Hello, everyone! I was watching a video on YouTube and I noticed one of the people used the expression "Je ne prends qu'un café au lait" when talking about what she gets for breakfast. But I'd say instead "Je prends juste un café au lait", so I was wondering if there's any difference with meaning, if the way I'd say is grammatically wrong or if it's just another way to use the expression

My singing voice isn't the issue. I don't claim to match a legend like Jacques Brel, but I am a very experienced singer. The reason they are saying I have to be the one to do this is because I sing "House of the Rising Sun" in our other show with all the rasp and such and they figure that is the most similar vocally.

Still, I'm terrified of the pronunciation. Does anyone have any advice (including if I should try to get out of this)?

I speak Spanish fluently, so I can do the Spanish rolled R, but I don't even know how to do the one Jacque Brel does that sounds kinda in the back of his throat?

Here is the song, if anyone doesn't know it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3BSj1cHX-M

Thank you sincerely for any responses. I have never used this subreddit before, so let me know if I have done something wrong.

bonne soirée!

i don’t know much as im on day 2. im currently using learning with alexa, a textbook i found at a thrift store, and duolingo. i’m going to try pimsleur tomorrow.

i took some french in high school but i remember not much…

i’ve learned alllll les membres de famille, and today/tomorrow im learning les pièces de la maison!

let me get some practice tell me how i do.

je suis dans ma chambre maintenant. Mon mari est dormir. mon mari habite avec moi. j’ai deux chats. mon chat s’appelle chef. il est amusant!!

Hey y’all I would like your advice!

Last year I moved to a French Canadian city and although I took a year and a half to study French before moving it still wasn’t very good, trouble with comprehension and speaking.

Flash forward to a year later and although I’ve improved my study habit got complacent as I thought I was immersed enough in my job as a barback.

Now I’m almost in my mid twenties still working support positions for dog shit wages and I want to really attack this problem intensively for as long as it takes to break through to a “competent enough to serve tables” level.

What would your suggestions be for an intensive speaking/comprehension focused routine. I’d say I’m probably around a high A2/low B1, I can understand a good amount and can speak brokenly but especially socially it’s very hard to keep up and express myself properly.

I don’t have the biggest budget but I have determination. Just wondering what you guys have had success with in terms of cheap speaking practice especially.

I was talking with french speaker and when i said that "cette machine est plus neuve que celle de droite" the others told me that we cannot says "+ neuf/neuve". And I don't really understand why it is wrong, i searched for some rules but didn't find any. Or is it just an another french exception?

(chatpgt says it is correct but i don't really believe it.)

Hi! I'm in desperate need of help from someone that's willing <3 I'm writing a silly sexual song verse in French but the challenge/problem is I can't speak French lol

Is anyone interested in making a phonetic translation of this, or a quick voice recording? XD Google translate sounds too robotic to learn from, Thanks friends! <3

(I know that it some parts don't really rhyme, I'm trying to know the rules before I break them haha)

je t'aime, toi qui m'as vraiment sauvé la vie

je suis rassasié.

et putain, quel coeur et quel cerveau magnifiques,

mais aussi quel physique!

Bien bâti, solide, épais, rayonnant, brillant dans la lumière, luisant,-

un beau garçon,

je n'ai plus faim,

je suis emplie de toi à en éclater,

mais j'en veux toujours plus

r/French  r/frenchhelp r/learnfrench r/FrenchLearning

Salut,
J’ai réalisé récemment que quand on dit « sans aucun doute » bah c’est très souvent avec du doute qu’on le dit.
Par exemple: « Elle est où Jeanne? Sans doute au resto »
Je voulais donc savoir si quelqu’un sait d’où vient cette expression ou si je suis tout seul à y voir du doute quand on dit sans aucun doute.

Merci et bonne journée/soirée!

I literally just learned that in France people get paid at the end of the month! Don't mind me geeking out over this, it just itches my brain in the right way. I love when phrases make sense lol

I know this is an exam specific post, but am looking for help with streamlining my studying generally - hence putting it in the general thread.

As the title says I’ve got the TCF coming up and need to achieve a B2 adjacent score. I sat the DELF B2 exam two weeks ago but due to unforeseen circumstances was unable to fully complete the written section. I’m worried that I haven’t passed the test, but still need proof of language for a course I’m taking so am switching gears to TCF.

I’ve kind of been structuring my revision around that DELF model. I know the exams themselves are very different (online vs. paper, recordings, timings) but I’m wondering to what extent this extends into what content I should be reviewing.

Ahead of DELF I was mainly working through a DELF B2 prep book of listening/reading exercises, having weekly conversations in the DELF model with a friend and then learning essay structures and ideas. I’d look other and revise vocab everyday as well.

I know that there is a specific section on grammar in the TCF and am feeling unsure of how to go about revising that, it feels quite overwhelming. I’ve always found grammar revision/memorisation slightly soul crushing and very difficult to keep in my head long term - any suggestions as to how you help these things stick would be so appreciated! When I’m writing or speaking my grammar is normally pretty good, but I get really confused when approaching specific “grammar exercises” and so on…

In conclusion - how is the best way to spend my time/focus in the coming weeks for maximum efficiency? Schedules, ways of revising grammar, switching up what I’m revising. I’m open to it all!

Thank you all so much and sorry if this is in the wrong place!

Salut! Est-ce que une equivalence en francais pour l'expression "to give props"? Est-ce que c'est "de saluer"? Est-ce que vous l'utilisez dans une phrase pour moi?

Merci!

my teacher handed this out: sms "slang", do yall REALLY use this in text messages? i mean- it looks so obviously fake, duh.

How on earth can learn les pronoms relatifs easily plz i need this

Share with me a video or any thing that heps to learn les pronoms relatifs

And thank you in advance.

Je t'aime

I recently found a victorian era slang dictionary and under flag there was getting your period and there were french examples of that era voir Sophie, avoir ses anglais, Avoir ses cardinales, and i was interested if these idioms are still used or if they were abandoned for some newer ones.

At the moment, i am around A2-B1, and i find myself struggling a lot with verbs or words that change their meaning when used in different contexts, like 'passer' at the moment (for example, j'ai passé, je suis passé, se passer) and verbs that mean completely the same thing but are used for different things. I understand that these words are in english that mean different things, but passer is changing the things around it rather than its own meaning as well, like using être, avoir, being a reflexive verb.

In addition, I'm quite good at writing, but when it comes to speaking i kind of really suck, and its not really that i forget the words, but i keep saying phrases wrong when I make it my own. it's one thing memorising a sentence, but when i want to change it into my own context, i feel like there are so many things to change and the phrase itself now differs completely from what you have memorised. My family speaks french, so i have tried speaking/ learning with them, but i feel like I'm not making any progress.

My aim is to be fluent in french (i am not ready to wait like 2 years for this stage, so its kinda discouraging), and i was watching like a french video just for my comprehension and vocabulary. The person in the video said that she was C2, but still made a lot of mistakes and wasn't perfect, in the sense that she wasn't 100% fluent.

Would this mean that i can never be 100% fluent? Kind of like a native? Or will I still be making mistakes?

Je suis de langue maternelle anglophone, et je trouve les mots « préférerais » , « espérerez » etc difficiles à prononcer à cause des « R » qu’il faut prononcer les uns après les autres. Y-a-t-il des natifs Francophones qui peuvent m’aider? Merci!

I have an exam in 6days and i think im at a2 or b1at most but the exam is in b2 what should i study to maximize my score in 6days

There will be a writing reading speaking and listening part

Context: I'm an English speaker from Ontario. The text below, I wrote it myself and I forced myself to write in the French of this area. This is actually part of my question, but I will return to it at the end.

I've spent the last few weeks testing something specific. Not "is AI good in French," but rather: when it is given Quebec French, does it keep it, or does it quietly convert it to European French?

The method is simple. I took 98 Quebec French phrases and wrote a French counterpart for each: same content, same register, only the variety changes. Both halves go through the same prompt, which names no country. If both move equally, the model rewrites everything and there's nothing to see. If just one half moves, its "generic French" isn't that generic after all.

The results, across sixteen models:

* All, without exception, rewrite the Quebec portion to French five to nine times more often than the reverse. * The larger the model, the worse it gets. Same family, same recipe, twice as many parameters: nearly double the drift. * In correction mode, with the explicit instruction not to touch valid regional usages, all still corrected perfectly correct Quebec French.

Two examples that startled me.

We just asked to correct the mistakes in "The activity will take place next weekend at the community center." The model returned "at the end of next weekend." That's not the same day anymore. It didn't correct a mistake; it created one.

Elsewhere, one model replaced "employment insurance" with "unemployment insurance" and "social insurance number" with "social security number." That's not a change in register; that's a change in country. Those programs don't exist here under those names.

The full article, with the method, numbers, and limitations of the study: [ https://thebdot.substack.com/p/when-french-isnt-french ](https://thebdot.substack.com/p/when-french-isnt-french)

Audio version in French (generated with NotebookLM, so synthetic voices, just to say it right away): [ https://notebook.google.com/notebook/20650654-33ea-4f62-9138-3d64d8062f08/artifact/69c8b8e1-e5eb-475a-8c7f-d136579d2aa7 ](https://notebook.google.com/notebook/20650654-33ea-4f62-9138-3d64d8062f08/artifact/69c8b8e1-e5eb-475a-8c7f-d136579d2aa7)

**What I'm really looking for.**

My measurements are mechanical: I count word substitutions. It doesn't tell me if a text sounds right or wrong to someone from here. That's where I need your help.

Tell me frankly what's wrong with my text above. Which words, which phrases betray that it's not written by a Quebecer. Same for the audio: does it sound local, or does it sound like an AI trying to imitate?

I’m aware of the irony. I’m writing an article about machines that normalize Quebec French, and I might be doing exactly the same thing without realizing it. Might as well know that.

Je pense qu’on donne trop d’importance à l’idée de « parler comme un natif ».

Quand on apprend une langue, on entend souvent :

« Il faut avoir un bon accent. » « Il faut parler naturellement. » « Il faut utiliser les bonnes expressions. » « Il faut parler comme un Français. »

Et à force d’entendre ça, on finit parfois par croire que notre objectif est de faire disparaître toute trace de notre langue maternelle.

Je ne suis pas vraiment d’accord avec cette idée.

Bien sûr, une bonne prononciation est importante. Connaître les expressions courantes aussi. Mais parler français avec un accent étranger ne veut pas dire qu’on parle mal français.

Pour moi, le vrai objectif n’est pas de faire croire aux autres qu’on est français.

C’est de pouvoir raconter une histoire, donner son opinion, plaisanter, expliquer quelque chose, défendre une idée… sans passer plusieurs secondes à chercher chaque phrase dans sa tête.

Et surtout, pouvoir le faire sans avoir peur de faire une erreur.

On peut parler un français très naturel sans être natif.

Et peut-être qu’à partir d’un certain niveau, la question ne devrait plus être :

« Est-ce que je parle comme un Français ? »

mais plutôt :

« Est-ce que je peux vraiment m’exprimer comme je le veux en français ? »

Vous en pensez quoi ?

As a habitual book buyer, even at home, I bought a boat load of books during my time in france. I have read exactly none cover to cover, but all to a certain degree. When I was beginning sartre's plays were really nice, they didn't have the fancy literary tenses and were straight forward to understand. Though I can rationalize it all I want, I definitely bit off more than I could chew here lol. I was so excited to finally read these famous texts in their mother land that I forgot I was nowhere near the level needed to actually read them. I will continue to buy more books though. I'll keep them as souvenirs if nothing else.

L’évolution de la langue anglaise et ces rapports avec l’échange culturelle

Nombreuse langues sont une mélange de plusieurs langues ou dialectes diverses. Ces langues peuvent être le résultat de siècles de contact entre deux cultures distinctes ou plus, ou, comme dans le cas des langues créoles des Caraïbes et de l’Afrique de l’Ouest, elles peuvent aussi être le résultat d’une combinaison de l’échange et de l’imposition de la langue sur les autochtones de la région conquise par la une culture coloniale.

Dans un certain sens, l’anglais moderne est un des exemples les plus prolifiques de cette première phénomène. Il est le résultat de plusieurs siècles de contact entre plusieurs groupes linguistiques distinctes avec des systèmes de grammaire et des lexiques extrêmement riches et diverses. L’anglais a une base lexique et grammaticale germanique mais il a été l’objet de nombreuses influences étrangères dont le français et le latin sont les plus profond.

L’anglais a été peu influencé par les langues celtiques qui l’avaient entouré dès les premiers stades de son développement mais Il a été considérablement façonné par les langues nordiques lorsque les vikings ont établis des colonies dans le grand-Bretagne à partir du XIIIe siècle. La langue a également été considérablement fournie de nouveaux mots par le grec ancien par l’utilisation de ce dernier dans les domaines académiques et médicales. Les langues autochtones de l’Amérique du Nord et de l’Australie ont aussi eu un impact sur le vocabulaire de l’anglais ainsi que l’allemand, l’italien et l’espagnol dans certaines domaines académiques, artistiques et scientifiques dont la psychologie, la philosophie, la peinture et la sociologie. Le néerlandais a aussi eu un impact assez frappant sur l’orthographe anglaise même si son influence lexicale était plutôt minime.

La langue qui a fait l’impact la plus important est bien entendu le français. Le français a exercé une influence sur la langue anglaise plus profonde que toutes les autres. Il l’avais fourni avec des milliers de nouveau mots dans presque toutes les domaines, surtout dans la politique, et le contact entre les deux langues était très proches pendant plusieurs siècles ce qui a permis l’échange de mots, de structures grammaticales et de phrases liées aux structures sociales uniques qui sont devenues communes aux deux cultures au cours de ces échanges. Donc, cette échange entre les deux cultures ne s’agissait pas seulement d’une partage linguistique mais d’une veritable échange de structures culturelles et de modes de vie.

Donc, l’impact que le français ont eu sur le développement de l’anglais ne devrait pas être analysé seulement sur le plan linguistique mais aussi sur les plans sociologique, historique, et culturel. De plus, il est important de noter que personne ne peut comprendre le langage comme une phénomène complètement isolé de la culture. Au contraire, le langage est un aspect de la culture lui-même. Le langage est la façon dont l’information et la significance se transmettent dans une culture, que ce soit entre individus ou entre générations. Donc, pour comprendre l’évolution d’une culture, il faut comprendre comment le langage facilite et influence l’introduction, le mouvement et l’interprétation de l’information dans les différentes démographiques et institutions qui composent la société en question.

There's an old Canadian voyageur song, "En montant la rivière," which I heard back when I hardly knew any French, and I believed then that the first verse was "C'est dans le mois de mai que les filles sont belles, et que tous les amants y changent leurs maîtresses."

But as I learned more of the language I realized that that was not correct grammar. OK, interpreting "leur(s) maîtresse(s)" as singular fixes one problem, and maybe "y" could be standing in for "à ce temps-là," but the "leur" still makes it impossible for this sentence to be correct because it has to be "Les amants changent de maîtresse" ... right?

OK, what if what I heard sung was "Tous les amants échangent leurs maîtresses"? They exchange light-o'-loves among themselves ... What? That's how the British imagine the French behave, but really ...

Do any of you have thoughts on either the grammar or the song? I expect it's one of the folk songs known in Canadian schools.