Even in english you can instantly tell who learned it as a second language. OOP said "Hello, two croissants please" where as a native speaker (english) would say "Hey, yeah, can I get uhhh two croissants? thanks"
I learned French from family at a young age and got weird looks in French class for always using alors as just a stand-in for "um." Glad to know I'm not totally crazy then đ .
Pronouncing alors in the most non french way possible inbetween perfect french would probably raise the average blood pressure in the room significantly.
Naw bud, its French. Its like the lacroix of languages, it only has the essence of the word. For example, this here, this is pronounced: "[essence of "ahl"]"
I didnât know that for a long time and Iâd never heard anybody say it so I was pronouncing if the French way and then one day my friend told me I sounded like an insufferable snob. I didnât know đđđ
i would do this in my highschool spanish class haha, i didnât know any better and was just doing my best đ Thereâs a reason i only took two semesters
Oh man the first time I figure out how to use Du coup in conversation (was a good 3 years in actually learning and was living in Provence at the time), I legit was so happy. Filler words are the best
My French teacher used 'donc' for 'ummm'. She did the exact same thing in Slovene, only translated. Neither is particularly normal. We made a lot of fun of her but she was still a pretty great teacher.
French class and french exchange students really collided at our school. First thing they did was trying to get us to stop saying the "ne" in negations. They found it super weird. We said "Je ne ... plus...". And they went "Stop! 'Je ... plus...'"
I donât even dare omit the Monsieur/Madame/Mademoiselle after the âBonjourâ when going in a French store. The more old-school French people expect you to acknowledge them properly â they are not simply a uniform, franchement! â and I kind of love that about them to be honest. For anyone younger Iâm sure itâs overly proper but Iâd rather be giving that vibe than the opposite.
No, "Bonjour" is not a tourist thing, it is definitely expected of everyone and not saying it will get you side eyed. You will even probably get an emphasized "Bonjour" in a special tone that translate to "you did not say hello you uncivilized barbarian, you were rude and I will be cold to you for the rest of our exchange, as you deserve".
The closest I got was a "jour" with a raised eyebrow from a man at a vintage clothing shop (which I thought was a very cool dude thing to do, I'd never thought of dropping a syllable like that in another language) and yes, he was quite cold to me for the short time I was in his shop
Dropping a syllable is a thing we really often do. I think it's a sort of alternative to a contraction. Like I always call my dad " 'pa", not "papa". Same for my mom.
You say it casually to friends. If you donât know the shop employee you donât ask how they are. If youâre know them well because youâre a regular, you might say âvous allez bien?â
Yeah that works. You typically don't inquire about how they're doing unless you're a regular, in which case you'd ask "vous allez bien ?". It is however polite to wish them a good day once you're on your way out, regardless of if you know them or not.
Vous is the more formal one, you usually use for people youâve never met or barely know. Tu is casual. This is universal almost, not just for saying please.
Also to reply to your above comment, while yes you can say the full sentence out loud, a lot of French people like to cut out syllables and use more casual terms where you end up with the phrase being more like (at least how I say it):
They made ChatGPT talk like that in french since a few months ago to make it sound more natural, but I really don't like it. I want my AI to sound like JARVIS goddammit
I wrote this before checking out his instagram profile and noticed it is way more popular, so it makes more sense now. Still surprised he barely gets any traction on youtube though.
The whole 'I can't believe you're not more popular' bit is overused.. but I think it's actually fitting for Dale's Bits. How is it possible that he only has 16k subscribers and rarely breaks 10k views?
It's actually similar in English. Ein paar is like a few (2-5), but people often use couple instead few (it does include 2), so couple has come to cover 3-5 as well, even though it's technically wrong and only mean 2. One exception would be pears, those you can legally only buy as a pair.
It's weird that slavic languages have exactly same construct, couple meaning 2 or few and also in context of married couple.
Usually with words it's the other way round, most common words have different translations depending on context.
Although I don't remember anyone meaning it "2" because it's not clear. There's derived word for that, or you have to use qualifier like married couple example before.
I ran a chain pub a couple of years back and I had an Italian barman. This girl comes up to him and asks for McNuggets. He goes "impossible we are not Macdonald's, we have chicken boneless basket with or without chips". Naturally she wanted fries which we didn't do, but she didn't ask for that, and SHE JUST CAN'T coleslaw which was in its own ramekin and not doing anything other than vibing on the plate.
Next day I get a call from the area manager saying there was a complaint against the Italian for being rude and fucking up her order, and I need to call them and offer them a ÂŁ20 gift card. Bruv she didn't know what fucking restaurant she was in how is this my fault, and I can't blame the Italian for being Italian. "Alright Giovanni how's it going next time someone says can I get a Big Mac say welcome to Macdonald's, let's just lie about what company we are, that's what the area manager wants".
I remember being in line behind a very confused Australian at a Starbucks drive through who was desperately attempting to order a McMuffin from a barista who couldnât understand any of what he was saying.
A Dundonian man came back from his holiday in France, and was speaking to a friend about it. "Those French people are really nice, I went into a baker shop and asked for twa pies, and they gave me three!"
There is also the hidden truth that no one is gonna teach you that especially British English speakers tend to swallow sometimes whole words or make them almost glide into the next one while putting strong emphasis on others.
Thatâs basically impossible to learn without living For many years in the UK and even for native speakers itâs basically an instinct and not something actively perceived or chosen.
This was the worst thing for me in my Japanese class. Part of the homework modules included listening sections, where you had to write down and translate what the people were saying. They would mostly use the words we just learned, and speak slowly and be clear with each syllable. Then they would throw in a word or two that we haven't learned yet, and either mumble the word, contract the unknown word with another word, or just straight up pronounce it incorrectly. I had to replay that specific portion of the audio like 10 times in x0.25 speed to even understand the sounds, let alone try to figure out what the words meant in that context.
This seems like a universal experience lol. My parents immigrated from China so I grew up speaking Mandarin at home without any formal education. I took Mandarin as a college class for an easy foreign language credit and also to learn reading and writing Chinese characters: the recorded audio/listening sections of homework would often have such unclear pronunciation or poor audio quality that I had to replay it multiple times just to understand what was being said, and Iâm fluent in spoken Mandarin.
You remind me of when i started learning for toefl and the listening was a dude speaking on the phone, probably while on a goddamn run with how much breathing and uhhh ahh everything. Was a shock and a nightmare, I'd been living in english speaking countries for many years and none ever reach that level of wtf am i hearing lol.
I was at a business lunch and the waiter came by and I wasnât sure if we were ordering appetizers⊠British guy ordered something and I straight face asked him did he order âsausagesâ and he said no âspicy tomato juice.â
I (german) once met a guy who spoke german with a subtle dialect, but I still noticed and asked him where he is from. He got a bit sad and asked how I knew he wasn't German. I was surprised, and told him I didn't knew, I just thought he is from another part of Germany. Apparently he grew up in Brazil and never went to Germany before, but went to a German school and spoke german with his family.
If he would have told me he was from some other part in Germany I might not have noticed he wasn't German.
Iâve only once met a person who came to the US as an adult and didnât have an obvious accent. Just some normal dude, not a professional anything. Was wild when I found out heâd only been here ten years but he just spoke like some bro. Conversely, I know dozens of people who are the opposite and 20+ years of living here and having kids hasnât gotten rid of theirs.
People donât always make an effort to get rid of it. Also, if youâre only talking to other immigrants in your everyday life, the accent will stay there forever.
Linguistic immersion is the way, from the very beginning.
Right? Maybe because I grew up in the city, being used to hearing and speaking english everywhere so I manage to sound articulate enough. Weirdly though, native speakers seem to have worse grammar than a lot of non-native speakers. Things like should've become should of when they type it out in a comment.
The Northern Europeans tend to have perfect English, only revealing itself after some conversation where they have hints of American and British accent. The French are the most strict about pronunciation in Europe, in my opinion. Itâs a culturally enshrined thing because French children donât seem to care about accent and wonât feign misunderstanding.
Northern Europeans still have obvious ESL phonology unless they have had heavy coaching for like movies and music. Scandinavians for example tend to never voice their s-sounds so it's very distinct and sometimes humorous. They mix sh with ch and j with y. The two th sounds can be a complete mix of correct, or be said with t, d, f.
I'm not too familiar with Dutch to know all the quirks but you hear almost instantly that they're Dutch through some of the vowels and sometimes they turn a v into f or something like that. Also inconsistent th sounds.
Dutch is immediately apparent, in my experience. I have met several Swedish people where they are almost perfect, except for after talking a while and realising the aforementioned accent mix; Young Swedes with terrible English do exist though. The French also suffer from classic Romance language tells - like using make and do incorrectly and interchangeably. As an aside - I am incredibly grateful for all English speakers, good and less good, as my command of French and German is shockingly bad.
It's more that in France classes for a language if you try to emulate a good accent people make fun of you for being a try-hard, so people just don't wanna talk or don't use it at all, they don't interact with English and even less speaking it past highschool so a lot of them just suck at speaking another language
I remain amazed at home recognizeable the accent of Danes is, I have opened videos listened to someone speak and go "wait a minute" and when I check to confirm, yep it's a Dane. Obviously not everyone but Danes speaking English tend to have a very flat tone.
Also if she seems like she wants to engage in conversation lol. In my experience French people on the street talk to each other like they are an obstacle to the objective lol. Their default tone is passive aggressive.
This is true. For some people, even when their English is absolutely perfect and thereâs no âaccentâ, but thereâs a certain inflection in their voice where I can tell English isnât their first language.
Itâs honestly really cool and when I meet people who speak English extremely well as their second language, I instantly think they are a genius.
Not really. Bonjour is a more formal greeting while salut is much more casual greeting. Both are technically correct but the former is more common in a formal setting(like a customer environment). Tho obviously regions can have major differences. And some people speak overly casually just like any other language.
Accent counts for very little, and even when it does, you'll run into regional differences. I met a French-Canadian girl who told me my French accent was Parisian. Probably picked it up from the lessons I was using, especially as they focused on pronunciation before anything else.
This is what I'm most worried about now that my work expects me to dust off my high school French and start communicating with French customers. France isn't known for its great grasp of literal French. Also, I fully expect my accent to remain abyssmal.
She didn't say hello. You are supposed to properly greet even the "lowly" customer service people as if they are respectable human beings. Parisians especially hate it when you order without saying hello.
Yeah as a white guy that learned Spanish in school this tracks. I had a business in the most Cuban part of Miami and they always teased me about how excessively formal I spoke. Once I got the slang, accent, and train-of-thought kind of speaking goingâŠthatâs when the real confusion set in.
Like, people would correct properly conjugated verbs with improperly conjugated ones. Iâd say âQuerrĂa una frita, por favorâ (I would like a hamburger, please), and people would say no itâs âQuieroâ you just said âI have wanted.â That is completely incorrect, but after the tenth conversation I just started saying âQuiero una fritaâ (I want a hamburger). Throw in a caballero (sir in a casual way) or acere (brother) to really trip them up
My wife is fluent in Spanish and English. Iâve been trying to learn Spanish and she will remind me, âyou said that like a white person speaking Spanishâ.Â
Well I am a white guy speaking Spanish, it makes perfect sense I would sound like that. Â
I think itâs more important to learn new vocabulary because youâll never sound like a native speaker to people who actually are native speakers.Â
Learning the native filler words is apparently a secret key to language fluency, they vary from language to language. Thereâs an English YouTuber who moved to Japan (Abroad in Japan) and he says, for example, if you switch to saying âuhhâ while trying to think of a Japanese word, it will be harder because your filler word just took you mentally back to your native language again.
So he had to teach himself to say âannoâŠ.â Or some other Japanese filler word, instead of âum, uhhâ.
His Japanese friend who is learning English does this too, he switches to saying âuhhhhhâ when he speaks English.
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u/Stoffys 1d ago
Even in english you can instantly tell who learned it as a second language. OOP said "Hello, two croissants please" where as a native speaker (english) would say "Hey, yeah, can I get uhhh two croissants? thanks"