Next CMA to reach 1 million

[lio45]

Originally Posted by Beedok

Malhereusement je manque due pratique avec mon français. Il n'y a pas assez de chances de l'utilisez dans ma vie quotidienne, mais ceci est un de les raisons je veux demenager au Montréal.

Pas mal du tout! Impressionnant, même. Cependant, j'ai l'impression qu'un francophone ayant investi le même nombre d'heures que toi dans l'autre langue officielle n'aurait pas fait autant d'erreurs. (Il y en a plusieurs; aucune n'est critique, mais elles sont quand même là.) Ce qui est justement ma position dans le mini-débat (hors-sujet, évidemment) qui a eu lieu dans ce fil, et que j'essaie de démontrer indirectement.

Case in point...

1) "je manque de pratique": in English, an ESL writer wouldn't even have had the possibility to mess up the indefinite article as you just did, because there isn't one in that case: "I lack practice".

2) "l'utilisez": Again, an ESL writer couldn't have had the opportunity to misconjugate that as you just did: in this context, "to use it" is the infinitive tense, plain and simple.

3) "est un de les raisons": Same thing - in English those don't take as many different possible forms, so there's less opportunity to mess things up. "one of the", and that's it.

4) "un raison" - there are no genders in English, so an ESL writer cannot possibly ever misgender a word like you just did.

5) "déménager au Montreal": in English, "to" never changes shape, so there's again no risk of using the incorrect version (as you did).

Interestingly, every one of your mistakes highlights complications of French that English doesn't have, helping support my point.

P.S. don't get me the wrong way, what you said was really impressively good. French isn't an easy language. You kinda bragged that it was, so, I feel it was fair game to point out the corrections.

[lio45]

Originally Posted by MonctonRad

It's why I can generally read a French newspaper with little difficulty, but I would never be able to speak the language with any facility........

All the "intellectual words" (for lack of a better way to define what I'm talking about) taken from French make English really easier for francophones. Strangely yet understandably, "intelligent" is a low-level English word for us, while "clever" is a high-level one. There are myriads of such examples.

German is way more difficult not only because of genders (three, including "neutral") and declination (shared feature of Germanic languages and Ole English, abolished in Middle English IIRC), but also because there are plenty of fancy English words that are from French - just re-reading my post above, even as an Anglo without any knowledge of French, you might have picked up all of the following: impression, investi, officielle, erreur, critique, position, débat, démontrer, indirectement - which, in German, are likely all or nearly all going to instead be completely unfamiliar-to-francophones Germanic words.

[lio45]

Originally Posted by speedog

Then simply just let this thread die and create a new thread to discuss language learning challenges.

Seems overly complicated. Easier to just follow the evolving topic...

[Beedok]

Originally Posted by lio45

Pas mal du tout! Impressionnant, même. Cependant, j'ai l'impression qu'un francophone ayant investi le même nombre d'heures que toi dans l'autre langue officielle n'aurait pas fait autant d'erreurs. (Il y en a plusieurs; aucune n'est critique, mais elles sont quand même là.) Ce qui est justement ma position dans le mini-débat (hors-sujet, évidemment) qui a eu lieu dans ce fil, et que j'essaie de démontrer indirectement.

Case in point...

1) "je manque de pratique": in English, an ESL writer wouldn't even have had the possibility to mess up the indefinite article as you just did, because there isn't one in that case: "I lack practice".

2) "l'utilisez": Again, an ESL writer couldn't have had the opportunity to misconjugate that as you just did: in this context, "to use it" is the infinitive tense, plain and simple.

3) "est un de les raisons": Same thing - in English those don't take as many different possible forms, so there's less opportunity to mess things up. "one of the", and that's it.

4) "un raison" - there are no genders in English, so an ESL writer cannot possibly ever misgender a word like you just did.

5) "déménager au Montreal": in English, "to" never changes shape, so there's again no risk of using the incorrect version (as you did).

Interestingly, every one of your mistakes highlights complications of French that English doesn't have, helping support my point.

P.S. don't get me the wrong way, what you said was really impressively good. French isn't an easy language. You kinda bragged that it was, so, I feel it was fair game to point out the corrections.

I wasn't trying to brag. I am seriously rusty.

And perhaps there's not those errors to be had, but there's plenty of others. I have a Chinese friend who I'm frequently trying to help with his English, and there's so many things he asks that I have to spend like 10-20 minutes trying to figure out the answers to...

For instance 'I lack practice' could easily be done as 'I am missing practice' a much easier mistake to make in English. Plenty of others that I'm sure I'm missing because English makes no sense so you can only remember the rules when you're challenged on them.

[Marshsparrow]

this thread is so far off the rails...

[kwoldtimer]

Indeed, time to close the thread.