Which is why forced bilingualism is bullshit. In Canada there's maybe 10% of the physical country where you will regularly use both languages so expected people to be fluent in both means you're eliminating the overwhelming majority of eligible candidates.
Some friends told me about a story that happened about 20 years back. Their first language was English, but they'd lived in Quebec practically their entire lives. They'd been immersed in a majority French culture for nearly two decades and had been taking French lessons with actual French Quebecers at school throughout that time, so they could speak the language fluently with barely an accent or any spelling mistakes when writing. At some point when they were around 18, they went to visit some of their friends who lived in Toronto. They met them at their school, and were given a tour. When they were introduced to their French teacher, she was apparently ecstatic at the opportunity to speak to them, and tried to start a conversation. They told me that they had to really struggle to understand the slightest word that came out of her mouth. They were completely fluent in French, but they couldn't make out what the person in charge of teaching the language at that school in Toronto was saying.
Simply taking lessons and accumulating hours isn't enough. You need to have a proper teacher, or to use a proper teaching method. You need to actually want to learn the language, and to make efforts to go about it. You need to find opportunities to speak it more often in your regular life. It's only by immersing yourself in that culture or by spending time having conversations with fluent speakers that you can really get a good grasp of it.
The difference is not pronounced enough to make it that hard to understand. More likely, it was an English person who had good knowledge of the language on paper, but who never really spent time speaking it with French people, so she didn't know how to say many of the words.
When I was learning English, I had issues with a few words, like "maple". It took me a while to learn that I'm supposed to pronounce it like "May-ple", not "Mah-ple". It also took me some time before learning that all English words, other than some prepositions and determinants, are pronounced with an emphasis on a particular syllable, while the rest are meant to essentially be half-tones that you just flow through.
In French, there are many words that have silent letters you don't pronounce at all. (English too, like the word "through", but French takes it to another level.) Words like that have those silent letters for one of two reasons: 1) either to differentiate them from other words that have similar spellings and that could cause confusion when reading them even in context, or 2) because it made the words look nicer on paper. And I'm serious about the second point, that's literally the reason many French words are spelled the way they are. So if someone who learned French only through reading tries to speak it, I wouldn't be surprised if many words end up sounding so butchered as to being unrecognizable. It's really not like German, where every letter needs to be pronounced.
But anyways, I wasn't there, and it was nearly twenty years ago, so I can't really say exactly what they meant. I vaguely recall them mention a thick English accent being the cause, which would make more sense to me than a French in a place like Toronto, but who knows.
It's also especially difficult when the languages are vastly different. Even though French and English have Latin roots they're still way off- just the idea of gendered words is a big mind fuck and you just have to remember them because there's no real internal logic. Then you have adjectives and past participles changing based on gender or number, verb tenses & conjugations change a lot, formal vs informal, etc
I took French from I think grade 4 to 12 but I lived in rural Alberta so I never used it outside of French class. I barely remember any of it, it was hard to remember stuff being young and only having a few months between class, let alone all these years later never using it.
No, it's not. It just takes time. If you don't regularly speak the language you'll get rusty. That's perfectly normal. It'll even happen to your native language if you don't speak it regularly.
Also speaking a language fluently doesn't mean you're speaking it on a perfect native level without any accent.
So what? Why should it be my or anyone else's fucking responsibility to learn French to talk to a tiny minority of frogs who hate anglophones anyway? The difficulty of learning a language has no bearing whatsoever.
If you don't actually speak the language you don't speak the language no matter how many lessons you supposedly took. Sounds strange but it is true.
Which is why forced bilingualism is bullshit. In Canada there's maybe 10% of the physical country where you will regularly use both languages so expected people to be fluent in both means you're eliminating the overwhelming majority of eligible candidates.
Some friends told me about a story that happened about 20 years back. Their first language was English, but they'd lived in Quebec practically their entire lives. They'd been immersed in a majority French culture for nearly two decades and had been taking French lessons with actual French Quebecers at school throughout that time, so they could speak the language fluently with barely an accent or any spelling mistakes when writing. At some point when they were around 18, they went to visit some of their friends who lived in Toronto. They met them at their school, and were given a tour. When they were introduced to their French teacher, she was apparently ecstatic at the opportunity to speak to them, and tried to start a conversation. They told me that they had to really struggle to understand the slightest word that came out of her mouth. They were completely fluent in French, but they couldn't make out what the person in charge of teaching the language at that school in Toronto was saying.
Simply taking lessons and accumulating hours isn't enough. You need to have a proper teacher, or to use a proper teaching method. You need to actually want to learn the language, and to make efforts to go about it. You need to find opportunities to speak it more often in your regular life. It's only by immersing yourself in that culture or by spending time having conversations with fluent speakers that you can really get a good grasp of it.
The French teacher may have also been speaking Parisian (aka real) French while in Quebec they speak Quebecois French which has some differences.
The difference is not pronounced enough to make it that hard to understand. More likely, it was an English person who had good knowledge of the language on paper, but who never really spent time speaking it with French people, so she didn't know how to say many of the words.
When I was learning English, I had issues with a few words, like "maple". It took me a while to learn that I'm supposed to pronounce it like "May-ple", not "Mah-ple". It also took me some time before learning that all English words, other than some prepositions and determinants, are pronounced with an emphasis on a particular syllable, while the rest are meant to essentially be half-tones that you just flow through.
In French, there are many words that have silent letters you don't pronounce at all. (English too, like the word "through", but French takes it to another level.) Words like that have those silent letters for one of two reasons: 1) either to differentiate them from other words that have similar spellings and that could cause confusion when reading them even in context, or 2) because it made the words look nicer on paper. And I'm serious about the second point, that's literally the reason many French words are spelled the way they are. So if someone who learned French only through reading tries to speak it, I wouldn't be surprised if many words end up sounding so butchered as to being unrecognizable. It's really not like German, where every letter needs to be pronounced.
But anyways, I wasn't there, and it was nearly twenty years ago, so I can't really say exactly what they meant. I vaguely recall them mention a thick English accent being the cause, which would make more sense to me than a French in a place like Toronto, but who knows.
Learning a second language isn't exactly difficult.
It is if you want to be fluent. After 10 years old you start speaking with an accent, and after 18 grammar becomes an issue.
I talk to my parents regularly, and my extended family notice the difference between me and my brother who rarely calls.
It's also especially difficult when the languages are vastly different. Even though French and English have Latin roots they're still way off- just the idea of gendered words is a big mind fuck and you just have to remember them because there's no real internal logic. Then you have adjectives and past participles changing based on gender or number, verb tenses & conjugations change a lot, formal vs informal, etc
I took French from I think grade 4 to 12 but I lived in rural Alberta so I never used it outside of French class. I barely remember any of it, it was hard to remember stuff being young and only having a few months between class, let alone all these years later never using it.
No, it's not. It just takes time. If you don't regularly speak the language you'll get rusty. That's perfectly normal. It'll even happen to your native language if you don't speak it regularly.
Also speaking a language fluently doesn't mean you're speaking it on a perfect native level without any accent.
So what? Why should it be my or anyone else's fucking responsibility to learn French to talk to a tiny minority of frogs who hate anglophones anyway? The difficulty of learning a language has no bearing whatsoever.
Are you Canadian and want to be the CEO of Air Canada? No? Then you're in luck because nobody said you should learn French anyway.
Ok, go learn Klingon then and stay fluent in it.
OH SNAP!
Could've at least said Latin instead of a ficitional language.
Also the jokes on you. I am bilingual.