7 top mistakes English speakers make in French
A French teacher (and native Parisian) explains the most common mistakes English speakers make in French - and how to avoid them!
💾 Read, save and/or print the full written lesson here (free): www.commeunefrancaise.com/blo...
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One of the most common reasons that students give me for not actively using their French is that they’re worried about making mistakes. This is totally normal, but the truth is that you’re almost always going to make mistakes when you speak French - yes, even if you’ve been learning French for more than a decade!
However, there are some very common mistakes that I hear English speakers make over and over again. The good news is, once you learn what you should be saying or doing, it’s quite easy to fix those mistakes.
In today’s video, we’ll revisit some of my most popular videos covering the top mistakes almost all English speakers make in French - so you can avoid them once and for all.
Take care and stay safe.
😘 from Grenoble, France.
Géraldine
If you had been my French teacher I would have enjoyed it much more!
Thanks for the video. I found it a bit confusing so i summed it up like this: There are 3 sounds described in this video 1. Ain. (Note “un” and “in” sound the same as “Ain” in spoken French)* 2. En 3. On Ain is pronounced like the “a” in bang. (Le Main, Le Train) En is pronounced like the “u” in jungle. (Bien, Rien) On is pronounced like the “o” in song. (Conversation) The sounds in all 3 groups are nasalised (ie the back of your tongue closes up, blocking the sound of your voice). The n is very soft and not heard eg. Le Main sounds like Le Ma. *There is an exception with “Ain” when it is followed by an “e”. Words like Semaine, Haine. The “ai” part sounds like the e in egg and the n is pronounced normally. If the nasalised part is confusing. English speakers actually do this when pronouncing words like wrong, jungle and song. The ng part of the word forces us to nasalise the vowel.
So true. It's very important to address things like these that get in the way of having a good communication! 👌
Suggestion: how about a video about "Permissable 'mistakes'" that native speakers typically/often make?
Merci beaucoup pour cette nouvelle et superbe leçon et theme de la journée pour pouvoir comprendre et apprendre meilleur la belle et douce language française, thanks a lot for teach this new lesson for understand and learning better the beautiful and georgeous french grammar
Like an American: let's discuss the difficulty the French have with pronouncing the English short "i" sound. Happily, the mispronunciation doesn't hinder comprehension . It's extraordinarily difficult to describe physically because the sound is produced by larynx control, not the tongue, lips, or mouth. Personally, I find foreign accents charming. Vive les accents étrangers!
In my native New Zealand English that sound is very often replaced by schwa (the unstressed vowel), in keeping with our preference for mumbling.
@@KevDaly Tons of vowels become schwas in American English as well. Unstressed syllables often become schwas.
@@maxducoudray We do it with unstressed vowels as well - so both syllables in 'river' are often pronounced with the same vowel.
You are mistaken saying that the short i sound is produced in the larynx. It is instead a question of the position of the tongue in the mouth. Look at a vowel chart online.
@@KevDaly You can't have two unstressed syllables in a two-syllable word. In RIVER, for example, the first syllable is stressed, so the i sound cannot be a schwa. The vowel in the second (unstressed) syllable is indeed pronounced as a schwa.
If I had one centime every time I hear people say Le (like the English pronounciation) for the definite article masculine in French, eg "le" train.. And that's not just anglophones either. The alphabet is essential learning in the early stages of any Latin European language.
C’est bonne, ta nouvelle vidéo. Je l’ai bien aimée. Merci Géraldine, et bravo de nous avoir encore enseigné votre langue si bien! À la prochaine fois.
Thank you for this fantastic resource. Do you have a lesson which explains when to pronounce the s at the end of plus? My instinct is to pronounce it when it's the last word in a sentence. Otherwise I would use normal rules of the first letter of the following word. There is obviously more to it than that.
Thank you so much for your detailed explanation and demonstration on how to pronounce and distinguish vowel sounds!!!
I was taught that bien, an adverb, = well and bon/ne, an adjective, = good. This lesson has me thinking those definitions oversimplify it.
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Merci beaucoup pour le vidéo
We were in Paris and Lyon last month and a week also after interacting with folks there, we realized that we had been pronouncing the AIN wrong. We had been pronouncing the vowel sound like the English words pain, pear, etc. The embarrassing thing is that we had been to France several times before and pronounced the basic everyday word of bread wrong all this time! The only consolation is better late than never.😅
Pain and pear have totally different vowel sounds to me 🤔
Was the bread good?
@@andtrrrot ...Ou *douloureux* par contre 😆...?! ~💚
"Et peut-e^tre un petit morceau du *Pain Marquis de Sade* quelqu'un ??" 🤣 ~🧡
Bravo! C est très bien expliqué! ( Québec)😊 Le français sera moins un « mystère « pour beaucoup d’ anglophones
I find it alot easier to make up my own spelling of words in my head just to perfect the pronounciation first. I would hear the word Longket for example and i would spell it that way. Pronoucing it perfectly. I later found out the word is enquête. Much harder to picture how to pronouce. An english speaker will approach it saying enn-kweter. In spoken french this word it is commonly heard with a "l" sound at the start so it was more useful to learn it with it included. I learned french in school, mainly from reading text books. Never gained any confidence in speaking french. I blame my trouble with this learning method. Its full of inconsistencies and traps. Children in real life learn languages by spending years listening and imitating. I dont see why for adults the process should be any different. I have learned other languages successfully by learning the words by text. But i feel this could be a mistake with french because its not properly phonetic.
Impressive
When you said "ain" I heard a sound indistinguishable to my ears from the French word "un" (one). Is there a difference?
Bien fait Geraldin! Very good video! I've watched all of it and will make sure to never ever make any of these mistakes. Was very helpful. Thank you so much. Bien fait!
Lol….. go see Geraldine’s lesson on bien fait! 😁
@@californiahiker9616 No time wasted in *"never ever* making any of these mistakes" 🤣...! ~💚
In American English, stress on the syllable is important, such as ADjective, the stress is on AD. Does French have stress on certain syllables? In English it is difficult because it does have to be memorized.
And in British English the same word may stress the second syllable.
In French, the emphasis is almost always on the last syllable.
@@allisonneapole9064 Et pour autant que je sache, en "l'accent Parisien" ( ou au moins, en *l'un* des accents de Paris ) souvent ce peut se trouver vraiment sur la premiere syllabe en plus. / From what i understand, in the "Parisian" accent ( or at least, in *one* of the accents of Paris ) it can actually often occur on the first syllable as well. ~ 🧡
@@andtrrrot Yeah, in quite a few words we Brits place the stress on some syllable different to how Americans generally do; anything to keep matters interesting, no 😁...?! ~💚
@@allisonneapole9064 Thanks!
Many years ago, my French friends used to laugh at me because they heard that I was going off to Cora to buy du sang - whereas I was actually looking for du son - bran. I had a useful lesson on nasal sounds after that ☺️
*@Cath Wilson* Faut qu'ils pensaient ces amis en vrai que tu sois vampire toi, quand tu c,a leur as dit, hein 😁 ...?! / Those friends must really have thought you to be a vampire, when you said that to them, yeah 😁...?! ~🧡
Ain are two sounds, le pain et le lapin:)
Oh so complicated :0
If you're having trouble pronouncing "ain", just pronounce it how they do in French Canadian, which has more of an "a" sound and is less nasal.
«un bon vin blanc» «vin avec du pain et fromage» -- in, vin, ain pronounce a short eh like in bet, almost like the short a in cat/apple/ash, but with that strong nasal as if you have a bad cold. It will come out somewhere between ẽ and ˜æ, close to pan in English. This is what you want for "ain, win, in." The "ien" is y- like in yellow plus that en or Anne sound: bien /byẽ/ /b'yann, b'yens/. Bien, mien, tien, sien, Parisien, and so on. French an and en otherwise are like a nasalize ah; French on is like a nasalized oh or aw. French un, œn, eun is like eu or œ nasalized. It is slightly different from uh like in but or short u / oo like in put, push/pull, book, look. Say eh but round the lips for aw for open/short eu / œ; Say ay but round the lips for oh for cose/long eu / œ [ø]; The nasal version is the open/short eh/aw /œ/ sound, just very nasalized, that bad cold again. Wiki and some other sites have audio recordings of these. Mlle ou Mme Prof Géraldine Lepère here says her "ain" sounds more like "un" than "ain". One other bit: many French dialects now tend to merge un into in, so instead of nasalized /˜œ/ you have /ẽ/ for both sounds. But for non-native, especially American students learning French, be very careful to pronounce these distinctly, the textbook standard way, and you will be understood more clearly. Practice un bon vin blanc, avec du pain et forage. Practice all those letter spelling combinations so you get them right: ( an/en, in/ain/ein; ien, on, un/eun/œn ). Oh! One more: oil/oim = /wẽ/ almost like wann (ă as in apple), or wenn, not wahn or won or wawn. The oin/oim is w- like in wet or water plus that same /ẽ/ nasal like Anne. LAN, WAN -> French lain, ouain, oin; (ouain or ouin would be French spellings also like oin.) So coin, loin, soin, moins, Bédouin, and so on.
Bah en vrai ce sont trop merveilleux tous ces renseignements que tu nous fasses cadeaux, ma chere **Geraldine*,* comme toujours a` vrai dire, et du coup en fait je dois te bien remercier quoi 😁...!! Au fait, je me demande si peut-e^tre c'est possible tu pourrais faire/realiser une video qui explique le regle pour quand juste - surtout au debut d'une phrase - vraiment c'est bon qu'on dise "il est" et quand juste qu'on meilleur dirait "c'est", en fait lorsqu'on parle de - ou, en faisant allusion a` - quelqu'un, je veux dire...? Et pardon stp mon pc - qui s'appelle un "Livre-Chrome" - bah bof, que c,a me permet pas du tout de pouvoir taper les "lettres particulieres" du franc,ais je crains 😔.... ~Bisous ❤💖❤
J'aime bien votre bon humeur, ce qui me fait bien. C'est bon ! ☺️
@@baxtercol Ah, et merci autant alors; en vrai c'est ravissante de toi pour dire un tel truc: tu es hyper bien sympa toi, ayant rendu trop mm meilleur mon "bon humeur" 😁...!! ~Bisous 💗💖
Number one mistake is trying to speak French :)
*@digrigx* ...😆...! ~💚
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