If you have spent some time around linguists, multilingual people, or anyone who has tried to learn a language, then you may have heard that “French is hard to learn,” or “French is hard for native English speakers.”
If you had the choice in high school between learning French and Spanish, you may have heard teachers say that French is harder for several reasons. Well, I’m here to bust this myth. Here are 4 common complaints.
- You Don’t Pronounce Each Letter
When you first start learning a language, you cognitively assume that letters will sound the same as in your native language (this is natural for everyone). In English, for example, we know to pronounce each letter in the word “apt,” while we know to make an “ooh” sound in the word “through.”
In French, there exists a theme of consecutive vowels. For example, “water,” in French, is “l’eau.” You pronounce this in the same way you say the letter “O.” Try it: one straight word beginning with the “L” sound and finishing with “O.” L’eau.
The fact that there are differences in pronunciation does not make the language “more difficult.” It simply means you have different subjects of study. In Spanish, for example, there are four ways to say “you,” and the conjugations that follow. In French, it’s only two.
2. French Words Blur Together
French is a famously musical language. In English, we have stresses on syllables. Take this sentence, for example, where capitalized syllables indicate stress: I asked you to BUY me a BUNCH of red roses. Now: I asked YOU to buy me a bunch of RED roses. The meaning changes.
In French, this kind of stressing doesn’t exist. Instead, each word flows methodically to the flow of the sentence. If you’ve ever heard French people speak English, you now know why it sounds flat (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=luArJ8dHLoc).
For English speakers, this doesn’t pose a huge problem. In fact, it’s one of the traits I decided not to train myself out of when speaking French. I put emphasis on words in sentences in French because I have an emphatic speaking style. Guess what? French people simply find me expressive and communicative–not a poor speaker.
3. French is Harder to Practice in the United States
If you’re an American reading this, I will admit openly that you would have an easier time finding local Spanish speakers in the United States. However, when is the last time you met a Spanish speaker who was not already fluent in English? And if they aren’t English fluent, how would you go about asking them to speak with you?
This cultural barrier between Spanish and English-speaking communities in the U.S. causes major problems because you and the Spanish speaker will always revert to English unless this person in a designated teacher. The hicup: you can just as easily find a French teacher in the United States as a Spanish one.
In sum, Spanish-immersion in the United States is just not possible. You have equal functional access to Spanish and French teachers.
4. The Grammar is Hard
In French, the grammar is highly logical. There are patterns that flow through different tenses. There are patters for adjectives, verb conjugations, noun genders and more. I explain this more in Fundamental French, but suffice it to say that the grammar is logically learnable. You will deal with exceptions, as you will in any language. And yet the language of reason turns out, well… reasonable.
5. There are 100,000 New Words to Learn
It is true that the biggest French dictionaries contain upwards of 100,000 words. However, you only need around 500 words to communicate on a daily basis. I explain this more thoroughly in The 500 Word Rule. On top of the comfort the 500 Word Rule brings, almost 30% of English words come from French roots. War isn’t usually a good thing, but the high historic tension between France and the United Kingdom gave way to significant cultural exchange and thus linguistic sharing.