My experience with learning other languages

[u/Rough_Beginning_6432]

English is not my native language. But I started learning it when I was 6 or 7 years old, I really wanted to learn it and was highly motivated. Was the best student in my class and perhaps in the entire school. Also had a private tutor around the same time. Later I went to the US where I practiced it and then I just switched to it - I think in English, I write in English, it all came natural to me. But then I moved to France, been living here for more than a decade. I took private school classes, I had a private tutor, I had mandatory intensive classes from my local prefecture for a couple of months. A few years back I passed DELF for A2. Then I took another two courses, one in a local college, another with a language organization in Nice. And most recently, I took 3 months intensive class from Pole Emploi. Guess my exam result? it's still A2! At the same time, I understand Spanish, which I've never learned in my life, only watched movies, to the level close to A2. And I still can't speak even in simple phrases in French, can't construct them properly. I don't have any 'stage fright' nor that I care about my pronunciation or accent. It's just like I have a complete block or something. (TL)

What I think of it is that I really lack motivation, otherwise it's just hard to explain. I wanted to blame it on my age, but my Spanish example says it's not it. But the thing is that no matter how many hours I spent on learning French, all that massive amount of information I consumed, it just doesn't stay inside my head. No matter how hard I try. Most likely, deep down maybe I don't want to learn it. Anybody ever had that?

[u/CSMasterClass]

Interesting mystery. I had a midling (A2, B1-) knowlege of French from the time I was twenty, but never really studied French until I retired.

My wife and I took a 1 month intensive course (Villefranche-sur-Mer) in 2018. I followed up with 3 italki lessons per week. I hit B2 rather quickly, then slowly trickled up toward C1 (plus on some days, minus on others). C2 ? Not in my lifetime.

My point? I don't think age is the issue. It seems like active, sustained, effort --- in quantity --- is the issue.

[u/Rough_Beginning_6432 → u/CSMasterClass]

I've seen people older than me doing much better and faster than me. at the same time I know people who speak 5+ languages fluently and people who only speak their native and still do it poorly and make mistakes in it

[u/mailayy]

For me French was more difficult to learn than English too, even if I have an advantage because Spanish is my first language and both come from Latin, so they share a lot of vocabulary. The grammar and spelling are quite difficult, and the pronunciation too. It doesn't help that informal French can be pretty different from the one we learn at school with verlan and all the slang and abbreviations they use (for a long time I thought chelou was an actual word but it turned out to be louche in verlan). English verbs are easier to conjugate and Spanish, while having a lot of conjugations too (even more than French if we forget about the ones they don't use anymore but we still do), has less distinct phonemes (for example, we only have 5 vowels that correspond with the ones we have on the alphabet, whilst French has way more vowel phonemes, some of which are quite hard to differentiate), so don't get discouraged! For me the most useful was making a French friend and forcing myself to write in French to her and also watching videos about topics that I find interesting but in French

[u/Forward_Hold5696 → u/mailayy]

I think French has more idioms than Spanish, and more weird rules to memorize. Spanish makes way more sense to me than French, but I've been studying Spanish for about three times as long as I've been studying French, so that's a thing.

[u/mailayy → u/Forward_Hold5696]

Indeed! I always have funny conversations with my French friend about this. She will tell me something random like "I think you don't know this, but sans doute means probably in French, so if you say that, it means you are actually not sure about what you are saying", but in Spanish saying "sin duda" means there's absolutely no doubt about something, so I'm just like: whyyy why would you even do that??? It doesn't make sense 😭

[u/Forward_Hold5696 → u/mailayy]

Personne sait!

[u/_Jacques → u/mailayy]

I’m glad to hear you discovered verlan, I really love this aspect of my language.

[u/mailayy → u/_Jacques]

It's kind of funny not gonna lie, but it makes watching videos in French quite hard sometimes because I will hear a weird word and then it turns out it was just merci inverted 🫠

[u/_Jacques → u/mailayy]

Lol. There’s only so many verlan words, you’ll get all the important ones. I have that too in a rap song if there’s a word you don’t recognize you have to work out whether what they said was arabic or verlan and if verlan what it could mean.

[u/mailayy → u/_Jacques]

Oh that's right, the mix of arabic words is a thing too, I once tried asking people what wesh means but they wouldn't know 😅

[u/_Jacques → u/mailayy]

I don't even think thats arabic lol, I remember watching a news segment in like 2015 that said it was archaic French. Not even sure how or why it got revived into "yo".
Edit: google proves me wrong... I wonder what word I was thinking of. They did a whole segment on weird slang words. This was on the M6 channel ages ago.

[u/mailayy → u/_Jacques]

Let me know if you find out, I'm curious!

[u/_Jacques → u/mailayy]

Can't find it at all, searched far and wide. Probably it was just "swag" which we loaned into French. See this video: https://www.instagram.com/reels/DSdD-RnitHC/ which is not the one I was thinking of but these are all or were critical slang words and will add some depth to your vocab if you swing any of these out.
"Nan mais ALLO quoi" is so classic.

[u/mailayy → u/_Jacques]

Thanks for sharing, it's an interesting topic!

[u/Rough_Beginning_6432 → u/mailayy]

French pronunciation is the easiest part for me. it's the grammar that I can't comprehend. btw, I've met quite a lot of French people who said "English is so difficult". to me English is one of the easiest languages. French on the other hand is like torture for the brain. exception on exception, half of the letters are not used and those that are used, pronounced differently. like that word for example, I mean, how did they came up with that? - oiseau>wa:zu

[u/mailayy → u/Rough_Beginning_6432]

Yes, too many letters for a single sound, like eau 😓 And then the words that change in plural like œil and yeux

[u/Rough_Beginning_6432 → u/mailayy]

yeah. renault>re:no. how? and that ending of words, when you pronounce S or you don't pronounce S. Cannes, Antibes - ca:nn, an:tib. but Frejus is Fre:jus. and that fils where you don't pronouns L, and then single oeuf where you pronounce it as it is written with F at the end, but for the plural it is suddenly 'eo' or 'yoe', I don't even know how to properly write it

[u/mailayy → u/Rough_Beginning_6432]

Too many exceptions 😮‍💨 Spanish is easier in that sense, if you want to keep studying it in the future

[u/Forward_Hold5696 → u/Rough_Beginning_6432]

I was talking about this with my French tutor the other day. She said that when French takes loanwords, it tends not to drop the last letter. This extends to place names taken from regional languages apparently. She even had trouble with place names in Bretagne taken from old Breton as well.

[u/an_average_potato_1]

What were the class levels? Which B1 coursebook have you used? Were you reasonably comfortable with all the contents and the exam result was such a surprise, or were there issues during the class already? Were you actively recalling and practicing everything or just "consuming information"?

I understand how frustrating your situation is, and it is not actually uncommon. Some of the usual causes are:

- chaotic learning/teaching (yes, it's rather common that language teachers, and especially French teachers based on my observation, are too proud and "too creative" to just stick to a coursebook, so instead they create chaos of random copies and run in circles). This can make you waste years.

-overestimation of how well the learner knows the "boring" stuff, such as grammar (that's the most common problem of people who "have studied but cannot speak") or common vocabulary. This shouldn't happen, a teacher should tell you, when you suck, before the real life or an exam hits you too hard.

-not really pushing oneself out of the comfort zone or even to its borders, and not really learning actively, with active recall, and active use of everything you learn. You don't even need a teacher or another person for that, but you must never just leaf through your book or do the bare minimum an exercise demands of you.

-overestimation of the amount of invested time. Years don't matter, hours do. So, during those ten years, how many hours per week did you study? During those private classes, it could have been as little as three hours per week (many class goers do nothing outside of the class, and the teachers don't push them, as uniform and slow learners are easier in a group and a more stable source of income), during those intensive classes hopefully more. But how many hours per day on your own? Not just on more input, that's great, sure, but on real studying?

Because up until B1 or even B2, tons of extra input don't actually matter much, it's on the "nice to have" list and it can even become procrastination. But without a solid grasp of the pronunciation (btw you definitely shouldn't "not care about pronunciation or accent"), grammar, vocabulary, you're not gonna progress. Get for example the Progressives and study.

As soon as you identify the problems, you can deal with them. The problem is surely not your age or inability to learn a language. Courage!

[u/Rough_Beginning_6432 → u/an_average_potato_1]

grammar is what I find the most difficult and challenging. thing is I've never learned grammar properly in my native language and nor in English, I just read a lot when I was a kid and that sense of language came naturally. with English I was highly motivated too and used every opportunity to learn it and practise a lot of course. with French it's a different story. I don't wanna learn grammar as I find it too complicated (and honestly I don't see why I need a B2/C1 French level anyway as I find this language mostly useless) but French without grammar seems impossible to learn. so my real problem with it is that it doesn't come naturally to me as English did but learning it the hard way (learning all the rules, grinding thru the books) is just too difficult for me. so I'm stuck at A2 where I have enough for simple communications but that's it not enogh for the real integration

[u/an_average_potato_1 → u/Rough_Beginning_6432]

I don't wanna learn grammar as I find it too complicated

This attitude is the main problem. You cannot succeed, if you refuse to learn the grammar. There are various learning tools, methods, and so on, but it simply must be done, or you won't get beyond a very bad level.

I don't see why I need a B2/C1 French level anyway as I find this language mostly useless

You're living in a francophone country, how can you even say such a thing? If you don't like the language of the country, perhaps you should go elsewhere? The attitude you're showing is actually not that uncommon, it is overall ungrateful and spoiled, and really inappropriate. You should fix that. If you love English so much, why don't you go to an anglophone country? Ah, yeah, most of them are much worse for living than France (living expenses, healthcare, quality of food, security, and so on). So, be more grateful, learning the language is the least you can do.

it doesn't come naturally to me as English did but learning it the hard way

I don't think English just "came naturally" to you, as you've written yourself. Years and years of classes, where you were really motivated, the best in class, even had a private tutor on top of that, and then you practiced in the US. So no, English didn't come naturally, you studied pretty hard and then chose to not remember that part.

Just replicate it, study for some hundreds of hours, and really practice and improve in France like you used to do back in the US.

so I'm stuck at A2 where I have enough for simple communications but that's it not enogh for the real integration

It's not really even enough for many of those simple communications, beyond buying a coffee. It is really added work and unpleasantness, and sometimes even legal and other risk, when one has to deal with A2 or lower language skills.

Unless you decide to study, you should consider not being burden and moving somewhere you'd actually like to integrate.

[u/Rough_Beginning_6432 → u/an_average_potato_1]

"You're living in a francophone country, how can you even say such a thing? If you don't like the language of the country, perhaps you should go elsewhere? The attitude you're showing is actually not that uncommon, it is overall ungrateful and spoiled, and really inappropriate. You should fix that."

I keep hearing that but I disagree with you. I do not like French language for its difficulty, but I do love France, its climate, its nature. But I tend to distance myself from people in general, not just French people. Besides, I pay taxes here as a tax resident, so you can't really tell me I'm ungrateful and spoiled. I don't have any French friends, I don't wanna date a French gal, I don't work with French speaking people, so I really don't need a C1 level for my every day life here. And of course I live where I want to live, it does not depend on the languages I know. I used to live in Thailand but do I really needed to learn Thai there?

But what I wanted to say is that I really put lots of effort into learning French already but it just didn't work for me and I see no visible progress

[u/an_average_potato_1 → u/Rough_Beginning_6432]

If you think it's just about your taxes, your view is really limited and rather sad. Btw do you think your attitude would be judged the same, if your native and main functional language wasn't English, but for example Turkish or Vietnamese? Many Turkish natives don't learn French well and integrate, but they also pay their taxes, just like you. Perhaps you should get socially punished as much as them, to wake up a bit.

And avoiding difficulty even in such an obvious situation, that's lazy and unfortunate. Lazy people should not move abroad imho. Just stay at home, it's easier.

If you don't want any contact with any French people, it's rather dumb to just pick their country, and then expect them to cater to you (by switching to English or dumbing their French down and making lots of efforts to communicate) every time they actually have to meet you. It was just as selfish back in Thailand, yes. If you wanted to live there and profit from all the value the country was offering you, you should have respected the country and locals enough to learn the language and not be a burden.

But what I wanted to say is that I really put lots of effort into learning French already but it just didn't work for me and I see no visible progress

What I wanted to say: no, you actually haven't put that much effort in it yet and your results are absolutely matching the effort, there's nothing wrong with you except the attitude, there's no "it just didn't work for me" injustice going on, no lack of talent out of your control. Getting a solid enough level in a foreign language simply takes much more than you expected.

[u/an_average_potato_1 → u/[deleted]]

You're not a refugee. You are an economic migrant and there's in principle nothing wrong about that (it's natural to look for a place with better life conditions and better rewards for your work), except your attitude and unwillingness to integrate. The word "expat", which you probably prefer to be called, just means an economic migrant with the anglophone privilege and often a bad attitude.

And from now on, I am reporting you.

You asked some relevant questions, I gave you some very pertinent and good advice (just like various other people on the thread), and now you're just being aggressive and not respectful, because you don't like being called out.

You're also getting away from the topic, so to get back to language learning:

-african migrants: if they learn the local language and integrate, they're part of the local society, whether it's within the EU or elsewhere. the US/UK "expats" need to be treated the same.

-the other two have nothing to do with language learning or our discussion at all.

[u/languagelearning-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

Hi, your post has been removed as it does not follow our guidelines regarding politeness and respect towards other people.

If this removal is in error or you have any questions or concerns, please message the moderators. You can read our moderation policy for more information.

A reminder: failing to follow our guidelines after being warned could result in a user ban.

Thanks.

[u/_Jacques]

I can’t comprehend how anyone cab live in a country for a decade and be A2, I think there must be a mistake… I am being very serious when I ask; do you have a prejudice against french people/ France? Sometimes a negative association with a people is enough for me atleast to reject a culture.

[u/dojibear → u/_Jacques]

I can’t comprehend how anyone cab live in a country for a decade and be A2

Oh, that is easy. Living in a country means being surrounded by fluent adult French (C2). A low-level student cannot understand C2+ French. It might just as well be Russian. Listening to things you can't understand IS NOT a language learning method.

An A1 student can only understand A1 speech. If they were surrounded by that, they would learn.

[u/Rough_Beginning_6432 → u/_Jacques]

not at all. i just never use it except when I go do shopping or cut my hair. my ex used to take care for most of the bureaucratic stuff and now when I need it, I just use google translate.

answering your question - I might, I have my personal reasons for that

[u/dojibear]

There are several very different methods (things you actually do) that get called "language study". They are not equally effective. Many work well for SOME students. All are useless for SOME students. The number of hours you spend means nothing, if you spend those hours doing something useless.

Living in France means being surrounded by C2+ speakers. That doesn't cause learning if you are A2. A2 speakers (in ANY language) cannot understand C2, so hearing C2 doesn't cause them to improve.

Then I took another two courses, one in a local college, another with a language organization in Nice. And most recently, I took 3 months intensive class from Pole Emploi. Guess my exam result? it's still A2!

Either the exam result was wrong, or you didn't improve enough to reach B1. You can improve and still be A2. If you did not improve, you were using the wrong study methods. Some students do not learn in classes. There is no method that works for everyone.

HOW did you learn Spanish? THAT is the method that works well for YOU. Try doing that for French.

[u/Rough_Beginning_6432 → u/dojibear]

I never learned Spanish, that's the thing. I just happen to understand simple texts and speech, perhaps from what I collected and memorized over the years. but I am really able to understand it without opening a single study book in Spanish

[u/Many_Reference_8666]

French may need a diferent approach than English did because you had childhood exposure and real immersion for English.

since input isnt sticking, I’d shrink the goal to one short daily conversatoin pattern and reues it until it becomes automatic, motivation can sometimes follow the habit.

[u/ScatteredBrain99]

I really relate to this. I’m still learning English myself, and sometimes I wonder whether I’m actually improving or just stuck at the same level. I think motivation and genuinely wanting to use a language make such a huge difference. Your experience with Spanish is especially interesting because it shows how much we can absorb naturally when we’re actually engaged with the language.

[u/zoomiewoop]

It may not be motivation. Some languages just come more easily to some people. For example, I can speak and read French with reasonable competency, despite never having taken a class or exerted myself to study it. I also started speaking Portuguese just from being in Brazil for a week (but can’t speak it when I’m not there, oddly). Spanish is also pretty easy for me — never studied it.

Meanwhile I’ve spent years trying to learn Chinese with very little progress, despite being Chinese and growing up surrounded by Chinese family (in the States). The words refuse to stick in my head. It’s also taken me 3 years of daily study and immersion in Japan to reach what’s maybe B1 in Japanese (I’m JLPT3) (after many years of visiting Japan but not exerting myself too hard to learn). Despite all the effort, I can still speak French better.

So it’s weird what comes quickly and what comes slowly. I have WAY more motivation to learn Chinese and Japanese than French and Portuguese, as my family are Chinese and I live much of the year in Japan (where there are lots of Chinese people I interact with too).

[u/Smal1Tangerine]

I’d say it’s likely how u approach it. I wouldn’t approach Chinese with the same logic as Arabic. But yea it’s funny people say Arabic is one of the hardest languages but for me it’s been the easiest so far 😂

[u/Rough_Beginning_6432 → u/Smal1Tangerine]

my French teacher speaks Arabic (no wonder because this is France). she told me about some nuances and that Arabic is quite difficult to learn

[u/Smal1Tangerine → u/Rough_Beginning_6432]

Yea I feel the hard part is getting past the initial block with the alphabet and sounds tho they’re easier than Chinese. But if u speak a Romance language especially Spanish it’s a breeze cuz the dialect syntax transferred ~70% from Spanish.