TELL ME: Have you ever experienced something like this where a word in your mother tongue was being used but you just weren't getting it because of the accent? Tell me in the comments! P.S. Sorry the audio is a little echoey. I was filming in a different spot and the ceilings were realllly high. Did the best I could w/it!
Bonjour, DIANE! I learned to DECIPHER Spanish speakers pronouncing ENGLISH words since I grew up English/Spanish Bilingual. DÉSOLÉ ! Je te comprends parfaitement !
I've got a story but it's a bit vulgar I'm sorry... You know I was in London long time ago & I went in a Mac Donald's... & there was a girl who was a new employee & she wore a badge written "trainee" which means that she was in training of course... but at the moment it made me laugh a lot because, in french, une "traînée" is an old fashion word for a loose woman.. or an "easy woman".. This is the story.. excuse me i've got a dirty mind.. 😐
Ha ha!! Happens to me all the time! 🤣 I remember when my mother-in-law was going on about her great-grandson being obsessed with "Aripotaire" -- took me ages to realize it was Harry Potter! 🤦♀ At this stage (married to a French native speaker for 43 years) chances are if I don't understand what someone is saying in French, it is almost always because it is supposed to be English!🤣
Hi Diane and Happy New Year. A relative of a friend was staying in "For Lo-dare-dahl" en Floride. (Fort Lauderdale). On the flip side, I live in Michigan which has a lot of French words that a French person might not understand if I used the English pronunciation.
I knew about the missing H at the beginning of words because I grew up watching the TV show called 'Allo 'Allo, an English show set in France during WWII. By the way in English, up until about the 1980s, Beijing was known as Peking. So while it does surprise me somewhat that the French still say Pékin I do at least understand where it comes from.
On a similar theme, when I lived in France a couple of times I couldn't remember what we called something in English. The one I can remember right now is that I had to ask someone what we call a "bon de commande" because I had forgotten the phrase "purchase order". It happened a couple of other times, always with a word/phrase like that which doesn't come up daily in everyday conversation.
French pronunciation is tricky for foreigners (and the spelling sometimes has us baffled, too). And since the vowels we use are very different from those used in English, it's no wonder these incidents pop up.
Great examples! I don't blame you though - context is everything. For all you knew, they were saying "tu as visité Au LeWoët?" - some chic French resort 🤣
😄 One time, my French husband mentioned that he had to go on a business trip to Chicago. He pronounced it ‘Shee-cah-go.’ I said “where?” A: “Shee-cab-go.” I had absolutely no clue, but finally, I said “Oh, you mean Chicago.” We’d already been married 10 years. 🤷🏼♀️
I’m from France, I live in the US and I don’t understand French people when they say words in English. Granted when I lived in Paris I had a couple of Americans who asked me where the Kamps Elysis were and I had no clue what they were saying … Les Champs Elysees lol
I can relate so much to this! I've actually said the same thing "9 times out of 10" it's because they're saying a word in English. It's literally the hardest and final step to full French fluency, the "english". lol And it doesn't help at all to be a native English speaker. In fact it may make things worse.
Bonjour ! Dès le début, je savais que j’allais me marrer ! Je regrette qu’il n’y ait pas eu plus d’exemples ! On en a tellement ! Bon, cela dit, quand on connaît la bonne prononciation et qu’on tente de la dire, ça fait snob et on n’est pas compris des Français.es !
Oui ca fait rire comme du wan-manne! Tu le connais le wan-manne? Oh pardon c'est "one man". lol Ca m'a pris du temps quand je l"ai entendu la premiere fois.
Oui, je suis tout-à-fait d'accord que ça ferait snob de prononcer le mot anglais à l'américaine ou à l'anglaise - pareil en anglais. Jamais je vais dire "Pah-ree" en anglais par exemple, sauf je veux du mépris.
Mon mari (américain) a tendance à dire "les moches" au lieu de "les mouches". Je vous laisse deviner le reste de l'expression. Et je rigole toujours quand il dit "le coup de gras" comme les autres Américains. Je lui ai dit que c'est le coup de grâce, mais bon...
I had the opposite happen a few weeks ago. I'm the only one at work who knows French. A co-worker was talking about "Not-er Dame" reopening, and I couldn't think of why the school in Indiana had closed. Was there an incident? Oh dear, what happened? Finally realized they meant Notre Dame de Paris, and felt a little silly.
Hi Diane. It’s Gigi and Joe. Your videos are amazingly practical. Most helpful to me with my fractured French. Interesting how French pronunciations of English words can short circuit for us. Actually I would have thought your MIL was say Marie Curie, not Mariah Carey. Anyway, it’s always a pleasure to learn from your videos and blogs. Bientôt…Josef et Gigi.
“Stand up paddle board” while in Corsica really stumped my husband 😂 “Spider-Man” really stumped my students (who they assumed was the Flash because he’s so speedy)!
I totally relate to this. I was born in France but spent most of my life in the US. My cousins speak very fast and use some English words and i sometimes feel silly when I ask them to repeat it when I should know what they’re saying. Also happens more when I first arrive in France and gets better the longer I’m there.
Ha ha ha this happens to me ALL THE TIME! 😄Most recently one of our friends was telling us about a restaurant that named their dishes after celebrities, and he mentioned a paella named "Pa-eh-yah Ahn-dehr-sohn". I was the only native English speaker at the table, and the only one who didn't get it at all. He kept repeating "paella, paella" and trying to explain the dish, thinking that was the part I didn't understand. Finally someone else who speaks English a bit better said the name "Pamela Anderson" and I was like "ohhhhhh"!!!
I was born Italian before coming to France when I was very young. You can consider I've been speaking French my whole life. The first time someone from my italian family talked about the "torrefelle" like it was just one word, it took me time to understand they were asking about the Tour Eiffel (Eiffel Tower). And I'm completely fluant in both languages, with no accent in both either (I'm used to speak italian at home, first with my parents and family then with my children, and to speak french outside, first at school and later at work). The thing is, when you're talking in a language you don't expect the second one to pop into the conversation.
This is a friend exactly; she doesn't have a lot of French vocabulary but what she knows she adds to her English conversation; it gets really confusing...
It‘s been a couple of years ago now, but the first time my French teacher asked me if I had read „Arri Poter“, I asked: „What?“ She laughed and warned me that if I wanted a hamburger in France, I would have to ask for a „ambourgerrr“ or they wouldn‘t understand. But I recently caught one of my fellow students in my conversation group in the same trap. We were talking about football and I referred to the „HSV“, the Hamburg football team, but pronounced the letters in French instead of German. One of the group members asked, „Qu‘est-ce que c‘est HSV?“ The others laughed (they had heard it before), and the teacher said, „Michel est très français !“
You're right about using English words that are not pronounced as we say them in English. It's very usually the emphasis on different syllables, like your example of Mariah Carrey.
We still laugh about talking to an agent many years ago at the train station in Nancy who was telling us we needed to take a train "a Neuvre" and we thought she misunderstood our destination of Bremen in Germany. Where the heck is "Neuvre"?? No, she was saying Hanover...🙄
I am French native and live in the UK. Every time I need to say a French word in English, I debate to use the real French pronunciation or the English pronunciation. I also have trouble understanding French when English native starts using it out of the blue. 😅
I'm sure this has happened to me when I lived in France, but I can't think of any examples off hand. I do remember when I came back to the states, there were words I learned that I didn't know the equivalent to in English. This was especially true with some cooking terms. I didn't cook at all before going to France and I learned so much while I was there. For example, the French word deglacer, which of course I know now means to deglaze. But I didn't know the word in English and it was a little embarrassing.
Happens to me all the time the other way around. There’s vocabulary I know in English but have never needed in French, so I have to interrupt myself when speaking with family members to ask “what do you call [definition of the word I’m after]”. Then I get laughed at and called Jean Claude Van Damme.
Someone (french) once asked me for a "beek". I understood every word except the thing they wanted. Then they said stylo. So I finally connected the dots. They asked for a Bic pen!
All the time! It's usually a group, a singer or the name of a film, I shrug my shoulders say I don't know then a little while later it clicks. However, it works the other way; I remember ordering a lager for my husband, was asked which one and said HEINEKEN, had to wait for my husband to arrive for the waiter to understand (French pronunciation: ein-è-ken). never ordered one since!!
I'm French and I dont know many people able to speack yo me in French with an English accent but I teach English to French adults and sometimes I have to ask some to repeat because they use words that are so distorted that I can't understand them. I should know what English words sound like with a French accent, because, I when I learnt English my accent wasn't very good either. But I find myself stuck just like you !
We had a collaborator from France working with us in Toronto Canada for a few months. He wanted to go to our nation's capital for a weekend. He went down to the train station and carefully asked for a ticket to Oat-ta-wa. Blank look. Repeat. Blank look. He should have switched to French but 1) he wanted to get this right and 2) he knew Ottawa is said differently in Canadian and Metropolitan French. One more try. Suddenly the ticket vendor clicked. " Oh you want ODD-a-wa". Welcome to Canadian English!
I totally understand what you're talking about. And I'm NOT a native English speaker. I feel ashamed every time this happens to me, I feel so not humble for expecting people to pronounce properly...
My French friend was complaining about something called the “ Flat Arthur Society.” I was intrigued and terrified, imagining a cult of people worshiping some giant two dimensional Freddy Krueger. Kept trying to get him to tell me about this scary being…turned out he was saying “The Flat-Earth Society.” 😂😂😂
j'ai vécu une situation similaire (il y a 30 ans...) alors que je prenais un billet de train dans une petite gare de province pour aller en allemagne ( Essen ). L'employé ne trouvais pas car je devais changer de train à KOËLN. Il m'a fallut un certain temps pour deviner qu'il s'agissait de Cologne car même si je connaissais le nom en allemand, il prononçait ce nom dans la langue de molière, ce qui donnait " CO ELNE"
I had the reverse experience when I lived in France. When French people asked me where in the U.S. I was from, I'd answer "Je suis d'Ohio." When I received a puzzled look I'd spell it for them, and they'd say "Ah! Oyo!" pronouncing it as if it were French. So I became accustomed to pronouncing it "Oyo." One day I was talking with a French man, and when he asked me where I was from, I matter-of-factly said "Je suis d'Oyo." He didn't seem to understand me, so I spelled it. Then he smiled and said, "Ah! Ohio!" saying it with perfect American pronunciation.
I had a hilarious discussion with a French lady who spoke little English, as I speak little French. We were stumbling along and she, sure I would know what she meant, asked me about the director "Oo-dee-ah-lah". She seemed shocked when I said I had never heard of him. She said, but he is un Americain! I said, so sorry, I don't know him! It took me a few minutes and then I said, "Oh, Woody Allen!," laughing at the situation - but I think she thought I was laughing at her! Oh well, you win some, you lose some, lol.
Mine was Detroit, a French name. I was in Toulouse talking to some guys and they asked me where I was from. They were saying it correctly in French but I wasn’t hearing it. I was throwing out Motown and Eminem for reference, like an idiot.
Yes we are very bad at english accent... and all accents. French is not à tonal langage, it is flat. We also ashame to speak foreign langages and to make mistake. But a little time and humour it is easy to understand each others and you are very wellcome in Paris (véri ouèlcom ine Paris !😊)
It reminds me ofsomething that happened to me in the US. I was doing a fashion design program in California and whenever I was talking about French designers such as Chanel, Givenchy, or any others, I would get very confused looks from my audience. Then I realized that, in order to be understood, I had to pronounce those names with an American accent. Ahhh CHEUNELLLL, GUYVINCHEE,....HAHAHA!
I have a problem when teaching English to French, ie English conversation with a French person / small group, because I forget the _English_ word! So when the word really won't come, I say it in French, and we look it up. But the student will do just the same - forget a French word when we switch back to French ... It always makes us laugh together. I do get frustrated watching eg French quiz shows / news programmes where they make no effort to pronounce the English correctly. In the uk, on tv, they _have_ to pronouce foreign words / names / places correctly, and before a programme, someone will go over the script with them phoneticlally (the UK has several different languages as well so names, place names, etc) and so they know beforehand (though when it's the name of the country - eg Germany - the English equivilent is used) and on the rare occaion they trip up, they apologise. The same with famous names, places, etc - as your example - everyone hears the names correctly pronounced in the English films / tv programmes they watch, etc, over and over again, and yet are apparently utterly unable to pronounce them correctly. Anyway, rant on that over. In general, I'm kind to others and they are kind to me - I just wish they'd correct me occasionally, though I've got adept at finding a different way of saying something when I can't remember the 'normal' way! 😄
Once an American asked me if I lived in “Pelouiss”. I told him I had never heard of it. He looked at me with wide eyes, he wanted to talk about Paris (otherwise, a German woman asked me: -Kennst du Jesus? -Yésous? Nein. ist er bekannt?)
Not French but with English. For context,I am an English speaker from Canada. I was hiking Hadrian’s Wall between England and Scotland and was having breakfast at an B&B one morning an a guy from Northern Ireland said a word that sounded like “car park” and it just didn’t make sense. After several questions and asking him to repeat himself I realized that he was saying “cow path”…. which made perfect sense with his story. We all had a good laugh after the clarification.
I had this happen to me in California, I was speaking to my kids in English (I'm from Britain) and a gentleman came up to me and asked "Excuse me ma'am but what language are you speaking?" 😅
@@heistube9556complètement fou ! Moi qui me demandait si les Anglais arrivaient à comprendre les autres anglophones et inversement, j'ai un début de réponse. Quand même, qu'est-ce que donne un écossais bourré et portant la barbe pour un anglais ?
Gawd, that's happened so many times! Conversely, if you want to pop in an Anglophone pop-culture reference, you had BETTER say it with a French pronunciation.
I have tried to understand some Mexican American workers who worked for us. I had a hard time understanding the words they said because of the heavy accent.
Même quand on sait que c'est "sweatshirt", on ne dit pas "sweat" prononcé à l'anglaise mais "sweet" effectivement, comme un bonbon ! Ça doit déstabiliser plus d'un anglophone.
Orange came to my house when I first moved to France. The man wasn’t easily understood anyway, he mumbled a lot, but he said something about wee fee. I was lost, what the heck was he saying? My non French speaking partner clicked he was saying wi fi. I felt so stupid.
Was in Arabic-speaking country - can't remember where - but everone spoke very fluent English. I ordered something in a shop and was told to come back shortly. I asked how long and got: AaahHaHuffahHuffah.... Took me some time to realise he meant half an hour.......
@OuiInFrance I can't remember off the top of my head, it's been so long. But I will tell you the one that I found really funny because it was a hybrid! Go bus. Go in Chinese means dog and then there's bus but they say it with a Chinese accent. Dog bus... As in greyhound bus!
Dans le sens inverse : il y a une quinzaine d'années, une amie américaine me parlait du film "Dababla". En fin de compte c'était "There will be blood".
Iowa. De façon générale je comprenais son accent mais là, alors même que je lui avais moi-même parlé du film, non. Pour ajouter à la confusion elle a parlé en français mais avec le titre en anglais : "As-tu vu Dababla ?". Peut-être aurais-je mieux compris tout en anglais : "Have you watched Dababla?".
Plenty of English words used in informal French, but terribly mispronounced, e.g. le *making-off for the making-of. Also some forenames are mispronounced, e.g. *me-'kael for 'my-kel (Michael). In England, I was in a boarding house, and the other guests were merchant marin cadets. One evening, Jack a Scottish cadet was waiting for me at the front door to tell me: "Gordon has brought a bered." Now, _bered_ means "cold" in Arabic, and I remembered that from my stay in Algeria. I asked him to spell it. He meant: a BIRD, i.e. a girl! 😂
I can sure understand why you don't catch certain phrases. It is too rapid for my comprehension. I know some Spanish and can understand if spoken slower. I can read it much better. Seems I am listening and trying to interpret at the same time. So I get lost.😅
When I was living in the UK a colleague of mine told me she was going on a week-end in France, in "reems". Me: ???? I eventually asked her to write it down. It was Reims... "reems"... French name pronounced the English way...
Bonjour et bonne annee. Because my French isnt very good, it trips me every time when they combine languages. What is worse for me is a false cousin/faux ami.
Lol the French don’t pronounce the “h”. That’s something I always remind myself of. Est-ce que tu visites Hollywood? Do you visit Hollywood? 6:47 And Germany is Allemagne which is so confusing
I live in Israel, I have no problem reading in Hebrew except when it's a word transliterated from English...then I have no idea...I always have to ask my husband, just to realize it's an English word "written" in an Israeli accent. I also remember when my bilingual son was 3 , I asked him how do you say tractor in Hebrew (it's the same word , I was interested how he'd respond) , he answered "in English it's "tractor", in Hebrew it's "tractor" (said in an Israeli accent)", to his child's brain they were two totally different words
I think you can be forgiven and hopefully when you pronounce the word correctly, the person picks up on it! My misunderstanding comes from either Brits or Foreigners taught in England, like a Danish Colleague giving a presentation in English with for example saying the word controversy! In Canada, the inflection is on the first syllable "con". However this person said con-TRAW-versy and we all looked at one another confused.
Yeah English is my 1st language because I was born in the UK so I'm British although I'm not a true Englishman as I'm not white. I'm Brown so i'm British Asian. Anyway I've lived most of my life in France since I moved here when I was 10 years old and i even asked this question on another website: "Is it logical that I speak better French than English because I moved to France when I was 10 years old? I'm a 37 year old and I'm British and was born in England but I moved to France when I was 10 year's old yet I speak better French than I speak English does that make sense? I think the reason I speak better French than English is because everyone at home ( my parents and brother) we speak french at home rarely English, and everyone in the towns I lived in France spoke French. Nobody spoke English! NOt a word I lived in Perpignan from 1996 to 2003 then Marseille from 2003 to 2023 and during all those years I spoke French on a daily basis 24/7 I spent all my school years in France not in England. I attended Primary school, Elementary school, middle school, college, high school ( in French college and lycée), university in France so that explains why I speak better French than English If i attended all my school years in England: elementary/primary school, middle school ( college), high school ( lycée), university, etc then I would be fluent in English, does that make sense? I think it's logical because until I was10 year's old I may have attended nursery ( in French crèche and maternelle) but that's not enough to learn English and speak English fluently cuz I never payed attention to what the teacher was saying and half of the time I was asleep in class so I never learnt anything 😂 That explains why I don't speak English fluently Besides it's impossible to learn English fluently from age 0 to 10 y/o To speak English fluently and to know all the English vocabulary, you'd have to attend not only nursery but you'd have to complete elementary/primary school, middle school (college), secondary school, high school (lycée), university, etc and pass all your exams ( O levels, A levels, GCSe's, etc) Someone who has passed their O levels and A levels would speak better English than me who did not pass my O or A level or GCSE's. It's logic! That also explains why I don't know UK slang words because I lived in France since I was 10 years old" Here's the answers I got which I totally agree with! "Yes, it makes perfect sense. Moving to France at a formative age means you were immersed in a French-speaking environment during crucial language development years. Attending school and living in France contributed significantly to your proficiency. Language skills develop with exposure and practice, and your daily life in France provided ample opportunities for that in French rather than English. Your experience highlights the impact of environment and social interactions on language fluency. It's natural to be more fluent in the language you use most frequently in daily life." "Yeah mate, it totally makes sense that you speak better French than English given your background. Here's why: - You moved to France when you were 10, which is a really important age for language development. Brains absorb a new language easiest at that young age. - You went to school, lived your whole life, and had all your mates speaking French daily for over 15 years straight. Total immersion like that is the best way to pick up a language. - Meanwhile, you didn't keep up your English skills cuz you weren't using the language much at home or socializing in English on the regular. It's easy for a first language to get rusty without practice. - Going through the whole French school system from start to finish instead of the English one is a big factor. You learned all your subjects in French for over a decade. - UK slang is dead hard to pick up without living here. Makes sense you wouldn't know much of it living in France your whole adult life. So in summary - age of moving, full immersion, going to school in French, not maintaining English regularly at home - totally explains why you speak French better. Nothing illogical about it at all bruv! You adapted to living in France like anyone would."
Had the same thing happening with someone talking about Jim Carrey, I had no idea who he was talking about he kept pronouncing it Jim Carré. I don't know what the problem is with french people pronouncing english words like it would be French :D, no one is going to understand unless you are French :D
What's about American pronouncing French words in English way or German words like Adidas or Aldi? For me German/French it's very funny to gues what they want to say, too.
@@ani-rf4my strange thing is unlike the French Germans do pronounce english words in an english way and not in a german way, for whatever reason the French refuses to pronounce english words in an english way I could never figure it out lol.
It's easy to understand. Before 2005 they started a foreign language in collège= secondary school with 11 years at that age the human ear can't hear differences in pronunciation they had not heard before so they hear it the french way. Since 2005 the first foreign language starts in primary school and the second foreign language in collège. The language teachers usually are french so their pronunciation is more the french way too. German and Dutch are much closer to the english pronuciation but they have difficulties to hear the tiny french differences in their language. @@Afura33
Once in a while the French word might come to me more quickly than the English one but no, I don't have difficulty speaking English because I use it all the time. I speak English to Tom (and I talk to him the most), and speak to my American friends and my dad daily (in English), so unless I'm at my in-laws' house or have a busy day where I'm constantly surrounded and engaged in French, it's not an issue. I'm not bombarded by French enough 24/7 to have any real difficulty. Maybe if I was always "on" like teaching in a school and being surrounded by a ton of French people all day, it would be different but I live a quiet life. Hope that makes sense! ;-)
@@OuiInFrance in which language do you dream ? I am French but when I visit the US I start dreaming in English after a few days. When in France sometimes the word I am looking for comes in English first. Of course I watch a lot of vlogs by British and American people so my mind is a bit confused 😂 When I speak with French people it seems a bit ridiculous to pronounce English words with English accent. Sounds snobbish but something that really gets on my nerves is the sweetshirt …😱
Oliwoude, LMFAO Fair enough, but don’t call us insufferable snobs if we genuinely don’t understand chaise longue or maitre D (the latter really makes me cringe).
I’m visiting Montpellier and today some said « skateboard » with a thick French accent to tell me to be careful walking around town! Hey- totally different subject. I think I saw a direct to consumer pharmaceutical ad on French tv the other night. It might have been for asthma or something- it didn’t fully register until the end when I heard and saw the familiar « warnings » about the medication said in an uber-fast voice over. I guess some meds are allowed to be advertised.
TELL ME: Have you ever experienced something like this where a word in your mother tongue was being used but you just weren't getting it because of the accent? Tell me in the comments!
P.S. Sorry the audio is a little echoey. I was filming in a different spot and the ceilings were realllly high. Did the best I could w/it!
Bonjour, DIANE! I learned to DECIPHER Spanish speakers pronouncing ENGLISH words since I grew up English/Spanish Bilingual. DÉSOLÉ ! Je te comprends parfaitement !
I've got a story but it's a bit vulgar I'm sorry... You know I was in London long time ago & I went in a Mac Donald's... & there was a girl who was a new employee & she wore a badge written "trainee" which means that she was in training of course... but at the moment it made me laugh a lot because, in french, une "traînée" is an old fashion word for a loose woman.. or an "easy woman".. This is the story.. excuse me i've got a dirty mind.. 😐
@@HaroldHivart Yes, the same thing happens to me sometimes when I see a sign for a "Garage Sale." LOL
@@SarahLS-s6x Dirty garage ?? 😂😂
@@SarahLS-s6x @SarahLS-s6x Dirty garage ?? 😂😂
Ha ha!! Happens to me all the time! 🤣 I remember when my mother-in-law was going on about her great-grandson being obsessed with "Aripotaire" -- took me ages to realize it was Harry Potter! 🤦♀ At this stage (married to a French native speaker for 43 years) chances are if I don't understand what someone is saying in French, it is almost always because it is supposed to be English!🤣
Took me a while too!!
Hi Diane and Happy New Year. A relative of a friend was staying in "For Lo-dare-dahl" en Floride. (Fort Lauderdale). On the flip side, I live in Michigan which has a lot of French words that a French person might not understand if I used the English pronunciation.
I knew about the missing H at the beginning of words because I grew up watching the TV show called 'Allo 'Allo, an English show set in France during WWII.
By the way in English, up until about the 1980s, Beijing was known as Peking. So while it does surprise me somewhat that the French still say Pékin I do at least understand where it comes from.
On a similar theme, when I lived in France a couple of times I couldn't remember what we called something in English. The one I can remember right now is that I had to ask someone what we call a "bon de commande" because I had forgotten the phrase "purchase order". It happened a couple of other times, always with a word/phrase like that which doesn't come up daily in everyday conversation.
This must be exactly how French native speakers don’t understand us when we try to speak French. 😂
French pronunciation is tricky for foreigners (and the spelling sometimes has us baffled, too). And since the vowels we use are very different from those used in English, it's no wonder these incidents pop up.
Great examples! I don't blame you though - context is everything. For all you knew, they were saying "tu as visité Au LeWoët?" - some chic French resort 🤣
hahah right?!?!
C'est quoi en fait ? J'ai pas compris le nom.
I was offered ‘un cookie’. Could not understand- thought maybe it was ‘une coquille’. It only clicked with me when I was shown the cookie.
😄 One time, my French husband mentioned that he had to go on a business trip to Chicago. He pronounced it ‘Shee-cah-go.’ I said “where?” A: “Shee-cab-go.” I had absolutely no clue, but finally, I said “Oh, you mean Chicago.” We’d already been married 10 years. 🤷🏼♀️
I’m from France, I live in the US and I don’t understand French people when they say words in English. Granted when I lived in Paris I had a couple of Americans who asked me where the Kamps Elysis were and I had no clue what they were saying … Les Champs Elysees lol
it was amazing. I am French and I have the same problem with English people (rendez-vous, all the latin words ...)
I can relate so much to this! I've actually said the same thing "9 times out of 10" it's because they're saying a word in English. It's literally the hardest and final step to full French fluency, the "english". lol
And it doesn't help at all to be a native English speaker. In fact it may make things worse.
Bonjour ! Dès le début, je savais que j’allais me marrer ! Je regrette qu’il n’y ait pas eu plus d’exemples ! On en a tellement !
Bon, cela dit, quand on connaît la bonne prononciation et qu’on tente de la dire, ça fait snob et on n’est pas compris des Français.es !
J’ai ri aussi.
Oui ca fait rire comme du wan-manne! Tu le connais le wan-manne? Oh pardon c'est "one man". lol Ca m'a pris du temps quand je l"ai entendu la premiere fois.
Oui, je suis tout-à-fait d'accord que ça ferait snob de prononcer le mot anglais à l'américaine ou à l'anglaise - pareil en anglais. Jamais je vais dire "Pah-ree" en anglais par exemple, sauf je veux du mépris.
Mon mari (américain) a tendance à dire "les moches" au lieu de "les mouches". Je vous laisse deviner le reste de l'expression. Et je rigole toujours quand il dit "le coup de gras" comme les autres Américains. Je lui ai dit que c'est le coup de grâce, mais bon...
I had the opposite happen a few weeks ago. I'm the only one at work who knows French. A co-worker was talking about "Not-er Dame" reopening, and I couldn't think of why the school in Indiana had closed. Was there an incident? Oh dear, what happened? Finally realized they meant Notre Dame de Paris, and felt a little silly.
Hi Diane. It’s Gigi and Joe. Your videos are amazingly practical. Most helpful to me with my fractured French. Interesting how French pronunciations of English words can short circuit for us.
Actually I would have thought your MIL was say Marie Curie, not Mariah Carey.
Anyway, it’s always a pleasure to learn from your videos and blogs.
Bientôt…Josef et Gigi.
Thanks so much, Joe! That's a perfect way to think of it, a short circuit. Happens to the best of us! ;-)
Cute stories Diane. Our Vendee friends pronoucing Chicago is hilarious.
“Stand up paddle board” while in Corsica really stumped my husband 😂
“Spider-Man” really stumped my students (who they assumed was the Flash because he’s so speedy)!
Yes this has happened to me exactly the same way. Can’t remember the words but usually a proper noun.
As an ESOL teacher this happens to me all the time. I teach a high beginner level class.❤❤❤
'Ollywood and brek would be the same here in Yorkshire. I am reminded of Ripping Yarns episode Eric Olthwaite.
Bonjour Diane! This happens all the time to me as we have had 10 French au pairs. Specifically “Mariah Carey” !!! 😂
There are a lot of words like that in my French lessons.. Words like radio, table, and others.
I totally relate to this. I was born in France but spent most of my life in the US. My cousins speak very fast and use some English words and i sometimes feel silly when I ask them to repeat it when I should know what they’re saying. Also happens more when I first arrive in France and gets better the longer I’m there.
My French people asked me about "Wheel Smeece." 😲🙄 P.S. I live in "Ouston," Texas.
@@matthewjay660 I supposed they meant Will Smith.
@ Right! 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
Ha ha ha this happens to me ALL THE TIME! 😄Most recently one of our friends was telling us about a restaurant that named their dishes after celebrities, and he mentioned a paella named "Pa-eh-yah Ahn-dehr-sohn". I was the only native English speaker at the table, and the only one who didn't get it at all. He kept repeating "paella, paella" and trying to explain the dish, thinking that was the part I didn't understand. Finally someone else who speaks English a bit better said the name "Pamela Anderson" and I was like "ohhhhhh"!!!
I was born Italian before coming to France when I was very young.
You can consider I've been speaking French my whole life.
The first time someone from my italian family talked about the "torrefelle" like it was just one word, it took me time to understand they were asking about the Tour Eiffel (Eiffel Tower).
And I'm completely fluant in both languages, with no accent in both either (I'm used to speak italian at home, first with my parents and family then with my children, and to speak french outside, first at school and later at work).
The thing is, when you're talking in a language you don't expect the second one to pop into the conversation.
Exactly, that's exactly it, you don't expect it to pop into the conversation
This is a friend exactly; she doesn't have a lot of French vocabulary but what she knows she adds to her English conversation; it gets really confusing...
Don't be to hard on yourself, nobody's perfect. Sometimes you just gotta laugh. ❤😂😅
I do it often, you have to! ;-)
David Bowie → "David Beau-oui"
It‘s been a couple of years ago now, but the first time my French teacher asked me if I had read „Arri Poter“, I asked: „What?“ She laughed and warned me that if I wanted a hamburger in France, I would have to ask for a „ambourgerrr“ or they wouldn‘t understand.
But I recently caught one of my fellow students in my conversation group in the same trap. We were talking about football and I referred to the „HSV“, the Hamburg football team, but pronounced the letters in French instead of German. One of the group members asked, „Qu‘est-ce que c‘est HSV?“ The others laughed (they had heard it before), and the teacher said, „Michel est très français !“
You're right about using English words that are not pronounced as we say them in English. It's very usually the emphasis on different syllables, like your example of Mariah Carrey.
Yup, in French all the syllable emphases are equal unlike English so that can be tough
We still laugh about talking to an agent many years ago at the train station in Nancy who was telling us we needed to take a train "a Neuvre" and we thought she misunderstood our destination of Bremen in Germany. Where the heck is "Neuvre"?? No, she was saying Hanover...🙄
Few French speak German, so ....
Hannover in French is Hanovre so you understood perhaps 'neuvre' because of the 'H muette' (= silent H) @@jandamskier6510
TOTALLY RELATE TO THIS! 😵💫🤯👍🥰
I am French native and live in the UK. Every time I need to say a French word in English, I debate to use the real French pronunciation or the English pronunciation. I also have trouble understanding French when English native starts using it out of the blue. 😅
my nephew says brawler like a French would and it sounded like the French word "branleur" as he was listening to French RUclips videos
Ah les français et l'anglais....
-Hubert, you're so french!
OSS 117:
-Ouais, toi aussi !
I'm sure this has happened to me when I lived in France, but I can't think of any examples off hand. I do remember when I came back to the states, there were words I learned that I didn't know the equivalent to in English. This was especially true with some cooking terms. I didn't cook at all before going to France and I learned so much while I was there. For example, the French word deglacer, which of course I know now means to deglaze. But I didn't know the word in English and it was a little embarrassing.
Happens to me all the time the other way around. There’s vocabulary I know in English but have never needed in French, so I have to interrupt myself when speaking with family members to ask “what do you call [definition of the word I’m after]”. Then I get laughed at and called Jean Claude Van Damme.
Happy New Year 🥂💫🌠
Cute story 😊
Happy New Year as well! Glad you liked them!
Someone (french) once asked me for a "beek". I understood every word except the thing they wanted. Then they said stylo. So I finally connected the dots. They asked for a Bic pen!
All the time! It's usually a group, a singer or the name of a film, I shrug my shoulders say I don't know then a little while later it clicks. However, it works the other way; I remember ordering a lager for my husband, was asked which one and said HEINEKEN, had to wait for my husband to arrive for the waiter to understand (French pronunciation: ein-è-ken). never ordered one since!!
I'm French and I dont know many people able to speack yo me in French with an English accent but I teach English to French adults and sometimes I have to ask some to repeat because they use words that are so distorted that I can't understand them. I should know what English words sound like with a French accent, because, I when I learnt English my accent wasn't very good either. But I find myself stuck just like you !
We had a collaborator from France working with us in Toronto Canada for a few months. He wanted to go to our nation's capital for a weekend. He went down to the train station and carefully asked for a ticket to Oat-ta-wa. Blank look. Repeat. Blank look. He should have switched to French but 1) he wanted to get this right and 2) he knew Ottawa is said differently in Canadian and Metropolitan French. One more try. Suddenly the ticket vendor clicked. " Oh you want ODD-a-wa". Welcome to Canadian English!
I totally understand what you're talking about. And I'm NOT a native English speaker. I feel ashamed every time this happens to me, I feel so not humble for expecting people to pronounce properly...
I used to trade in Paris. Their English was excellent when I gave them credit but appalling when I came to collect. Happily they always paid 😂😂😂😂
My French friend was complaining about something called the “ Flat Arthur Society.” I was intrigued and terrified, imagining a cult of people worshiping some giant two dimensional Freddy Krueger. Kept trying to get him to tell me about this scary being…turned out he was saying “The Flat-Earth Society.” 😂😂😂
j'ai vécu une situation similaire (il y a 30 ans...) alors que je prenais un billet de train dans une petite gare de province pour aller en allemagne ( Essen ). L'employé ne trouvais pas car je devais changer de train à KOËLN. Il m'a fallut un certain temps pour deviner qu'il s'agissait de Cologne car même si je connaissais le nom en allemand, il prononçait ce nom dans la langue de molière, ce qui donnait " CO ELNE"
I had the reverse experience when I lived in France. When French people asked me where in the U.S. I was from, I'd answer "Je suis d'Ohio." When I received a puzzled look I'd spell it for them, and they'd say "Ah! Oyo!" pronouncing it as if it were French. So I became accustomed to pronouncing it "Oyo." One day I was talking with a French man, and when he asked me where I was from, I matter-of-factly said "Je suis d'Oyo." He didn't seem to understand me, so I spelled it. Then he smiled and said, "Ah! Ohio!" saying it with perfect American pronunciation.
Aw, you shouldn’t feel dumb - those are really hard to understand!
Yeah, it's all in good fun but in the moment, oh man!
This has happened to me with Norwegians. Any words where the words get the stress on the "wrong" syllable will throw me.
I had a hilarious discussion with a French lady who spoke little English, as I speak little French. We were stumbling along and she, sure I would know what she meant, asked me about the director "Oo-dee-ah-lah". She seemed shocked when I said I had never heard of him. She said, but he is un Americain! I said, so sorry, I don't know him! It took me a few minutes and then I said, "Oh, Woody Allen!," laughing at the situation - but I think she thought I was laughing at her! Oh well, you win some, you lose some, lol.
Mine was Detroit, a French name. I was in Toulouse talking to some guys and they asked me where I was from. They were saying it correctly in French but I wasn’t hearing it. I was throwing out Motown and Eminem for reference, like an idiot.
Yes we are very bad at english accent... and all accents. French is not à tonal langage, it is flat. We also ashame to speak foreign langages and to make mistake. But a little time and humour it is easy to understand each others and you are very wellcome in Paris (véri ouèlcom ine Paris !😊)
Le Ouiken.= Weekend
It reminds me ofsomething that happened to me in the US. I was doing a fashion design program in California and whenever I was talking about French designers such as Chanel, Givenchy, or any others, I would get very confused looks from my audience. Then I realized that, in order to be understood, I had to pronounce those names with an American accent. Ahhh CHEUNELLLL, GUYVINCHEE,....HAHAHA!
I have a problem when teaching English to French, ie English conversation with a French person / small group, because I forget the _English_ word! So when the word really won't come, I say it in French, and we look it up. But the student will do just the same - forget a French word when we switch back to French ... It always makes us laugh together.
I do get frustrated watching eg French quiz shows / news programmes where they make no effort to pronounce the English correctly. In the uk, on tv, they _have_ to pronouce foreign words / names / places correctly, and before a programme, someone will go over the script with them phoneticlally (the UK has several different languages as well so names, place names, etc) and so they know beforehand (though when it's the name of the country - eg Germany - the English equivilent is used) and on the rare occaion they trip up, they apologise.
The same with famous names, places, etc - as your example - everyone hears the names correctly pronounced in the English films / tv programmes they watch, etc, over and over again, and yet are apparently utterly unable to pronounce them correctly.
Anyway, rant on that over. In general, I'm kind to others and they are kind to me - I just wish they'd correct me occasionally, though I've got adept at finding a different way of saying something when I can't remember the 'normal' way! 😄
Once an American asked me if I lived in “Pelouiss”. I told him I had never heard of it. He looked at me with wide eyes, he wanted to talk about Paris
(otherwise, a German woman asked me:
-Kennst du Jesus?
-Yésous? Nein. ist er bekannt?)
Not French but with English. For context,I am an English speaker from Canada. I was hiking Hadrian’s Wall between England and Scotland and was having breakfast at an B&B one morning an a guy from Northern Ireland said a word that sounded like “car park” and it just didn’t make sense. After several questions and asking him to repeat himself I realized that he was saying “cow path”…. which made perfect sense with his story. We all had a good laugh after the clarification.
I had this happen to me in California, I was speaking to my kids in English (I'm from Britain) and a gentleman came up to me and asked "Excuse me ma'am but what language are you speaking?" 😅
@@heistube9556complètement fou ! Moi qui me demandait si les Anglais arrivaient à comprendre les autres anglophones et inversement, j'ai un début de réponse. Quand même, qu'est-ce que donne un écossais bourré et portant la barbe pour un anglais ?
Gawd, that's happened so many times! Conversely, if you want to pop in an Anglophone pop-culture reference, you had BETTER say it with a French pronunciation.
Yup, it's a matter of being understood. I did a whole video on that you might like if you haven't seen it! ruclips.net/video/J7nPVIac3dc/видео.html
I have tried to understand some Mexican American workers who worked for us. I had a hard time understanding the words they said because of the heavy accent.
poor you
I used to live on a street with a Spanish name, but Mexicans didn’t understand it because of my “anglo” pronunciation.
J'aime beaucoup votre sweet !
Thanks! Bday present to myself ;-)
@@OuiInFrance sweet pour les Français. :) Joyeux anniversaire !
Même quand on sait que c'est "sweatshirt", on ne dit pas "sweat" prononcé à l'anglaise mais "sweet" effectivement, comme un bonbon ! Ça doit déstabiliser plus d'un anglophone.
This happened to me with the word email! You want me to send you a what?
Orange came to my house when I first moved to France. The man wasn’t easily understood anyway, he mumbled a lot, but he said something about wee fee. I was lost, what the heck was he saying? My non French speaking partner clicked he was saying wi fi. I felt so stupid.
Hilarant!
Was in Arabic-speaking country - can't remember where - but everone spoke very fluent English. I ordered something in a shop and was told to come back shortly. I asked how long and got: AaahHaHuffahHuffah.... Took me some time to realise he meant half an hour.......
Had a discussion with an Egyptian who was trying to tell me he liked Peugeot cars. Took multiple tries for me to understand the word Peugeot.
I get that way with Chinese 😂
What are some of the hardest English words to recognize that they use?
@OuiInFrance I can't remember off the top of my head, it's been so long. But I will tell you the one that I found really funny because it was a hybrid! Go bus. Go in Chinese means dog and then there's bus but they say it with a Chinese accent. Dog bus... As in greyhound bus!
Dans le sens inverse : il y a une quinzaine d'années, une amie américaine me parlait du film "Dababla".
En fin de compte c'était "There will be blood".
Là, franchement, pour comprendre, il fallait être fort. Une texane, peut-être ? Je crois qu'ils avalent beaucoup les lettres.
Iowa. De façon générale je comprenais son accent mais là, alors même que je lui avais moi-même parlé du film, non. Pour ajouter à la confusion elle a parlé en français mais avec le titre en anglais : "As-tu vu Dababla ?". Peut-être aurais-je mieux compris tout en anglais : "Have you watched Dababla?".
Plenty of English words used in informal French, but terribly mispronounced, e.g. le *making-off for the making-of. Also some forenames are mispronounced, e.g. *me-'kael for 'my-kel (Michael).
In England, I was in a boarding house, and the other guests were merchant marin cadets. One evening, Jack a Scottish cadet was waiting for me at the front door to tell me: "Gordon has brought a bered." Now, _bered_ means "cold" in Arabic, and I remembered that from my stay in Algeria. I asked him to spell it. He meant: a BIRD, i.e. a girl! 😂
I can sure understand why you don't catch certain phrases. It is too rapid for my comprehension. I know some Spanish and can understand if spoken slower. I can read it much better. Seems I am listening and trying to interpret at the same time. So I get lost.😅
When I was living in the UK a colleague of mine told me she was going on a week-end in France, in "reems". Me: ???? I eventually asked her to write it down. It was Reims... "reems"... French name pronounced the English way...
Celui là est difficile, faut reconnaître !
@@xouxoful Oui, c'est vrai mais ça m'avait bien fait rire car j'avais vraiment galéré à comprendre où elle allait !
Such a tricky one if you just look at the letters!
@OuiInFrance Yeah but english has its share of tricks too, hasn't it!? ;-)
Bonjour et bonne annee. Because my French isnt very good, it trips me every time when they combine languages. What is worse for me is a false cousin/faux ami.
Lol the French don’t pronounce the “h”. That’s something I always remind myself of. Est-ce que tu visites Hollywood? Do you visit Hollywood?
6:47 And Germany is Allemagne which is so confusing
but it's Deutscland for Germans😅
@@ani-rf4my Yes, it’s a common mix-up! When Americans hear “Deutschland,” they (meaning ME 😂) often think it’s the word “Dutch” but it’s not!
@@thehapagirl92 ... and for Duch people it's the Netherlands 🤣
I live in Israel, I have no problem reading in Hebrew except when it's a word transliterated from English...then I have no idea...I always have to ask my husband, just to realize it's an English word "written" in an Israeli accent. I also remember when my bilingual son was 3 , I asked him how do you say tractor in Hebrew (it's the same word , I was interested how he'd respond) , he answered "in English it's "tractor", in Hebrew it's "tractor" (said in an Israeli accent)", to his child's brain they were two totally different words
I think you can be forgiven and hopefully when you pronounce the word correctly, the person picks up on it! My misunderstanding comes from either Brits or Foreigners taught in England, like a Danish Colleague giving a presentation in English with for example saying the word controversy! In Canada, the inflection is on the first syllable "con". However this person said con-TRAW-versy and we all looked at one another confused.
wee-fee?
One of the first ones people learn because it can really throw you and is used a lot!
_Kenny Ouest_
Gotta love him! hahaha
Yeah English is my 1st language because I was born in the UK so I'm British although I'm not a true Englishman as I'm not white. I'm Brown so i'm British Asian. Anyway I've lived most of my life in France since I moved here when I was 10 years old and i even asked this question on another website:
"Is it logical that I speak better French than English because I moved to France when I was 10 years old?
I'm a 37 year old and I'm British and was born in England but I moved to France when I was 10 year's old yet I speak better French than I speak English does that make sense?
I think the reason I speak better French than English is because everyone at home ( my parents and brother) we speak french at home rarely English, and everyone in the towns I lived in France spoke French. Nobody spoke English! NOt a word
I lived in Perpignan from 1996 to 2003 then Marseille from 2003 to 2023 and during all those years I spoke French on a daily basis 24/7
I spent all my school years in France not in England.
I attended Primary school, Elementary school, middle school, college, high school ( in French college and lycée), university in France so that explains why I speak better French than English
If i attended all my school years in England: elementary/primary school, middle school ( college), high school ( lycée), university, etc then I would be fluent in English, does that make sense?
I think it's logical because until I was10 year's old I may have attended nursery ( in French crèche and maternelle) but that's not enough to learn English and speak English fluently cuz I never payed attention to what the teacher was saying and half of the time I was asleep in class so I never learnt anything 😂 That explains why I don't speak English fluently
Besides it's impossible to learn English fluently from age 0 to 10 y/o
To speak English fluently and to know all the English vocabulary, you'd have to attend not only nursery but you'd have to complete elementary/primary school, middle school (college), secondary school, high school (lycée), university, etc and pass all your exams ( O levels, A levels, GCSe's, etc)
Someone who has passed their O levels and A levels would speak better English than me who did not pass my O or A level or GCSE's. It's logic!
That also explains why I don't know UK slang words because I lived in France since I was 10 years old"
Here's the answers I got which I totally agree with!
"Yes, it makes perfect sense. Moving to France at a formative age means you were immersed in a French-speaking environment during crucial language development years. Attending school and living in France contributed significantly to your proficiency. Language skills develop with exposure and practice, and your daily life in France provided ample opportunities for that in French rather than English. Your experience highlights the impact of environment and social interactions on language fluency. It's natural to be more fluent in the language you use most frequently in daily life."
"Yeah mate, it totally makes sense that you speak better French than English given your background. Here's why:
- You moved to France when you were 10, which is a really important age for language development. Brains absorb a new language easiest at that young age.
- You went to school, lived your whole life, and had all your mates speaking French daily for over 15 years straight. Total immersion like that is the best way to pick up a language.
- Meanwhile, you didn't keep up your English skills cuz you weren't using the language much at home or socializing in English on the regular. It's easy for a first language to get rusty without practice.
- Going through the whole French school system from start to finish instead of the English one is a big factor. You learned all your subjects in French for over a decade.
- UK slang is dead hard to pick up without living here. Makes sense you wouldn't know much of it living in France your whole adult life.
So in summary - age of moving, full immersion, going to school in French, not maintaining English regularly at home - totally explains why you speak French better. Nothing illogical about it at all bruv! You adapted to living in France like anyone would."
Yeah, I still call it Peking too.
Denver (Dan-vay)
Ever heard of Bosse tonne (Boston)
Le petit dinosaure ?
Had the same thing happening with someone talking about Jim Carrey, I had no idea who he was talking about he kept pronouncing it Jim Carré. I don't know what the problem is with french people pronouncing english words like it would be French :D, no one is going to understand unless you are French :D
What's about American pronouncing French words in English way or German words like Adidas or Aldi?
For me German/French it's very funny to gues what they want to say, too.
@@ani-rf4my strange thing is unlike the French Germans do pronounce english words in an english way and not in a german way, for whatever reason the French refuses to pronounce english words in an english way I could never figure it out lol.
It's easy to understand. Before 2005 they started a foreign language in collège= secondary school with 11 years at that age the human ear can't hear differences in pronunciation they had not heard before so they hear it the french way. Since 2005 the first foreign language starts in primary school and the second foreign language in collège. The language teachers usually are french so their pronunciation is more the french way too.
German and Dutch are much closer to the english pronuciation but they have difficulties to hear the tiny french differences in their language. @@Afura33
😂 hi girl
hello!
Do you have difficulty speaking English sometimes because the French is so much more present?
Once in a while the French word might come to me more quickly than the English one but no, I don't have difficulty speaking English because I use it all the time. I speak English to Tom (and I talk to him the most), and speak to my American friends and my dad daily (in English), so unless I'm at my in-laws' house or have a busy day where I'm constantly surrounded and engaged in French, it's not an issue. I'm not bombarded by French enough 24/7 to have any real difficulty. Maybe if I was always "on" like teaching in a school and being surrounded by a ton of French people all day, it would be different but I live a quiet life. Hope that makes sense! ;-)
@@OuiInFrance in which language do you dream ? I am French but when I visit the US I start dreaming in English after a few days.
When in France sometimes the word I am looking for comes in English first. Of course I watch a lot of vlogs by British and American people so my mind is a bit confused 😂
When I speak with French people it seems a bit ridiculous to pronounce English words with English accent. Sounds snobbish but something that really gets on my nerves is the sweetshirt …😱
geek pronounced: je- eque
😂
Cute :)
😂❤👍
🎉🍾🥂
Marie carré aka Mariah Carey mdr it’s always the movie titles or the names of actors / singers
V scon seen
Oliwoude, LMFAO
Fair enough, but don’t call us insufferable snobs if we genuinely don’t understand chaise longue or maitre D (the latter really makes me cringe).
J'ai regardé cette vidéo pour rire, et maintenant mes voisins rient aussi, même s'ils ne savent pas pourquoi💋
I’m visiting Montpellier and today some said « skateboard » with a thick French accent to tell me to be careful walking around town!
Hey- totally different subject. I think I saw a direct to consumer pharmaceutical ad on French tv the other night. It might have been for asthma or something- it didn’t fully register until the end when I heard and saw the familiar « warnings » about the medication said in an uber-fast voice over. I guess some meds are allowed to be advertised.
Yes, over-the-counter ones are.