mr.moderino

[idle rivet]

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[tawny crane]

Thanks in advance all helpers, I'm slowly inching my way to improving French little by little each day. It has been extremely slow but I'm picking up on small concepts such as future and conditional which were foreign before

Still slow of course. I still cannot understand French speaking fast, but when I glue my eyes on subtitles I can grasp a slight idea of what's going on, atleast better than before

[tough star]

I don't know what level of english learner you're looking for, but as a more advanced learner, the part I struggle the most is pronunciation, sometimes it feels so random, same sylabus are pronounced very differently depending on the words

like why kernel and colonel are pronounced the same ?!
I would expect the first to be pronunced like (french kinda pronunciation) "kér-nélle", and the second "ko-lo-nélle" but instead both are like "ka-nélle" 🫠

[heady juniper]

English spelling is utterly deranged, I wouldn't want to learn English without learning API

We just brute force it in school

[wispy eagle]

i learned english without the ipa

yeah pronunciation is a big part
that and a lot of grammar details

like his and her

irregular verbs, we gotta learn all of them from scratch

[wispy eagle]

hey thats nice!

[heady juniper]

how about the word "get" which has like 40 meanings or something?

[wispy eagle]

not the worst

the meaning changes depending on the preposition that comes with it

"that" is more confusing

people being plural without an s

adjectives not agreeing in number was a big thing for me lol

[merry dock]

the part where I struggle the most is pronunciation
the part [that] I struggle the most with is pronunciation

also ka-nélle sounds more like UK English? otherwise I'd say Rachel's English on yt is good for pronunciation but it's NA English :p

[wispy eagle]

use youglish

my goat

https://youglish.com/

[heady juniper]

The fact that colonel and lieutenant are pronounced exactly how they're spelled in French actually threw me off lol

for some reason lieutenant in particular is funny to me

vive loo-TEN-it'

[merry dock]

but weirdly also has an f sound in UK English

[heady juniper]

wait what

[merry dock]

(UK, General Australian, New Zealand) IPA(key): /lɛfˈtɛnənt/,

[heady juniper]

wow

not sure I've heard that

[merry dock]

similar thing with fillet /ˈfɪl.ɪt/

sounds odd to me

[heady juniper]

that one I've definitely heard

[wispy eagle]

The sounds in general are the hardest part I'd say

Like θ and ð

i and ɪ

ʌ

I'm still not sure how to /ʌ/ help

[merry dock]

isn't /ɔ/ a rounded version of that

[wispy eagle]

Oh and let's not forget lexical stress

[merry dock]

I don't have /ɔ/ in my dialect (perhaps in the diphthong oi) so it's a bit annoying with French

[wispy eagle]

French learners complain that gender is random
Why don't we complain that words in English have stress on a random syllable

Economics
Economical
Economic
Economist

[merry dock]

or perhaps the french /ɔ/ isn't /ɔ/ exactly and might not line up well with /ʌ/

I don't know

[wispy eagle]

it may be difficult, but it can be understood through tough thourough thought though

[wispy eagle]

i don't think thats right

[heady juniper]

good ear

[wispy eagle]

yeah you just switched them around XD

[heady juniper]

yup

[wispy eagle]

i think its slightly more closed
but very similar

#prononciation

speaking of

why is it
pronunciation
pronounnce

[merry dock]

and trough

[wispy eagle]

is that a word

[heady juniper]

trough slough

[wispy eagle]

okay but

bear, pear

[merry dock]

trough rimes with cough

[wispy eagle]

i know because i looked it up on Youglish.com 👍

[heady juniper]

slough doesnt rhyme with trough lel

[wispy eagle]

it does

oh it depends

on the dialect

[heady juniper]

not in my dialect ig

[wispy eagle]

i actually saw a video about water things and theres like 3 possible pronunciations

[heady juniper]

wym water things ?

[merry dock]

things with water obviously

[heady juniper]

i wonder water water things

[wispy eagle]

https://youtu.be/Li-Ph_gdqk8?si=2LdhsH3-Cqy7WORm&t=397

[heady juniper]

oh yeah

slews

i learned that word from that video

[wispy eagle]

really

[heady juniper]

yeah in the sense of a water thing

also i say slough "sluff" but I'm not English

[tawny crane]

Hi! Sorry for late response I was doing some stretches for a while and then forgot discord

[tawny crane]

I never understood why everyone talks about colonel and kernel so often. I've almost never used those words. If you're not talking about the military the word colonel is never going to come up. And i've never heard Kernel either, people just say they're eating corn.

[tawny crane]

Had no idea English irregular verbs were a problem for learners. I never realized irregular verbs existed until I started learning French

[tawny crane]

I just realized this is a problem for learners.

[tawny crane]

Not sure what you mean by this

[tough star]

Working in IT and liking Stargate, I encountered both with confusion, but yes I guess it's a common example

[merry dock]

Even if you have issues with irregular verbs, there's less conjugation / it's simpler

[tawny crane]

I'm confused here, does French do the same thing? Chatgpt says l'economie for economics, economique for economic, economique for economical an un economiste for economist. (imagine theres aigu's there)

[wispy eagle]

i watched ironman again and it came up like 5 times

[wispy eagle]

well in french when a noun is plural the adjectives that go with it also get an s

les maisons bleues

but that's the blue houses, not the blues houses

[heady juniper]

he's not talking about the spelling, he's talking about which syllable is stressed/emphasized - ie
ecoNOMics
ecoNOMical
but
eCOnomist
eCOnomy

[tawny crane]

ah thanks

[tawny crane]

yes, I thought this was normal until I went into French. It was difficult saying maisons bleues at first.

thanks for reminding me too btw I definitely wasnt doing that

[wispy eagle]

i mean it still sounds like bleu

but in writing you should respect that yeah

[wispy eagle]

youll get used to it

[tawny crane]

It's nice having one word for the word In, To and Think. I am still adjusting to Penses for think (beliefs/opnioions) Connaitre (Knowing a person, place) and Savoir (sais) Know a fact

[heady juniper]

99% of the time, it's connaître + noun, savoir + anything else

i still don't understand the exceptions

[wispy eagle]

Yeah but im so not used to back unrounded vowels yk

The only other one I've ever used was ɯ in Turkish

And i stopped at like a2

[merry dock]

/ɔ/ sounds close to /ɑ/ to me, though sometimes some french speakers seem to use /ʌ/ apparently

I think I only have /ɔ/ in "oi", but it feels more closed than probably in french, at least I think so

[wispy eagle]

Phonetics is un casse-tête

[wispy eagle]

"oi" in English?

[merry dock]

I heard a girl on a bus say monsieur la poooooorte which helped me hear that /ɔ/ better lol :p

[wispy eagle]

Lmao

[merry dock]

yeah like "boy" /bɔɪ/

otherwise it doesnt exist for me

afaik at least

[wispy eagle]

How do you say block

[merry dock]

/blɑk/

[wispy eagle]

Blawk

[merry dock]

/ɔ/ is replaced with /ɑ/ for my dialect

[wispy eagle]

Where are you from if you don't mind

Okay well interesting

Do you make a distinction between the vowels in hot and but

[merry dock]

probably those on the east coast still retain it, but I don't remember

[wispy eagle]

They're so close xd

[wispy eagle]

Don't a lot of ppl from NY say "not" with an [a]

[merry dock]

same for "hot", and then /bʌt/ "but"

[merry dock]

uh I don't know, there is the real ny accent which is a bit different

[wispy eagle]

Real?

I mean when i think of how spiderman talks it's most definitely with [a] right?

[merry dock]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_accent

[wispy eagle]

In the second audio file near the end he says "he went on to"
That on sounded like ɑ to me

[merry dock]

it says there's variability for it, so perhaps

it sounds like /ɑ/ yeah I suppose

apparently there's /ɔ/ retained with <r> (/ɔr/)

[wispy eagle]

Like in more?

[merry dock]

yeah

[wispy eagle]

Yeah sounds right

So it's really not just one accent

[merry dock]

they have cot-caught distinction and Father–bother variability, I have both as mergers (no distinction)

[wispy eagle]

There's even some non rhotic speakers

[wispy eagle]

So cot and bother are both [a] or sth right?

Man why are motorbikes always so loud

[merry dock]

/kɑt/

/ɔ/ is a bit weird in this case when I try because I need to try to avoid rounding /ɑ/ as /ɒ/

since I said /ɔ/ sounds similar to /ɑ/ for me

at least at times, maybe not always

[broken mural]

although French people get much more exposure and there's more resources and reasons to learn english, i think from a completely blank slate it's actually harder for a french person to learn english than vice versa

although french pronunciation is hard, english has almost as many vowels and even more consonants

tenses too are arguably more complicated in english

[spring basin]

This. I remember reading a post about French people learning English, and tenses were a major part of the difficulties. Simple past vs present perfect, present perfect continuous vs present, past perfect continuous vs simple past/past continuous

[spring basin]

Unrelated, but English has this noun/verb alternance that a lot of non-native speakers don’t get. In two-syllable words (at least I think it’s two syllable because I can’t think of non-two syllabic words) that double both as a noun and a verb, the noun will get the stress on the first syllable and the verb will get the stress on the second.
‘Sign the contract.’
‘The ropes contract when a force is applied.’

[broken mural]

yeah, that's true stress rules in general are somewhat complicated in english

and basically non-existent in french

[spring basin]

Plus regionalisms

The word ‘advertisement’ has the stress in the second syllable in British English (advertisement, /ədˈvɜːtɪsmənt/) but the first in American English (advertisement, /ˈædvɚˌtaɪzmənt/)

Hence British English ‘advert’ and American English ‘ad’ though American English’s dominance has led to some Brits adopting ‘ad’, particularly online

[wispy eagle]

oh yeah its so hard to master knowing when to use what

[wispy eagle]

oh yeah like critic and critique

[wispy eagle]

i mean french has a consistent pattern for stress too, it falls at the end of phrases

[wispy eagle]

i've been hearing "commercial" a lot more but yeah

[broken mural]

that's what i mean, in english it's very complicated. in french it's very simple, so french people mess it up in english but not vice versa

[wispy eagle]

oh i can tell you some one-syllable words that can be nouns or verbs
strike, hit, fear...

[broken mural]

well sometimes americans mess it up in french, but that's not french's fault

[wispy eagle]

damn why the hate on americans lmao

[broken mural]

je peux le dire en tant que vrai ricain

mais je mens pas!

[wispy eagle]

maybe its just not that easy