>go from learning German to learning French just to read Baudelaire
Fuck you frogs why does your language have so many fucking rules? The monks that conjugated your shit must have been the most retarded faggots. No wonder your immigrants want to murder all of you.
it's really not that difficult
>>8281639
this tbqh
>>8281610
>muh conjugations
If you are learning just for the sake of reading then you couldn't have picked a more retarded thing to bitch about, since you won't even have to use conjugations yourself since you are just reading and they'll literally be spelled out for you.
>>8281610
Honestly, German isn't easier
immigrants haven't been behind any of the attacks though
>>8281610
>french
>conjugations
It's literary the meme of languages, I'd learned it under 6 months.
Ancient Greek, now that's a challenge
tu rencontres des problemes, reste tranquil, pense que les conjugations sont une forme de pretention et revise tes objectifs
>>8281610
French literally takes no more than 6 months to learn if you're a fluent English speaker. Grow a pair
>learning French to read Baudelaire
when will this retarded meme end? You're not a cool bohemian, this will literally never work right. A high-school knowledge of French and a side-by-side translation will always suffice.
>>8281878
To be fair you can spend 6 months just trying to figure out the fucked up phonology and spelling.
>>8281899
I understand that, but french people are easy to find
tl;dr If you learn a new language, it comes from both reading and speaking
get off your ass and figure out something
>spoon feed me my life senpai
>>8281835
ehh. son of immigrants
>>8281610
To be fair it took me 10 months of learning German in Germany to get to a point where I'm very comfortable with the language. It took me 5.5 months to get to a point where I can read the news in French and just read La musique without translating a thing. Got 90% comprehension
>>8281903
>the tl;dr is longer than the original sentence
>>8281610
>thinks french is harder than german
nigga are you stupid
>>8281835
>1st generation Muhammad is just as French as Pierre
>>8281916
Also I have never spoken French with a native speaker in my life
>>8281917
>the tl;dr resumes learning any language
step up your game senpai
>>8281919
Why does German have this reputation for being difficult?
It isn't noticeably anymore difficult than French. If you aren't retarded you can learn it quickly.
>>8281934
>Why does German have this reputation for being difficult?
Anglos.
>>8281934
Case, mostly.
>>8281937
No, my friend, german is very hard, very very hard, you should spend your life not learning that nazi language, trust me senpai, it's an evil language, and really hard, don't learn
>>8281610
>der, die, das, dem, den, and the list goes on and on
go fuck yourselfs Germans. Why is it so fucking time-consuming to learn a new language
>>8281948
>oh no articles
You've got to be kidding me.
How about you make it past chapter 1 before commenting on the language.
>>8281948
Just skip that shit. At the lowest level you want to focus on making simple sentences, how many verbs have you learned? Can you describe the last 2 hours of your life in the present tense with all the words in the right places (possibly ignoring articles and half-assing conjugations)? That's where you should be around week 1, then slowly start chipping away at grammar, do one or two points a day and you'll have it all in a few months.
At the lowest levels you should focus on making sentences, at intermediate make them understandable and at upper levels make them perfect or more natural sounding.
>>8281948
That's the only hard part besides speaking nebensatz. It gets easier with exposure.
>>8281945
It is my dream that one day the pseudo-state of Germany will be divided in equal parts between France and Poland.
>>8281948
The only thing that's difficult is memorizing der/die/das. In French you have it only mildly easier with la/le
>learning French to read Baudelaire
>not Ronsard, not Hugo, not Mallarmé
>Baudelaire, the ultimate meme poet
That's like learning English to read Poe
Does anyone know afrikaan? Its not that much different from dutch, right?
>>8282095
Yes.
>>8282061
>meme
>replace with more memes
when will you stop with highschool literature
>I studied in a french lycee
>>8281610
German has just as many rules.
It's literally the easiest language to learn
>Spanish is my mother language tho
>>8282274
I'd argue that English is a lot easier to learn. It's unavoidable and has fewer rules.
>>8282274
french and spanish are about equal in terms of learning imo
german is a bit harder than both
russian, mandarin, japanese and arabic can fuck off
t. native enlgish speaker
>>8282274
thats because your spanish you dumb fuck
we have almost the same language, i didn't even had to spend more than one hour in spanish class to be able to read the news in spanish.
for an anglo, french is going to be more difficult to learn than german while for us latins, german is harder than french
>>8282293
advanced french is still harder than advanced german
only 20% of the population is able to use some of the most obscure conjugation times.
German isn't easier than french at all but if you want nordic/german languages that are actually objectively harder than french you have to learn nordic shit.
>>8282303
i found german grammar more difficult than french and french has given english an absolute ton of words so also found it easier to enter into on a simple vocab level also - not that there arent german/english cognates obviously
this was the experience of most of my friends who have studied both too
Fuck those frogs. They deserved it.
>>8282319
maybe try not digging through selective tweets from 2015
>>8282278
English syntax is kill though
>>8282328
Not OP but now that he mentions it learning French to read Baudelaire sounds like something taht could keep me sane on the down low.
Is this doable by yourself? How do I learn it? Duolingo? Or do I need to go to some classes?
>>8282346
After hearing English a lot, which is pretty much unavoidable, English syntax becomes second nature no matter how retarded it is.
German words seems easier and more intuitive to English speakers. French shares latinate words with English which are generally less understandable on an intuitive level.
>>8282355
Other anon here, I too am interested in learning French for the sake of literature and french loli's
>>8282293
if you're good at memorization mandarin honestly isn't that hard, the grammar is easy and you don't really have to worry about conjugation much. tones can be hard to discern but you get better at it with time
>all these anglos saying french is easy
french grammar is hard as shit
french spelling is retarded
fortunately, you don't need any of these if your goal is to just read books
>>8281873
>tu rencontres des problemes, reste tranquil, pense que les conjugations sont une forme de pretention et revise tes objectifs
Too bad for you, some french people browse /lit/ and can read through your shitty grammar.
A correct version would be
"Si tu rencontres des problèmes, ne t'en soucie pas. Imagine simplement que les règles de conjugaison sont une forme de prétention et modifie tes objectifs en conséquence".
>>8281835
The correct word is sandniggers
>>8282464
His writing was fine you autist, it's just not formal
>learned Spanish for my resume
>realized a year later that nothing of worth has come from the language
>only use it to speak to the Mexican grocer every week or two
I should have learned German.
>>8281835
>WE ARE FREEEENCH
relax mon ami. once your mind acquires the structure, and after some practice, the rules will be followed without you noticing it.
>>8282519
It sounds weird and you should know that I'm the guy that keeps writing incredibly shit (but for me surprisingly seemingly passable since I get proper replies) French. As one example that stands out, rester (unsurprising as it's often used incorrectly by English speakers) is not something you actively do, it's something that (p much unintentionally) happens to you.
>>8282156
Who is not meme mon amis?
>>8281610
My frustration with french evolved as I studied it but I think what will persist is a dislike of how consonants are swallowed and words slurred together when spoken. It doesn't have the crisp distinction of words and syllables that English tends to have and the pathological omission of the final syllable in so many words often lacks the sharp ending you get with english words. Not always, guard in french has the hard ending but Quand doesn't,
Although whenever I say that and write it down it suddenly becomes hard for me to actually think of examples. I was looking at the foreign legion anthem and normally my tongue trips over the "Voila du boudin" but all of a sudden now I can say it no problem, and I can read french sentences no problem.
Which I think is the other issue. I feel confident enough that I can read standard french sentences and, if struggling and feeling my way through it, still be able to understand it. But when I hear french it's like I am tone deaf and all I hear is this sonorous blur of words.
And I will never not hate gendered nouns. I cannot fathom why so many languages from so many different language families all independently came up with the irrelevance of making one object male and another female.
Also 80-99 is fucking stupid. What idiot in the past came up with "4 twenties + un/deus/trois...onze/douze/ect" to say 80.
French sounds beautiful though. And I have heard English has plenty of stupid exceptions and bullshit that we native speakers just forget because we were raised with it.
>>8282350
thats our girl
>>8283422
English does liason as well, say "am I an American or British?" at conversation pace and pay attention.
>>8283441
>English does liason as well, say "am I an American or British?"
Calm down ESL, that phrase doesn't have liaison you just haven't got your ear around the micropauses yet.
>>8282626
>he fell for the Spanish meme
>>8282626
spanish has amazing literature
>>8283422
>But when I hear french it's like I am tone deaf and all I hear is this sonorous blur of words.
Yeah I have the same issue. I'm at the stage where I read French well, without needing to look things up whether it be a novel or a newspaper. But when it comes to oral comprehension I'm still significantly lacking. I guess that's where talking to native speakers comes in.
>>8283934
English native speaker and teacher here champ. There is no space between words, if you add one you sound chinese.
>>8281835
If a dog is born in a stable, does that make it a horse? Sandniggers are sandniggers, French passport or not.
>>8283934
Also remember that you use a or an depending on if the word that follows starts with a vowel or not.
>>8284017
Thiiiiis! I've been spending a couple of months in France now and I can read stuff like Camus and Dumas without problems, but understanding locals when they speak quickly is completely impossible.
>>8284082
That's not liaison bud. A Namaerican is different to an American in production partly because of very very small pauses (I think in the literature these are called palatal closures) of a few 10's of milliseconds.
>>8284030
>English native speaker and teacher here champ.
Either we're into role play territory or you're having some kind of midlife crisis type breakdown. Saying "are you an American or British" while parseable sounds awkward as fuck for a start.
What you're somehow managing to do is confuse liaison with elision or assimilation. So sometimes English doesn't delimit certain groups of words and you get things like 'don't' (elision) or 'aza' (assimilation) for do not and as a. Liaison in French not only works differently but it also marks what are called phonological phrases with liaison (separating the sentence into something like grammatical phrases of roughly things like subject, object and verb, between which liaison doesn't happen). English doesn't separate like this phonologically (at least not in any vaguely consistent way anyone can see).
The reason I'm saying you're in fantasy land tho is- for English speakers around second language learners- even if you don't know this shit it is readily apparent. If they don't allow enough space between words and/or get the stresses fucked up, you can't understand what the fuck they're saying. It sounds a bit like a dog saying iwuvu 2bh
>>8284089
If you're in Paris their accent is particularly hard. The way they speak on Radio tho is quite clear.
>>8284134
I was in Paris before, but now I'm in the south. But yeah, as you say, the radio is completely intelligible and I can follow conversations there.
>>8284126
No what I meant was that we decide whether to use or omit the n in an based on the following word, ie we don't want a new vowel word directly after a vowel and the same thing with consonants.
>>8284150
Yeah, that's nothing to do with anything here. Do you know what liaison is?
german is way harder to learn. on the other hand, you will spend 50% of your time learning french struggling through listening comprehension.
>>8284142
South accent is worse desu
How to learn Latin?
>>8281610
>>8284089
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqzMMadF7Ww
watch this shit until you get used to spoken french.
i swear to fucking god, this is the best tool for french listening comprehension
>>8284174
;__;
harsh
>>8284217
Ah fantastic, thanks! Subtitles help so much. There was only one or two words I had to look at the English version of the subtitles for in the video, so it's just perfect for training the ears.
>>8284174
Comment s'appelle cette comic?
>>8284174
Does it end there or do you have more?
>>8284158
It's exactly that, but in English it's explicitly written the way it's pronounced.
>>8284126
Okay. "I like apples". You actually say "Ai Lai kapples" or else you sound like a.) shit or b.) angry. The sentence I wrote had a bunch of liaisons in it on purpose, so of course it wasn't something you would normally say. The "your ass" in the sentence "I fucking destroyed your ass, faggot" would become "yo rass" the same way.
American English's fucked up ("fuck dup") lenition rules also do this, so "Every night a girl comes to my house" becomes "Ev'ry nai da girl..." And so on.
Thanks for getting me to wiki "micropause" though, that was good reading.
>>8284261
Assimilation, then whatev. It's the same thing as liason minus silent letters becoming pronounced.
>>8281873
i can tell you only did 6 months of french, faggot.
People who complain about conjugations seem to be mislead beginners. In general, only very commonly used words are irregular. This means you'll memorize the conjugations in very little time if you are actually using the language by reading it or listening to it, as opposed to reading a textbook.
>>8284254
Liaison is moving a terminal sound to the start of the next word. So c'est-à-dire isn't pronounced set-a-deer it's se-ta-deer. A or An is more like mon amie or mon absence instead of "ma" qqch.
It's meant to be something left over from Latin, what's probably confusing you is since then they've gone on to not pronounce many of the endings of words in French. It's probably a form of elision again (tho that may be the wrong word. Contraction? )
>>8284261
>"Ai Lai kapples"
No, if anything you assimilate the end of the stressed syllable into the unstressed (so it becomes something like aisle-ike but a seamless utterance). Apples has the stress on app so there's really good delineation between in normal natural speech between the k sound at the end of like and the a in apples. Of course there can be variation in I like but not in apples as far as stress goes.
It may be understandable or parseable in very short simple phrases but it's not how natives speak and it can be ridiculously hard to understand sometimes in normal conversation when people do the shit you're claiming.
>>8284275
PHONETICS
(in French and other languages) the sounding of a consonant that is normally silent at the end of a word because the next word begins with a vowel.
Also c'est-à-dire is not pronounced se-ta-deer.
>>8284293
I hear "c'est-à-dire" often enough to know exactly how it's pronounced. And phonetics is an incredibly broad term, p much everything I've spoken (lol) about comes under that umbrella.
By all means vocaroo whatever you're now arguing about tho.
>>8284298
http://vocaroo.com/i/s1qVSSqygPYL
>>8284292
You still stress the AP but the k goes with it (wi-thit), otherwise you have to stop at the k for a moment which sounds very unnatural. You literally wrote above exactly what I'm describing with your "as a = aza" example. That happens anytime a word ends on a consonant and the next starts on a vowel, barring special stress or the invisible "y" in front of some u's ("he's usually late" would stay "heez yusually leit") and even then, in some dialects it still happens.
If second language learners aren't ready for it, the same problems you guys are having with French happen in English (can read, can't listen)
Are you a native speaker? Or a teacher? I notice some teachers who don't notice they do this stop after teaching for a while and it sounds really unnatural.
I'm. Andrea. I'm. American. Hello.
>>8284322
> it's not "se(pause)ta(pause)deer" it's "se-ta-deer"
Holy shit...
>>8284333
http://vocaroo.com/i/s1k1gv2TgB43
>>8284324
You're confusing pauses and micropauses. A micropause (broadly, this is a mild misuse of the term as it's commonly used now) is any pause that is so short as to be consciously unnoticeable (often with some arbitrary limit in papers like anything less than 200 ms or something). Again we are talking 10's of milliseconds of time here. Not. Like. A .Full. Stop. Or, even, a, comma, you - dingus-,.
I would recommend trying to publish everything else you're saying since it's going against almost everything thing else published ever and even my own personal experience. Paradigm shift anyone?
>>8284343
So you're getting anal about non-IPA transcriptions? Uh huh.
I also feel now like I have to comment on your own poor pronunciation after that act of bad faith on your part, but I'll just leave it at poor. Disappointed bud, disappointed.
>>8282293
Russian is no difficult than German. And Mandarin is straight up memorization, if you use a spaced repitition program like Memrise or Anki you can learn it.
>>8282452
French spelling is consistent compared to English. The grammar has rules that you can learn. Get off your ass and learn it.
>>8282452
French (and Latin) account for over half of the english vocabulary. It's easy af
>>8284367
http://vocaroo.com/i/s0ip58cpJcmW
>>8284065
but then all americans are british, anon
>>8284395
I considered dir instead of deer but I felt it was potentially confusing. Set is a word in English, as is a, as is deer. The emphasis in the original point was on the t sound in the "set a" part actually being on the a rather than in set (because the terminal sound moves to the next word). In French the difference becomes something like
Ssseeeeeetttaaadddiiirrr rather than
Ssseeetttaaaaaadddiiirrr (you sound the t sound at a later position, French doesn't have the same stress based production as English so the differences between words tends to be less. That's actually the "reason" for the "moi je" type construction for emphasis btw: you can't go *I* want something, JE veux qqch, it's moi je veux qqch because all syllables have similar stress). That is, liaison takes the terminal sound and sticks it on the next word like Latin might have done. Spellings usually reflect old pronunciations so if we time travelled back no doubt people used to say the t sound in est regardless. But now in all but liaison it doesn't get pronounced.
>>8281610
>>8284065
This.
>>8281610
>he thinks French is more difficult than German
pseud detected
![tumblr_o9gbd3Dgs31truqn2o1_1280[1].png](https://i.imgur.com/nBUB7Xf.png "tumblr_o9gbd3Dgs31truqn2o1_1280[1].png")
Any tips on learnin' ze German?
I've been reading simple stories so far. Experiencing some "Lesefluss" really helps make it feel like a constructive experience.
I tried Duolingo for a while but it just puts me off learning altogether when I use it. It just becomes a chore to do every day.
>>8284445
frig off homosex fisting lover
>>8284596
If you're English it's p straightforward to learn the modal verbs and that opens up an awful lot of options for you speaking wise early on. You have to be aware of quite a few grammar rules but you can be understood if you make really basic mistakes like "Ich kann sprechen deutsch".
I recommend going over there early, or getting something like an italki Skype tutor you talk to regularly because it's good to drill basic communication and correct yourself imo. And download something like a pimsleur to get pronunciation down (it's not that hard but it's good to practice and get consistent and so on).
If you're not feeling duolingo honestly get a tutor and do your own reading/writing/listening exercises at home and get feedback. I wouldn't throw out duolingo totally tho, it used to just be about the translating actual writing and Web pages with like a community approach (really incredibly useful in a lot of ways), the little app thing is just to get people to a stage where they can start translating real texts.
Oh and the BBC did some German series where a Romanian immigrant says lots of "I ch kann nicht sie verstehen" and plenty of other useful phrases for beginners over and over. The second series of that is pure interviews with German people asking questions like "was it heimlich für dich?" And other odd words that don't really have a proper translation and Germans like to talk about somewhat. If you like philosophy unheimlich (often translated as the uncanny) makes a lot more sense, plus a few other odd words and phrases pop up. Been a few years since I looked at it so I can't remember everything (I also apologise to any German speakers if I fucked up something above).
>>8281610
German is much more complicated for native English speakers. For French, start here: https://fsi-languages.yojik.eu/languages/french-phonology.html
Once you get that down, the grammar is tard-level simple. You'll understand most things and speak decent French in a few months. Have fun.
>>8282394
Utter nonsense. No one semantic is more 'intuitive' than the next.
French is very easy for English speakers as we share so many words. End of story.
>>8285103
They both have their issues. Generally speaking Anglos think French is easier and can be understood but speak like idiots. German in a lot of ways is a lot more consistent and it's fairly straightforward to work on an individual issue ime.
That might be because I had piss poor French teaching at school, but I started learning German at university and the teaching was miles better.
>>8285130
To each their own, I suppose. I learned both on my own, and German seems much more complicated. Little abstract vocabulary overlap, noun cases, and word order rules collectively make it tough. OTOH, French word order is very precise, there is a large vocabulary overlap, and no noun cases. Do I speak like a native Frenchman? No. But I live and grew up in Texas. I still speak better than most Americans and Anglos because I put in the time. Anyone who puts in large amounts of effort and time will see results.
>>8285160
There's a fair amount of latinate in German but it's often relegated to lesser used words (like ambulance can be der Rettungswagen or die Ambulanz. I think in this case the Latin wins out but there's a ton of other common and more abstract words that are Latin, I guess because of all the religious stuff and Holy Roman Empire stuff. And Google's throwing up der Krankenwagen but I don't think I've ever heard anyone say that ever).
German's definitely got its odd little word order things (like you even order descriptive words in a certain way but I can't remember how that goes. I guess French tho has its objective v subjective adjective thing like how petit comes before the noun because it's truth but magnificent often comes after because opinions. Yes colour it turns out is fundamentally subjective I guess (I would love btw if someone has a better explanation than this but I think I'm right here)).
The declensions I found a bit of a joke because I can (somewhat) speak a Slavic language. It boils down to you sometimes have to change the article but a lot of the time it often doesn't matter. The only problem I ever had was rushing overly confident to the noun and not stopping at the article iykwim.
>>8285272
>but there's a ton of other common and more abstract words that are Latin
I mean are typically German but have less common Latinate counterparts
If you think German is more difficult than French then you probably don't know what a direct object is.
>>8284596
Get a conjugation table that includes present, preterite, past participle columns as soon as possible. Every night before you go to bed read through it out loud. It's an extremely easy way to memorize the past participles, which you can then use in present perfect speech, and, for reading, the preterite forms which are mostly written.
