The real reason why French is hard to understand for English-speakers is the numerous liaisons (that I mentioned recently) and lack of junctures between words. English tends to pause more often between words and exhibit open juncture, while French pauses between phrases and links sounds between certain word boundaries so that determining individual words is rather difficult unless one already knows French phonology. In addition, English is a stress-timed language that gives prominence to stressed syllables and reduces the unstressed syllables, whereas French is a syllable-timed language that gives equal prominence to all syllables, with the so-called “stressed” syllable always being the last.
Nevertheless, I would like to add another reason why French is hard to understand: the invasion and transformation of English words in the French language. I have nothing against borrowing among languages, but sometimes it’s a little annoying when French borrows words from English when a French equivalent already exists. I know this happens in a lot of languages and the use of English words is seen as cool, but for English-speakers, it actually is a disadvantage when trying to learn vocabulary. We basically have to learn a new Frenchified version of the English words, along with the pronunciation based on French phonetics.
English or French or both? news, people, look, relooking, fun, clip…
First of all, the borrowed words are often changed slightly so that they are not exactly the same as the original English word. Fortunately, they are quite easy to understand in writing and are usually easier to change from French to English than English to French because many times French drops the end of the phrase. However, the pronunciation of these words can be radically different and so understanding “English” words spoken in French can be a challenge. This is also true of names and titles – it took me a good 5 minutes to understand Sons of Anarchy when I first heard it pronounced in French. Usually it is the stress on the last syllable in French – which rarely happens in English – that makes the word so unrecognizable for English-speakers. Finally, since most of these words are recent borrowings and considered too informal, they are often missing from textbooks and grammar books. So once again the only way to learn them is to listen to native speech in everyday situations that has not been produced specifically to teach the language (and therefore stripped of all cultural and informal vocabulary.)
If you teach English to French students or pay attention to the mistakes that French people make when speaking in English, you may notice that they simply use the French form of the English word and assume it is exactly the same as in English. Every single one of my students thinks camping is the correct way to say campground or that bowling is the sport and the location where one bowls. So on the other hand, French students learning English are also at a disadvantage because they need to re-learn the English vocabulary they thought they already knew.
Here are some examples where the French “English” is shorter than the real English:
trench coat: un trench
parking lot: un parking
campground: un camping
bowling alley: un bowling
fast food restaurant: un fast-food
drive-thru: un drive
bodysuit/onesie: un body
e-mail: un mail
volleyball: le volley
basketball: le basket
Other French “English” words are usually easy enough to figure out even if they are rather different from the original:
sneakers: des baskets
cereal: des cornflakes
rollerblades: des rollers
lip-synching: le play-back
facelift: un lifting
celebrities: des people/pipol
schedule: un planning
bartender: un barman
tennis player: un tennisman
Though some of them are a little harder to figure out:
dry cleaner’s: un pressing
blowdry: un brushing
walk-in closet: un dressing
makeover: un relooking
hit song: un tube
music video: un clip
style: un look
lounge chair: un relax
And others have a much more complicated etymology:
tuxedo: un smoking
station wagon: un break
One tip for learning this type of vocabulary is to check out celebrity magazines online (like Closer or Public) or some TV/radio stations (like MTV or NRJ) for videos or audio. They use a lot of English words because they are geared toward young people and they want to seem cool.
Pronunciation of the above words, as well as many more “English” words used in French, can be found at French Tutorial VII.
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View Comments so far ↓
1 Katie // Mar 11, 2010 at 5:13 pm
I always cracked up when my students would tell me that they were wearing “baskets”. Really? Paniers? You sure 'bout that?
I'm so, so grateful that my first few French teachers (starting in seventh grade) had authentic accents (one was French, the other spent 10 years as a translator in France and Francophone Africa). I was miles ahead of many people (in terms of accent, anyway) when I went into college.
2 Nathan Marley // Mar 11, 2010 at 7:42 pm
I've noticed the same thing tends to happen in Spanish.
A “boliche” is the bowling alley, and also the name of the sport. And “smoking” and “camping” have the exact same meaning in Spanish as in French, though I've no clue why a tuxedo is called a smoking.
3 Anne // Mar 12, 2010 at 6:32 am
The hardest thing then is to make French students pronounce those words correctly in English ! As you said Jennie, they are so used to hearing them with the wrong pronunciation that it is really hard work !
But we have the same problem with French words that English-speaking people use: it's hard to recognize your “déjà-vu” or “à la mode” or “bête noire” or “crème brûlée” when they are pronounced the English way. ( Also the spelling is different in French, with the necessary “accents graves , aigus or circonflexes” !)
And some words don't have the same meaning in French : no one wants to live in a cul- de-sac in France ! We have “maîtres d'hôtel”,We don't have any maitre d' , nor double entendre. We don't use en suite or petite like you do.
Getting back to borrowed English words, the one I really can't stand is “people” ! Les people, absolument insupportable ! Celui-là, c'est ma bête noire.
4 Zhu // Mar 12, 2010 at 11:32 pm
Growing up in France, I never noticed, but after using these fake English words a couple of times in Canada and receiving blank looks, I understood, trust me!
Now I really can't stand when French speakers use English words to sound cool but mispronounce them. I have become a pronunciation Nazi, even though I know I probably still have a French accent (but apparently not, since people can never ever guess where I'm from).
Now, in Québec, people talk of “chiens chauds”, “planche à neige” and the movie “Trainspotting” was translated as “Ferrivopathe”… which I find equally disturbing.
Oh, and don't you love the way French people (mis) pronounce brand names such as Levis (Lévisse) and Nike (Nikeu)
5 Zhu // Mar 12, 2010 at 11:34 pm
Oh, and as Anne mentioned, it is difficult to recognize French vocabulary here too. I cringe every time I hear “maitre d'”. Really? Master of… what???
6 ielanguages // Mar 13, 2010 at 3:58 am
It seems like a lot of English words are similar in many European languages. German also uses smoking, and Italian also uses lifting, etc.
I've heard that smoking comes from smoking jacket, which is really a dinner jacket in Britain and that somehow got changed into a tuxedo. Apparently people who are/were dressed nice like to smoke a lot! lol I absolutely hate “smoking” and I make sure my students know that they can never say he is wearing a smoking. So ridiculous!
7 ielanguages // Mar 13, 2010 at 4:02 am
I know what you mean! I hate the “French” words used in English too because of course the pronunciations are completely wrong, and sometimes the meanings (a la mode means with ice cream, what?? why??)
“People” gets on my nerves too. I feel that it is very insulting to anyone who isn't a celebrity. Like those who are rich and famous are the only real “people” in the world.
And LOL at cul-de-sac. I refuse to say it in English now because I picture what it means in French!
8 ielanguages // Mar 13, 2010 at 4:08 am
Ha, the literal translations from English into Québecois are a bit weird too. I would never want to eat a chien chaud!!
9 ielanguages // Mar 13, 2010 at 4:10 am
I purposely have my students try to make sentences using “English” words that I know they will use wrong just so I can yell at them and make sure they know it is wrong to say “I wear baskets” or “I work at a fast food” or “There is a dressing in my room.” But maybe I'm just mean.
10 ielanguages // Mar 13, 2010 at 4:12 am
w, k, and y are not as common as other letters in French, but with the invasion of English they will be someday… though most of these English words don't really appear in dictionaries yet because they're too new or informal. Same thing for Italian, especially with the letter j.
11 Street-Smart Language Learning // Mar 13, 2010 at 1:31 pm
If you think French is bad, try Japanese. You could probably get by in Japanese entirely with English-origin words and the Japanese verbs “to do” and “to be”. It's so bad at times that grandparents can't understand what their grandchildren are saying.
In any case, my experience has been that it's easier for me to remember words with links like those described above than for completely unrelated words. Once you make the mistake of using in the 2L a word in your 1L with 2L origins and find that it doesn't work at all, that word becomes pretty easy to remember, and le smoking is a great example. I wonder if it's easier to do that than to remember a 2L word that is totally unrelated to the equivalent word in the 1L.
12 Lucas // Mar 13, 2010 at 4:31 pm
That's funny about Italian. Their Scrabble doesn't even include a J (or KWXY). You're right; very very few words with those letters are in Zingarelli, and players have to designate a blank tile in order to play them. JAIS, BOXE, and YOLE appear in Zingarelli I think (do you know if those are loanwords? I honestly don't). I just love that they can't be played naturally.
13 Amber // Mar 14, 2010 at 1:54 pm
Great post, Jennie! This stuff drives me nutso. It's so hard to teach people that these words either don't exist or aren't used in english. What's worse, because there are so many invented words now in English and French alike, a group of my students gave a presentation the other day for a new broom (for curling) and their slogan was “for your brooming pleasure”. I said that “to broom” is not a verb, and they replied that they knew, and wanted to be more authentic by inventing their own words. AAGH!
Have you heard of “le fooding”? this is the new one that really grinds my gears. I'm not sure if it means something beyond gastronomie, but I refuse to use it. And my students try to describe something as “speed” or “class” is equally vomit enducing.
14 ielanguages // Mar 14, 2010 at 3:30 pm
Grandparents not being able to understand their grandchildren is just sad!
I wish my students would learn from their mistakes when using English words. I purposely added a lesson on these “English” words used in French because all of my students were making the same mistakes over and over again, so I'll see in a few weeks if they remember the real English words or not!
15 ielanguages // Mar 14, 2010 at 3:35 pm
Ah, I hate le fooding. I don't even know how to define it in either French or English. I read a Master's thesis on -ing words in French a while ago, and fooding was in it, but I'm still confused about what it really is!
16 claudius // Mar 24, 2010 at 11:54 am
I've often wondered why French borrows English words/phrases when a French equivalent would work just as well. Even a literal translation of the word or phrase would appear somewhat more dignified. I don't mind borrow, per se. However, when I learn another language, English borrowings look out of place. It's weird clash of familiar with something that had been approached as a different structure. I wonder if French people feel the same when they encounter terms like cul-de-sac or carte blanche in otherwise all English writing or speech
I laughed when I learned “French” words like “le weekend” and “le parking”. Do French people actually use such terms on a regular basis?
17 claudius // Mar 24, 2010 at 11:57 am
Broom can be a verb (meaning “to sweep”), though that use is uncommon and perhaps a little archaic.
18 claudius // Mar 24, 2010 at 3:54 pm
I've often wondered why French borrows English words/phrases when a French equivalent would work just as well. Even a literal translation of the word or phrase would appear somewhat more dignified. I don't mind borrow, per se. However, when I learn another language, English borrowings look out of place. It's weird clash of familiar with something that had been approached as a different structure. I wonder if French people feel the same when they encounter terms like cul-de-sac or carte blanche in otherwise all English writing or speech
I laughed when I learned “French” words like “le weekend” and “le parking”. Do French people actually use such terms on a regular basis?
19 claudius // Mar 24, 2010 at 3:57 pm
Broom can be a verb (meaning “to sweep”), though that use is uncommon and perhaps a little archaic.
20 Tam // Mar 28, 2010 at 11:40 pm
Like my friend who says ” c'est space ” (space pronounced in English) which I guess means that something is weird. Also “open space” to say cubicles and all of those you already said, just wonderful to guess what he is trying to say when he uses English words.
21 Fabien // Apr 1, 2010 at 2:16 am
Hey, historically about 30~50% of English words come from French words! (“The Story of French”, 2006).
And they are also altered, more or less, sometimes in a weird way. But some words are nearly the same like cereal, celebrities, style or station in your list.
For example for “music” I don't know if it's more largely just latin or precisely french, there are so many latin words in english (they have often non-latin equivalent) but it's difficult to make difference between them.
These days there are less french words borrowed but cliché, rendez-vous, déjà-vu are examples of them.
Though, as French I also think the invasion and (above all) not clever tranformation of English words are a bad thing, and overmuch (even if I'm “young”). But as someone told before me, it's worse with Japanese.
22 Fabien // Apr 1, 2010 at 3:26 am
Oh and I forgot:
“e-mail: un mail ; volleyball: le volley ; basketball: le basket”
We use the proper english words too for these ones, either first and second are “French” (ahah).
23 big roly // May 22, 2010 at 6:20 am
Oh, these things don't just happen in French… French people would be amazed at the English use of the word “porte-manteau” for example, the (invented) expression “double-entendre” and the appalling mispronunciation of “coup de grâce” as “coup de gras”.
24 ielanguages // May 23, 2010 at 6:09 pm
And don't forget cul-de-sac! LOL
25 pacamanca // May 31, 2010 at 8:55 am
Hello!
I think these things happen with pretty much all languages, it's just that it sound funnier in some rather than in others, I believe
In Portuguese (I'm Brazilian) a hot dog is called “cachorro quente”, a literal translation. Volleyball, meaning the sport, now has a totally official “vôlei” equivalent in the dictionary (just like basketball, which has become “basquete”). Of course, the same has happened with tons of French-borrowed terms, such as “abat-jour”, which has become “abajur”, “fermeture (fecho in Portuguese) Eclair” which has turned into “fecho ecler”, and truly countless others.
In Italian (I live in Italy) they use “hot dog”, mispronounced as usual thanks to the fact that Italians are completely unable to pronounce either the “h” sound or words that end in a consonant sound, so it sounds like “ot-dog-a”, with that half-vowel-thingie added just to make it pronounceable in Italian. I remember it took me MONTHS to figure out what the heck “la oll-a” meant – it was simply “the hall”, Italianized. Just thinking about it still cracks me up.
Then you have this misuse of English words you mentioned: here they also use “un bowling” meaning a bowling alley, “una mail” as “an e-mail”, and so on. My favorite ones are, of course, the invented pseudo-English words such as “footing” (meaning “jogging”) and a few others. “Smoking” as in a tuxedo is used in both Italian and Portuguese and there's a pretty simple explanation for that, actually.
What I'll never understand, however, is the misuse of “peperoni” in American English…
26 Why French is Hard to Understand: Reason 17 of 428 // Jun 1, 2010 at 3:50 am
[...] Jennie in France writes an article about the difficulty of learning French when you are a native English speaker… Check out her post here. [...]
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