Do you think French is difficult? 10 Secrets of Language Learning ⇢ www.thelinguist.com LingQ Grammar Guides ⇢ www.lingq.com/en/grammar-resource/ My blog ⇢ blog.thelinguist.com/ The LingQ blog ⇢ www.lingq.com/blog/ My Podcast ⇢ soundcloud.com/lingostevepodcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/learn-languages-with-steve-kaufmann/id1437851870 --- Social Media Instagram ⇢ instagram.com/lingosteve_/ TikTok ⇢ www.tiktok.com/@lingosteve Facebook ⇢ facebook.com/lingosteve Twitter ⇢ twitter.com/lingosteve LingQ Discord ⇢ discord.gg/ShPTjyhwTN

The most difficult thing about French is understanding spoken French. Everything else isn’t too bad.

I'm Polish, i have learnt 6 languages. When it comes to listening comprehension, french is definitely the most difficult one with no doubt...Took years to understand normal daily conversations.

École🇫🇷 --> Escuela🇪🇸 --> School🇬🇧 Some words are easier to see the similarity if you know other Latin languages, because French changed a lot (and isn't even the same Langue d'oïl) since the Normand invasion of England.

It's difficult for me mainly because of the pronunciation / accent. I find speaking with the proper pronunciation and understanding spoken French with thick French accents quite difficult while the reading and writing aspects are fairly straightforward.

I want to take French again in the next 2-3 years when, I get more confident with Swedish.

To me, comprehension definitely seems more difficult with French than a lot of other languages I listen to. Compared to Spanish, for example, listening to French as a non-native is like a soup of vowels, nasal or otherwise, where a lot of information gets packed into very tiny parts of speech. I think a good example to illustrate this is the case of the two pronouns _"y"_ and _"en"_ . They are just one single syllable each, one vowel sound, which usually just stealthily enters a sentence by replacing some other vowel (e.g. _"j'y crois pas"_ , _"il n'en reste plus"_ ). Yet, despite being so innocuous and easy to miss, both play a huge role in their respective sentences, and depending on context they can each have a wide variety of meanings. The key is of course to listen and to read a ton, to the point that the ear/brain is used to detecting such minute variations in vowels, as well as the structure of the language. But had I decided to learn something like German instead for my 30th birthday, I'll bet I'd have gotten a lot further, since I wouldn't be struggling so much already at the simple point of properly parsing _the sounds_ of the language.

As a Russian speaker I found that the knowledge of English greatly simplified learning of French. Not only because of shared vocabulary, but also because of many grammatical similarities. On the other hand, existence of genders in Russian only made things worse, since genders in Russian and French mismatch more often than not.

i found french listening comprehension the biggest challenge, with their liaison, and many slangs! They also speak so fast, faster than my mother tongue.

Came from İclal's video!! Such an inspiration!!

It's difficult to get good enough for a French person not to switch to English when you try speaking to them in French lol

You're excellent teacher. I like your videos so much Mr. Kaufmann.

Yes I would also agree to Mark that the most difficult it is to understand spoken french. Like for example if I'm watching a series I still often need subtitles to be able to follow along. With italian I was already able way earlier to catchup spoken things, because it's more melodic and clearly pronounced. Thanks again for another good video :).

French is hard to understand for me, structure is really easy because i'm a spanish speaker but the R in french is very hard because i don't have any idea of how the heck they pronounce it so fast without getting stuck. French speakers speak really fast and not loud enough to be able to distinguish the sounds, i was having a better time with german and i got to understand pretty quickly but then i decided to drop it because i thought it was hard and did french and now i'm having a bad time, if they would speak more clearly and not so fast and in a low voice we all would be happy

That is very interesting, brighty and clearly explained.

French to me was one of the hardest language to learn, french is complicated as hell and I'm not talking about learning just to say hi, it took me almost 7 years to start feeling comfortable and my native language is Spanish so yeah, I think french is a really special language but you need to have a lot of patience and recilience.

Très intéressant ! Bonjour du Québec ☺

I my opinion at least to me, French is difficult because a lot of words are not said how they are spelled. Unlike, their Spanish counterpart where many words are said exactly, as they are spelled. A fellow Canadian.

If you think French is difficult then never try to learn russian Chinese Arabic etc lol

السلام عليكم ورحمة الله وبركاته. Awesome Mr. Kauffman that you give us your experience about learning those languages. And it seems I'll watch your videos with each language i learn because i am dreaming to become a polyglot like you ❤️👍

waiting for this episode long time

I love to study English and French, Steve!!! Cette vidéo c'est très utile ! Je suis brésilienne ! Amo seus vídeos, assisto todos os dias! Eu aprendo tanto com você! Your videos are my compelling input! Thank you so much!

Hi Steve how are you? I would like to have a interview with you,I’m originally from Brazil and living in Japan,I’ve learned English since 2016,now my comprehension skill is good, I learned it by my own,so glad bless you my dear friend

Your awesome and awesome video

Is French Difficult? Me, only 2 months into learning French: *O U I*

I'm about 1 month into learning French on my own and I find it hard when they connect the words and speak fast. As long as it doesn't happen it's ok

Absolutely, sharp listening skills are very important in distinguishing whether a new word is a noun, an adjective or a verb, etc., and if recognizable by its conjugate structure, that immediately puts it into a grammatical context. Conjugations point to actions, processes and needs. Adjectives point to nouns preceding them, and more likely tangible objects or concrete objectifications of abstract ideas. it is important we do not reverse them in their translation if we want to fully understand and develop good grammar in the employment of the native french. It's almost like we are apologizing for french being the lesser of the two languages when we anglicize translations. It is not. The Swiss use french for business and in complex finance and transaction use, and the Swedes employ french in defining theories and biological functions in medicine, in writing scientific white papers and in choosing the winners of Nobel prizes.

I often have to check the gender with the Spanish word in order to get it right ( Spanish and French cognates often share the same gender so if you speak Spanish or Portuguese or Italian you can often use the gender of the word in that language to remember the gender in French)

2:46 This reminded me of a little rhyme we learned at school: Quand un gendarme rit Dans la gendarmerie, Tout les gendarmes rient Dans la gendarmerie.

J'ai écrit un vers: Un ver vert allait vers le bar pour boire un verre d'un verre en vaire (et non en verre).

Yearly paid subscriber here. I've dropped using your website, Steve, not because it isn't a good website, but because it's unfathomable for me to use efficiently. I just don't have the time to spend trying to navigate around the site and learning how to engage in the overall processes or in figuring out how to do things, like import texts, books, netflix and Amazon movies instead of just learning French. There's no easy path to establishing a simple rhythm or daily procedure when I'm muddling around all the time, and much of it comes from what I've mostly learned about myself as far as learning languages goes. I've been into it for three months now, and there are things I really dislike about learning french, not only on lingQ, but on most other sites as well, but again that's entirely on me, Steve. I love listening to you talk about different languages and I do see a marked improvement in my retention, but I believe my own method works better for me. Here's what I like doing and on whatever website or with whichever tool I am using, and much of this comes from early experimentation in following your advice on doing tons of reading, listening, and repetition. Sounds like whining and complaining, I know, but please hear me out. I have found I have a huge preference for hearing the French spoken first, and second, speaking the word or phrase out loud before ever learning its primary meaning or derivations. Why is that? Because I find I recognize the word a whole lot faster than I would have from hearing a translation, and that's the difference in actually having a conversation, or not... how about, definitely not. Instant recognition. Its so important. And why is that? Because french is unique in its grammatical structure and context due to liaison and the silencing of certain syllables, depending on the next word that follows. Also, a word's meaning isn't always critical to understanding the gist of the conversation. Keeping up is. Furthermore, nothing gets me frustrated faster than hearing a translation of something given back to me that was never said the way a frenchman would have spoken it. I understand the purpose is to get us familiar with the meaning of what was said, but what it really means is relearning how to say everything differently in order for me to utter it properly in the native tongue, and it has the effect of slowing my brain down to a crawl. Just the fact that adjectives follow nouns instead of preceding them causes massive confusion for a native anglophile between listening and responding to conversational french while being fed improper translations. I suppose I will learn to adapt eventually. That pretty much sums it up.

A lot of Native Speakers of languages are not good a communicating with people who do not have a good understanding of the language, in contrast as a French and Spanish L2 and L3 speaker I can speak in a way that language learners can understand by speaking slowly, using simple words, gestures, and a lot of cognates in order increase their comprehension of the language.

I’ve wanted to go/live in Paris my whole life , recently Went for my first time in early feb , currently want to surprise my fam as it’s march right now and welll probabky go back in late summer and I want to surprise them just randomly start talking French aha

What kind of mic are you using? Its really clear

3:13 Even more interesting than "mot"'s plural is maux ("mal"'s plural) which is pronounced the same as mot(s) and Meaux (a city): the context will give you the clue to guess which we refer to!

Very interesting and helpful! Merci beaucoup! You refer to the French half of the video. Perhaps I misunderstood. Where is the French half?

As soon as the video started, there is something you said that is very true, French has things that make it easy and others that make it difficult.

Good Teacher

Listening is extremely hard, in daily conversations, their vowels are like 50% pronounced 😂

Base level in Romance languages. Then listen a lot (and pick up new words) I am not very good yet. (and trying this method.)

Le français est difficile pour les élèves français : les homophones grammaticaux, les consonnes géminées, la conjugaison : quel souci pour eux ! Et cela ne s'arrange pas à l'âge adulte ! Pour les Français aussi le vocabulaire en anglais est facile à maîtriser. Clémenceau disait d'ailleurs que l'anglais était du français mal prononcé. Quelle mauvaise langue ! Enfin, merci Guillaume le conquérant ! Pourtant, malgré tout ce vocabulaire transparent, beaucoup de Français ont beaucoup de mal à apprendre l'anglais.

I am studying listening skill here !!

Very difficult. And I'm italian. I can make out something when I read it (more or less) but almost nothing when spoken. And the grammar is terrible, like the italian one.

After two years trying to master english (i'm still far from it) now i'm taking a breathe with french. As portuguese native speaker i think half of french is already in my head.

My main problem is telling apart the conditional and the imperfect for example lol

Is it okay i didn't learn france but i'm watching this video?😂 i learn english i'm still struggling with vocabulary little by little i learn new words keep going for those of you who learn france.😊

Question for the Canadians (since Steve is one): In school, is there any proclivity towards teaching some of the Quebecois accent, idioms, and general differences it has with textbook French? Obviously if you're in Quebec, but what about someone in Ontario who is relatively likely to visit Quebec City or Montreal before Paris or Marseilles? I figure it gets less common the more distance you go, like schools in British Columbia would see this as less valuable. I fully understand the connotations of the Quebecois accent to French people!

hey Steve, could you make a video telling us what you think about the war between Russya and Ukraine? we know you know a lot about both peoples.

A escrita vs pronúncia do francês é tão difícil quanto o inglês. Bom mesmo é português e espanhol nesse sentido. Você lê o que está escrito. Abraços.

Its not very difficult for English speakers because of the vocabulary but the way words are spelled makes no sense and some of the grammar is confusing (kind of like English lol) i think French is the hardest romance language and its probably super difficult for people who don't speak west European languages at all.

Steve, if one understands a lot of Spanish, but has studied French in high school, which of these two languages is better to start with again, and is it too much to learn them at the same time?

70 % of French verb conjugations are only written which makes writing harder but at the same time, I tend to make fewer conjugation errors when speaking, in Spanish or Italian you have to Conjugate every verb when speaking and there are often no subjects to guide the person you're speaking to in order to understand them. for example I mess up the Tu and el/ella form in Spanish and all of a sudden the person thinks I'm talking about someone else when I was actually talking about them, with the Subject pronouns being used in French you know who the person is referring to even if they mess up the pronociation

Wow I'm a French native speaker with a good English understanding and yet this thing about accents never occurred to me.

Grammar is tricky even for french kids xD So many exceptions, and exceptions to exceptions

Can you rate your fluency in languages you speak? I’m very curious.

3:40 I am a non english speaker. I agree that english has strange spellings, silent letters, crazy rules etc. But since we studied english from childhood, we are able to understand it. But french is more difficult than english. English is nothing. French spellings, conjugation are really hard,... Till now I get confused by the words like vont, sont, va, veux, vous etc... In english it's very easy. I have, You have, He/she has, It has, They have. But in french masculine and feminine comes. For each different words are used. Such a crazy language. My goodness. 😂Pronunciation is really hard. English we know, but still we find it difficult to understand some difficlt accents, then french native accent itself difficult. Just imagine how difficult it is😆

Le problème d'une langue ce sont les structures des expressions, le vocabulaire, lui, on peut l'apprendre facilement si on s'y met. La difficulté de l'anglais vient du fait qu'il n'y a pas de règle pour la lecture, le français quant à lui, conjugaison et grammaire sont très compliquées.

You need captions to show the spellings of your French examples. The KZfaq subtitles don't help with that.

Myself learning French being Spanish. Spoken French between natives definitely is the hardest part, more even than Polish or Russian seriously. When natives speak between themselves, I barely understand anything, it gets very frustrating.

If you're a Spanish speaker it's likely to be a piece of cake. At least so was it to me.

I think in your next video you should tell people about the war in Ukraine. I watched your videos about Lviv, I know you like our city. 😢

0:48 it's actually only 30%, which is still more words than those than come from Germanic origins, though English is a Germanic language, not a Latin one.

I think the difficulty in French is pronounciation rather than the spelling. Spelling I can get used to it very easly. However the pronounciation is somewhat hard for me.

the main Problem is understanding spoken French 1) its ridiculously fast 2) they speak very unclear 3) speak quiter 4) they keep cutting words in spite of so many already having only 2-3 sylablles. Italian in that regard is way easier, laut, clear, every syllable spoken etc

Hey Steve do you speak Portuguese? If so is it harder than French?

Spelling in English is not obvious to English natives. Especially to them.

Oui

Even the French find French difficult. Just read native speakers' comments on youtube videos. So many spelling and grammatical errors, especially faulty adjectival or participial agreement. For non-native speakers it's the spoken colloquial language that's the hardest part. Paratactic sentence structure, argotic vocabulary, suppression of the e muet with all the attendant consonantal assimilations, plus the lack of a tonic accent which makes all the words within a phrase seem to run together, all pose serious problems. It takes someone with linguistic gifts to learn to speak a fluent accentless French. Learning French just for reading comprehension, though, is pretty easy. And that gives you access to a large part of the riches of French culture.

About gender, in Spanish, peluche is masculine, but it is feminine in French. As a Spanish speaker, I find it really hard. I would like to be just a good listener in French.

As I 'm neither English nor French native speaker, I think that spelling of English is way more difficult than French's. In both languages, you can't hear a word and guess how it's written. However, in French, once you recognise the patterns, it's possible to read something and pronounce it correctly.

¿Y en qué momento hablas solo en francés en el video?

Je croi le lanngue fransai ce tres complicat . All words I wrote are wrong . Hhhhhh I feel English is more easy despite people in my country speak French as a second language.

English: Now Japanese: Ima French: Maintenent

À mon avis, l’orthographe du français est certainement unique et parfois un petit peu bizarre. Néanmoins je crois qu’elle est relativement consistante, et beaucoup plus même que celle de l’anglais. Ce qui me donnait des problèmes était surtout la prononciation des phrases entières, pas forcément des mots individuels. Parler en tout marmonnant comme ça, ce n’est pas du tout naturel pour un anglophone. Quant à la grammaire, bien qu’il y a plein d’étranges particularités je n’avais aucun problème avec les genres parce que j’ai étudié l’espagnol au lycée. Bon, ça correspond pas toujours mais c’est un excellent indice quand même. Il faut simplement traduire un mot donné à l’espagnol et voilà là dans la terminaison 🙃 Mon français n’est absolument pas parfait mais je comprends la vaste majorité de ce que disent les français, même entre eux. Donc voilà mon opinion pas du tout sollicitée lol

I find it easier to listen to the language directly with subtitles etc rather than learning out of a grammer book. Grammer books are definitely useful and you do need to know how the language works, but it's like you end up trying to remember how the grammer works rather than remembering the language. Anyone else feel like that?

Kind of.

I’ve studied french words for several months and still can’t follow a regular french conversation. My brain doesn’t seem to connect spoken words to the written words which it does in german and italian and to an extent spanish. I almost felt like giving up on french out of frustration but I’m not going to do it.

How difficult is French? Well, I can say it's probably not as difficult as learning Japanese (for native English speakers) :)

French language easy to learn but the pronunciation and the conjugation is a bit hard ; "Il faut apprendre la langue française" .

2:30 Hello, Hostel n'est pas hôtel mais auberge de jeunesse :) Hôtel est hotel.

Tout d'abord, le français est une langue que j'aime beaucoup mais le chose qui me fait très ennuyeux c'est la conjugaison surtout les temps composé et la structure de la questions. Ce me gave beaucoup malheureusement 😖

When it comes to pronunciation, French is not that difficult as people make it out to be aside from the silent letters. The nasals are very easy. When you pronounce the letter ‘n’ the tongue touches the palate. Now to pronounce the nasal say ‘on’ but keep your tongue in its resting place. It’s impossible to say the ‘n’ when the tongue is down, but when you attempt to say ‘on’ the vowel becomes nasalized. It’s very easy. Now do the same for the other nasal vowels. The ‘r’ is a uvular fricative or another variety which people classify as the “harsh r” is the uvular trill. To pronounce the r, keep your tongue in its resting place and gargle without water, and get a feel for where it’s pronounced. And keep in mind the r is a fricative, it’s supposed to be a weak letter so don’t strain your throat while pronouncing it.

French govt should change the spelling and rules of the language and make it simpler. Crazy pronunciation. When I heard someone saying "une orange" I really didnt understand what he was saying. Later found that he meant the orange. ohanj. Who will understand what word they are saying. OMG. Crazy... 😂😂😂

I am learning french since I was 8 years old and I am 17 now still don't know how to say a good phrase in french 😂😂😂

Pls can you correct the subtitle CHEVALE merci

Euh! "Chevale" n'est pas correct (ce qui apparaît sur l'écran) "Le petit cheval blanc" Merci !

My weakness is conversational french.

Où est la chanson française ?

5:14 Leave about objects, even different countries have different gender. Oh man! how french people decide which country is masculine and which is feminine? How do they know a country is male or female?? On what basis?No logic. That makes it very difficult

Le petit chevaL blanc, without a final e on cheval. Plural : chevaux.

The easiest part in the French language is spelling.

Is Arabic difficult?

I heard that french ppl are rude towards foreigners. Is it possible to impress a french girl? How difficult it would be for a foreigner?

L'orthographie française est plus facile que celle de l'anglais. Pour moi, la plus grande difficulté était d'avoir eu une enseignante au lycée qui elle-même ne pouvait pas parler proprement la langue

mais non, le français n'est pas si difficile que ça, je peux vous aider, si vous voulez.....

Je suis Française mais je trouve la langue anglaise bien plus complexe, la prononciation et le vocabulaire sont plus riches.

Nom c pa dure

One hard part of learning French is that the native speakers are not nearly as helpful and forgiving, as the German or English speakers.

To me the French language is easy to pronounce it Because we're in Algeria We speak French and Arabic And I , I am learning English. Mon je suis francophone et je peux parler en français facilement Merci beaucoup mon prof .

For me English is more difficult than french. Im Berber and I'm talking easily french and Arabic but I face big difficulties with English especially in speaking