r/French

I learn French at school and in some of the reading tasks we do it says j’en …. So for example,
If I said je suis au college (ignore the missing accents pls) or j’en suis au college, Whats the difference in meaning and also can I even use the second one

Je suis américain et ces mots veulent dire la même chose en anglais. Pouvez-vous me donner des examples des différences?

Had a waiter use the former and I want to know if he was being rude because we're tourists or if that's normal.

One of my students recently asked me how she can be comfortable with the structure of French, the vocabulary and the conjugation but yet when she tries to speak it feels like she has never studied French in her life. It made me realise that in my time working with students, most of whom are not beginners, they have studied for years. Some of them know grammar that most native French speakers often get wrong. And almost every single one of them freezes the moment they have to actually speak. Like the language they spent years learning just disappeared.

It took me a while to understand why, because it seemingly doesn’t make any sense. They know the words and the structures. But knowing and using are completely different things, and almost nothing in standard language education builds the second one.

The best way I have found to think about it is like a muscle in the gym: you wouldn’t be able to go from not lifting any weight one day to then bench pressing 100kg the next. You have to train it consistently, day after day, week after week until you can go from 15kg to 20 to 50 and then one day you can lift 100kg.

Back on to languages now, here is what actually happens in your brain when you try to speak a language you've learned passively:

You hear something. You try to decode it word by word. By the time you've decoded it, the moment has passed. You try to respond whilst searching for the right word. Once you find it. You try to remember the conjugation. You second-guess it. You say nothing, or you say sorry, or you switch to English.

That entire process happens in about two seconds and it feels like failure but it isn’t. It's just the wrong kind of practice catching up with you.

The only thing that closes that gap is daily contact with the language in a context where you're actually producing it, not choosing from a list, not filling in a blank, but constructing something and having a real person respond to it. Your brain needs to build a reflex, and reflexes don't come from weekly practice. They come from daily repetition over weeks until a new language stops feeling like a translation exercise and starts feeling like a thought.

I’m interested to hear if people have similar experiences and how they have overcome them. Is anyone else experiencing this right now? Happy to share some learnings from my experience if that would be helpful.

Bonjour à tous,

Je me permets de vous solliciter car je suis actuellement en train de lire un texte historique et académique sur l'affaire Dreyfus et le célèbre « J'accuse » d'Émile Zola, et une subtilité contextuelle me pose question.

Voici le passage concerné :

>

Concernant l'expression « contre lui », j'hésite entre deux interprétations pour l'antécédent du pronom « lui » :

1. Émile Zola lui-même : Zola aurait délibérément provoqué l'armée et le gouvernement pour que ces derniers intentent un procès pour diffamation contre lui-même (perspective de stratégie judiciaire). Sur le plan grammatical, le sujet de la proposition étant « un article », il serait tout à fait correct de désigner Zola par « lui ».
2. Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy : Le pronom renverrait à Esterhazy, qui était le sujet de la phrase précédente. L'objectif ultime de l'article aurait donc été de traduire à nouveau le véritable coupable devant la justice (perspective de révision du procès).

En pesant à la fois la structure grammaticale de la phrase et la réalité historique de l'époque (notamment le fait qu'Esterhazy venait d'être acquitté et que l'autorité de la chose jugée empêchait de le rejuger directement), selon vous, quelle interprétation est la plus juste, la plus naturelle ou la plus couramment admise par les locuteurs natifs et les historiens ?

Je vous remercie d'avance pour le partage de vos précieuses lumières !

Je suis désolé! A2 level here…just looked up a translation for « French baddie  » and it came back as « une bad girl française » 😂 that can’t be true!

Does it just not translate? Is there an equivalent slang?

Je suis étudiante de la langue française, et aujourd'hui j'ai appris la expression "il n'en demeure pas moins que".

Il me semble qu'elle est synonyme de néanmoins, cependant ou pourtant.

Je voudrais comprendre se les phrases sont correctes :

1. Elle est très jeune, cependant elle travaille déjà très bien.

2. Elle est très jeune, il n'en demeure pas moins qu'elle travaille déjà très bien.

Merci.

I’ve been doing Duolingo off and on for a while but now want to give it a more serious effort for a job I’m working towards. So other than practicing on the app 15-20 minutes a day what are some other things you would suggest to help with retention, grammar, etc?

I'm looking for a word to describe someone a bit trashy, vulgar, slightly douchy in an oblivious way - a show-off and also a bit of an asshole. "Frimeur" seems more or less to fit - I have seen in the dictionary that it's pejorative. What are the real-world connotations of this word? How offensive would it be to call someone that?

Any other suggestions? I also thought prétentieux, vulgaire, poseur, vaniteux... but I'm not sure which word captures the essence of what I want the best!

Suggestions welcomed!

Are there any good kids shows/ cartoons to help learn french? All I can think of is blippi :)

I'm looking for a text to memorize and shadow to help with pronunciation and intonation. Does anyone have any recommendations from a French movie, series or even political speech? I'm looking for something with some emotional appeal, because that will really help me remember.

Thanks!

Employez-vous l'anglicisme tel quel ? Y a-t-il une forme francisée qui soit vraiment utilisée ?
J'aimerais savoir parce qu'en espagnol on utilise très fréquemment le mot « basado », le participe du verbe « basar ».
Ce serait intéressant d'avoir aussi l'avis de Canadiens sur la question 😃, afin de comparer avec la France.

Am I stupid or something? The dictionary IPA pronunciation is [f⁠ɶj] but every time I’m in Paris people pronounce it as “foi” (with y at the end of course). Are there two pronunciations/french people trying to pronounce it like anglophones because I speak English/it is indeed pronounced as foi?

I have my DELF examination in around 3 days, and I am really scared. I am not ready for writing or listening, and I don't know what to do to prepare. For the reading, I am pretty confident, as the sample papers I have done, I've gotten above 21/25 and speaking, I have been preparing, so I might do well, but that's 50/50. Is there anything I can do, or am I dead