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as an Italian who worked as waiter I met many many tourists who tried to speak Italian and their pronunciation was really really bad but somehow I always managed to understand what they meant. That's because you don't have to focus on the pronounce but on the context, trust me french people: it will be easier also for you

Je suis français. Quand un étranger parle français je suis tellement content que je suis très concentré pour bien comprendre ce qu'il dit. Et je comprends bien ce qu'il dit même s'il ne prononce pas bien. Quand je parle anglais je n'ai pas un bel accent et je comprends ce que vis un étranger. Je pense que ce n'est pas de l'arrogance mais un manque d'empathie.

As a linguist, I feel the need to stress that it's important to find balance with this; obsessing about pronunciation can sometimes scare people away from speaking your language at all, since many people will never have a perfect accent and that is of course fine. For effective communication, of course vocabulary and grammar are much, much more important.

My favorite misunderstanding I encountered was with a Spanish couple that were talking about the famous singer "El toñon". I said I don't know many spanish singers .. they said "no no, he's English"... I asked a few more times... they finally started singing "Candle in the wind" ... it turned out to be Elton John 😀

I studied French for three years. I spent a month in France. 75% of people had no trouble understanding my French but the other quarter did not, I firmly believe it was intentional. I was so annoyed with the French that I switched to Spanish. All six of the Spanish speaking countries I’ve been to have been far more gracious than France.

Pour la question que tu as posée "Est-ce que les Français sont trop arrogants" ben ça dépend un peu quand même. Parfois j'entends des élèves faire des erreurs de grammaire qui ne rendent pas leurs phrases incompréhensibles, genre ils utilisent l'infinitif au lieu de conjuguer le verbe. Ça sonne très faux, c'est clair, mais strictement parlant on va TOUJOURS bien comprendre les phrases où les verbes ne sont pas conjugués. Et oui, même si quelqu'un dit "je aller", "vous vouloir", on comprend. Et pourtant, il y a pas mal de Français qui font semblant de ne plus rien comprendre lorsqu'un étranger fait une faute de grammaire comme ça. Et ça, c'est de l'arrogance, il n'y a pas autre mot.

I've run into this problem many times living in France and being a beginner in the language. The pronunciation is sooo subtle that in some cases I have hard time hearing the differences, let alone trying to speak myself. But I do think there might be a difference in the listeners too. I never had so many problems being understood when speaking English, Portuguese or German for example, even when I was very bad at those languages. The combination of the subtlety and the listeners' expectations makes it tricky.

When learning a new language and especially if you are living in that country, trying your best for a good pronunciation is very important indeed. Though when a foreigner is trying to communicate speaking your language, there is really a limited amount of similar sounding words or miss-pronunciations that can happen and there is always context to a conversation. It is not that hard to make some effort and understand what people are trying to say. You can expect them to speak your language in your country but you shouldn't expect them to speak it like you do.

Excellent! J'ai vécu longtemps au Brésil (je suis franco-brésilien) et il y a une erreur que tous les français font quand ils vont sur la plage et demandent au vendeur un jus de noix de coco. "Uma agua de cocô por favor". Le problème, c'est qu'en mettant l'accent sur la dernière syllabe coco ne veut plus dire noix de coco mais veut dire caca. Donc en gros ils demandent un jus de caca. Ca fait toujours rire les vendeurs mais depuis le temps, ils sont habitués et ne leur servent pas du jus de caca mais bien un jus de noix de coco.

It’s kind of annoying tho cause I’ve been studying French for 7 years and teaching it at a high school level for going on my second year. I immediately understand immigrants who just started speaking English like this year - so idk why the same courtesy and active listening can’t be applied.

Here's a strategy: muddle your accent. When I went to France -- with only two years of university-level French classes -- I tried a unique strategy: muddling my American accent. I threw a little of -- what I thought -- was a Mexican lilt with a bit of -- what I thought -- were Russian vowels. With the base American accent, my accent was so confused, that the French had no idea where I was from. They kept asking me where I was from, and I simply played coy. (I wasn't about to tell them I was American.) The fact that I'm African American just seemed to confuse them more. This is the crux of the problem: they try to place where you are from, and there are some prejudices there. Also, I should note that I was *always* polite and grateful to anyone who tried to help me. And I *always* tried to speak in French.

I've had some very patient people in France speak to me and make a huge effort to understand me. Particularly one wonderful hotel receptionist who said everything twice - once in English and once in French so I could practice. I did experience the vin blanc issue though 🤣 the poor barman had no clue until his colleague shouted over. I've met some lovely people when I've been practicing, with some people who have overheard making an effort to say hello or good evening to me too!

On holiday near Nantes. My husband and I were staying at a campsite. My husband was playing pool and won the game. He shouted "Je suis le champignon!" Hysterical laughter all round!

I love the way you teach, c'est très intéressant. Et vous parlez plus doucement et je veux dire merci pour votre patience 🤗

you are such a clear explainer Elisa :) also your video production is sooo good.

Hello ! Je suis franco-italienne et je parle 4 langues couramment dont l'anglais, et j'ai des bonnes bases dans plusieurs autres langues. J'ai été serveuse plusieurs étés de suite. Et je peux vous dire que malgré tout mon bagage linguistique, je n'ai jamais compris lorsqu'un britannique m'a demandé du "kow-drô-oune". Je l'ai fait répéter plusieurs fois, très gênée, avant de lui demander de me montrer ce qu'il souhaitait sur le menu. Il n'a pas voulu et a continué à répéter "kow-drô-oune". Il a fini par s'énerver et par me montrer sur le menu qu'il voulait du "Côtes du Rhône" - le vin. J'étais hyper mal à l'aise et lui a dû croire que je le faisais exprès alors que pour le coup, j'y ai mis beaucoup de bonne volonté, mais je n'ai vraiment pas compris... Par contre je pense comme beaucoup de gens dans les commentaires que parfois, les Français le font un peu exprès. Vu le contexte, un "vent blond" ça se comprend... à Paris surtout, je suis effarée par l'accueil réservé aux étrangers dans les lieux touristiques.

Le trauma moi, c'est sur le tempo... J'ai parlé espagnol en Espagne, le vendeur m'a répondu tellement vite que j'avais l'impression qu'il parlait une autre langue... Selon les régions, le rythme auquel on parle est assez différent, et c'est vrai que ce qui est une vitesse normale pour moi peut être rapide ou lent pour d'autres...

More of these videos please! Would like to compare similar sounds since there are so many subtle variations in French and many words sound similar.

You are amazing and so are your videos, since a week ago I started to learn French language from zero and also watching your videos everyday :D Thank youuuu

This is a very simple / obvious yet also not so easily expressed or taught concept. Thanks for your videos!

Toujours de très bonnes vidéos, merci! 👌

J’aime tellement votre accent. Un de mes profs de Français m’a dit que les Fraincais ne roulent pas leurs “r” (elle était Americaine). Mais tous mes autres profs étaient francophones avec une belle accent comme vous. J’ai écouté ce video avec beaucoup de plaisir. Merci!!!

Speaking very clearly and precisely requires listening carefully and repeatedly. I cannot emphasize how much more important pronunciation is than grammar and vocabulary combined. Thank you for this video.

Je me suis tombé accidentellement dans cette vidéo et littéralement je ne arrête pas de regarder chaque de leux. Merci bcp Elisa, je les trouve hiper amusant et si bien utile. Nouvelle abonnée💞 .

After a summer of looking forward to this, I'm now just weeks away from starting a French module at university, alongside my degree. These videos have been gold for passively enjoying the language throughout the summer. But this video encapsulates my greatest fear - pronunciation! As a 28 year old Manchester lad who has never shown any interest in other languages before, I've become very set in my ways and am really having to try to get the sounds right 😂Here's to hoping it goes well!

A little pointer for anyone learning the french, the usual speaking speed is around 1.25× the speed of the video if you want to train in more real condition

This lesson is SO good -- to dramatize the mistakes made by non-French speakers is brilliant. Merci pour ca, Elisa

C'était chouette votre cours. Ca m'a rappelé mes cours de sciences du langage. Bravo à vous ;)

I had a different experience. I once was lost on Quebec. I was nervous at first but confident in my French to ask for help. Well, I understood ZERO. I walked away realizing my French was rustier than I thought. 😢 Years later, I visited France. Same situation, I need to ask for directions. I understood the gentelman who tried to help me and he even coplimented my French! It was a moment of redemption.😂🎉

Le problème habituel est que beaucoup de gens s'attendent à un certain système de sonorisation et qu'ils déraillent lorsque cela ne se produit pas. J'avais cette problème quand j'ai commencé à parler l'Allemand. La problème est beaucoup moins aigu en anglais, où plus d'accents sont déjà reconnu et accepté. Nous sommes plus habitué à des accents quand on entend quelqu'un qui parle l'anglais avec un accent étranger (ce qui est aussi parfois maladroit). Ayant dit cela... Il y a des années j'étais en voyage prés de Nîmes avec une parisienne et elle a insisté sur le fait qu'elle ne comprenait pas "l'accent" d'un petit commerçant, qui était aussi français qu'elle. Donc, je pense que oui, certains Français ont une idée un peu exagérée de le "français correct". Y compris sa sonorisation.

When you were saying aCIdo I was also confused on what you were trying to say. But when u said it Acido i was able to understand. This video was great. Im trying to learn French and it help. Muchas gracias!

Thank you, your video is so helpful. Plus, I love your english accent!

Yes! I am a French teacher in the U.S. Pronunciation has been de-emphasized the past 50 years or so in foreign language teaching. Teachers either do not teach it at all or just the alphabet and basic sounds. And the teachers here also de-emphasize listening. Listening to native speakers also helps with Pronunciation. And students think it is weird to make these weird sounds so they don't do it and just use an English sound instead. And teachers here do a lot of paired speaking practice, which reinforces the Pronunciation errors and fossilizes poor Pronunciation. Plus a lot of reading of French further makes this poor Pronunciation a habit as students subvocalize as they read. And when Admin. comes in to observe French teachers, they cannot understand French, so they cannot understand that the students' French is very poor and they want the teachers to just use these poor methods. So if a teacher does try to improve the students' Pronunciation beyond the basics, it is actually criticized by school leaders. So 99% of American French students have poor Pronunciation and cannot speak French properly so a native speaker could understand them, and the Americans also cannot understand French because they have done little, if any, listening to real native speech. So, hopefully you can make some money off this complete and utter failure of the American education system.

I've worked in customer service for the past 21 years. I am French Canadian I live in Montreal. In Montreal, the island in the east it's mostly French and in the west is mostly English speakers. We have a lot of people from around the world. Personally I love it. For a little more than the past decade, I worked for alarm company emergency center and we have client all over the country. I got the opportunity to speak to people from all over the world. I always make the most effort to understand them. It's even harder for my job and people at 911 because people you talk to are often upset and or angry and or scared, and so they may even have a harder time pronounciating and enunciating words properly, but it's your duty to concentrate and try your upmost to understand. Who cares if they are mispronounciating their words. But there has been a constant in the last 20 or so years. French people from France mainly from Paris, they are the only people and I understand that a few bad apple doesn't represent the entire population. But it's really much a stereotype for French speaking Canadian who speak french to never be understood by French speaking people from France. Because of our history with France and this, there is a stereotype that French Canadian tend to think of French from France and more specificically Paris as arrogant, snobbish, and that they use too many english borrowed words but can't pronounce them properly to save their life. The only people I have ever had issues with, in my entire life, were a very few English Speaking Canadian mostly from Alberta, they would get condescending or hostile when they detected a hint of french accent in your voice. And to be fair it goes both ways. I can't count how many time an english speaker (one of my colleague) in my company called me to call back a French Client in Quebec because they were being asshole to my co-worker with an english accent. Even people from 911 which I find completely insane and stupid (But I am used to it, most French and English speaking Canadian had at a certain point in their life experience a certain level of racism toward the other group. Personnaly I never had anything against english speakers, but my Grandma was something else, this is due to our shared history, Hostilities between French and English going back centuries, but it's not as bad as it used to be) and the other group I have ever had issue with are French from France, every time from Paris. If you are a French person from anywhere in the world and someone says I want to buy Vent Blond and you can't make out what they are saying in a Restaurant, there isn't any two ways about it, you are an as*h*le. Simple as that.

Excellent video Elisa...and let me say that your English pronunciation is incredible.

I never studied french but I have high competences in English(I am italian); it is very interesting to watch you speaking as I can figure out le nouvelle mots isolating them form the context (I am advantaged as italian) and I get used to spoken French. Thank you.

en tant que Italian, je me démande ce qu'il a prononcé ton frère pour ne pas etre compris alors que "quattro tiramisu" devrait etre relativament facile à comprendre, n'importe quelle prononciation

Le problème avec "ácido" (fr: acide) prononcé comme "aCIdo", c'est qu'il peut être confondu avec "ha sido" (fr: il/elle/on a été). Mais aussi si le context est très claire, je pense que la confusion est un peut exagérée. Au fait, votre espagnol ici avait un accent argentin. C'était mignon, hehe.

Si tout le monde parlait français aussi clairement que vous, je comprendrais beaucoup mieux la parole. Merci pour cette super vidéo.

They do understand, but they do not care, especially in Paris. In Berlin I lived with french people and we talked in French many times, and through them I had occasional conversations with their French friends too, and they all understood me perfectly, always. Not just in Berlin, but traveling around the world. But when I go to France, I come across that attitude many many times, when they detect a slight foreign accent they go like "I don't understand", or they directly pass away. You can tell they do understand but they get "offended" if the pronunciation is not perfect. It is called "Chauvinism".

Peu après mon arrivée en France, j'ai vu un croque Monsieur dans une guinguette mais je ne savais pas le nom du plat. J'ai donc demandé et la serveuse m'a dit que "c'est un croque Monsieur" J'ai répondu okay, "je prends le croque". Elle m'a dit "c'est un croque Monsieur" et j'ai cru qu'elle me corrigeais ma prononciation. J'ai donc bien articulé "je prends le croque" et la scène s'est répétée trois fois avant qu'un ami français m'a expliqué que le plat s’appelle au fait un "croque Monsieur". Bordel, faut savoir🙃🙃🙃

merci pour votre vidéo!!🤍🤍🤍

The imitated scene in the beginning of the video is so precise!

I switched from German to French as a third language in "videregående" (what we call the education years age 16-19 in Norway); some girls in my class wanted people to choose it because they needed a certain minimum of students to sign up for the class if the school was going to teach it. They argued that French was much easier than German, easy grammar and you already know a lot of words from English the only slight challenge was the pronunciation. But weirdly for me, pronunciation was not a problem at all; maybe because I'm musical I have a good ear for sounds in general; but learned all the French sounds in a few hours and most of the text-to-sound rules of French in just a few days. This is actually quite easy because unlike English; French pronunciation rules is very regular so with very few exceptions (mostly slang and dialectal words and proper names) you can always know how to say something from the spelling (but not the other way around, theres several ways to spell the same sounds). The challenge for me; as with any language is learning enough vocabulary to be able to speak anything meaningful. I'm still at a very low level of understanding and even lower at speaking French; but the little I can say I apparently sound so fluent it just gets me in "trouble" because it makes French speakers think I know more French than I actually do. I once tried to help a French tourist that for some reason had travelled to Lillehammer in Norway thinking he could get by without speaking English (we're almost all fluent in English; but only maybe 10% of us have had any French in school); who was desperately asking everyone around him in french something about a park (one of the few words I understood of his rapid rambling was "parc"); though I don't speak much French I assumed I could understand enough to understand which park he was talking about (after all Lillehammer is not a big city so there could not be to many to choose from) if he just spoke slowly or perhaps showed me the name written down; so I approached saying fairly slowly: "Je parle un petit peu de Français..." ("I speak a little bit of french..." probably misspelled a bit) but apparently that still sounded way too fluent; because he immediately bombarded me with an even faster and completely incomprehensible barrage of French with no attempt at all to speak in any simpler terms. After a while I had to just leave him because I could not understand anything, and I was unable to make him slow down. (In recent years I've deliberately started speaking English with a more Norwegian accent; both because it's more comfortable; and because it's better to be more fluent than you sound)

My problem in French (but also in Spanish and Italian too) is that native speakers DO understand my questions but then I have trouble understanding their responses.

Wonderful video Elisa! Merci!

Merci 🙏🏼 j’ai besoin de pratiquer ♥️

Merci beaucoup pour cette lesson ❤️

Ma femme est hispanophone et elle prononce par exemple de la même façon "verre" et "beurre". Quand elle me dit "passe-moi le beurre" je comprends "passe-moi le verre". Ce genre de choses arrive plusieurs fois par semaine avec une personne qui vit en France depuis 20 ans ( mais qui n'a jamais réussi à améliorer son accent). Alors non, quand on ne comprend pas on ne comprend vraiment pas.

Merci infiniment pour votre explication! C'est cool !👍🙂💜

J'adore vos vidéos de prononciation. Vous êtes impitoyable et sans pitié. J'aimerais que vous viviez à côté de chez moi, je pense qu'avec vous si près, je pourrais peut-être vraiment apprendre à parler la langue.

Je suis arrivé en France pour mes études il y a presque 1 mois et je n'avais pas regardé un de ces vidéos dès que je suis ici. La difference est immense entre ce qui me passait par la tête en regardant ces vidéos en Colombie... C'est comme si je n'apprenais pas le français avant de venir. L'immersion change beaucoup la perception, vraiment trop. La prononciation est toujours un problème, même si la communication est généralement bonne et mon vocabulaire est assez complet. Par contre, je trouve important de noter qu'il y a des gens qui ne font pas un effort pour améliorer sa prononciation et ils peuvent avoir une bonne communication, mais je ne suis pas d'accord avec cette approche au problème. Merci pour tes vidéos Elisa ! Tu m'as aidé surtout en sujets culturels et du français courant.

En tant que français en Australie on ne me comprenait pas quand je demandais un croissant 😂 j'étais obligé de le dire le plus mal possible pour qu'ils captent de quoi je parle X)

i think it’s definitely a thing about being used to certain accents and knowing the person (or what they are trying to say). since i work in customer service by phone, i’m used to a LOT of accents and because people call for the same thing i can easily understand them most of the time

You have a lovely accent. I could listen to you reading a technical manual.

Pour moi le problème a toujours été le volume de ma voix au moment de parler. Quand j’ai commencé à apprendre le français j’appréhendais les moqueries si jamais je faisais une faute, d’où cette mauvaise habitude de baisser le son de ma voix, parfois inconsciemment. C’était une torture pour moi être envoyée chercher la baguette à la boulangerie. “Je pourrais avoir une baguette s’il vous plaît “ ? Phrase trop longue et compliquée à me débuts. Maintenant je parle haut et fort! (Ou du moins j’essaye). Surtout que ça aide à mieux articuler et donc à se faire comprendre !

The problem is that French is especially sensitive to improper pronunciation. Compare that with Spanish where people can generally guess what I want to say.

Vous êtes tres bon a ce que tu fais! Merci!

I have experienced this many times and usually when I try to speak the French change the conversation to English. 😂😂😂 I’m now going to head over to the pronunciation video.

Le p'tit sketch du début m'a effectivement rappelé une histoire, mais avec deux français. Je suis Québécoise et ici la distinction des son nasaux est plus ''évidente'' si je peux dire ça comme ça. Donc, je travaillais dans un dépanneur (je crois que vous appelez ça une supérette en Europe?). Le dépanneur était situé dans la haute ville de Québec, donc très touristique comme quartier. Un jour, il y a un touriste français qui rentre et voilà un apperçu de la conversation: Moi: Bonjour! Lui: Bonjour, il est où votre paon? Moi: Du paon, comme l'oiseau? On a pas d'oiseaux ici monsieur. Lui: Non du paon... comme boulangerie! Moi: AH!!! Du pain! (Prononcer avec le ''in'' le plus québécois que vous aurez entendu de toute votre vie!) On a bien rit quand même. Quelques semaine plus tard, une situation similaire ce produit. Un autre touriste français rentre dans mon dépanneur: Moi: Bonjour! Lui: Bonjour, vous vendez du vent? Moi: Ben, y en a dehors...? (En disant je me souviens du paon/pain) Ah du vin? (encore un fois, prononcer avec mon meilleur ''in'' bien québécois.) Faque ouin, quand tu dis blanc ou blond, pour vrai, pour mon oreille de québécoise ça sonne exactement pareil. 🤣

C'est vraiment très importante de prononcer une langue correctement (voyelles, consonnes diohtongues), puisque les personnes qui nous entendent parler, ils peuvent mieux comprendre ce que nous disons.Merci bcp pour la vidéo.

I see this point has been well covered in the comments below, but when an American tourist came up to me recently in London and asked for directions to “Ly-sesta Square” it really didn’t take too much effort on my part to interpret and cheerfully help him with the directions he needed.

Merci beaucoup pour le vidéo ❤️

Merci, Élisa, pour tes vidéos. Ils sont toujours très intéressants et utiles. Alors, comme hispanophone, je t'explique pourquoi ton amie n'avait pas compris. Le truc c'est que en espagnol, si tu es "seseista" (comme la grand partie de hispanoamericain et aussi les français qui apprennent l'espagnol), c'est-à-dire on prononce le sons (/th/ en anglais, /z/ en espagnol Ibérique) comme /s/; et tu prononce "aCIdo" au lieu de "Ácido", on va comprendre "ha sido" (ça a été), c'est-à-dire un autre signification différent. Merci pour tes explications, celà m'a fait me trouver plus identifiqué avec les francophones qui ne comprends pas les étrangers qui hésitent de parler le français. ❤️🇨🇵

I grew up around Quebecois (I think it was specifically Quebecois but the accent was closer to a Chiak accent - my mother's family is half Quebec and half Acadian/Cajun). My Mémère and Pépère spoke Canadian French before learning English when they started school. The stopped using it with their kids after their oldest, my uncle, got made fun of when he was a toddler for speaking French. I want to learn Quebecois but finding classes for any dialect besides parisian French is near impossible. I figured I'd try parisian French and visit Montreal to later adjust to using the dialect I want to know. That was a laughable failure between my being an English speaker and having picked up a little bit of the Quebecois I'd hear my family use. I REALLY struggled with pronouncing "en" the parisian way and I was using duolingo so despite it being still technically correct I couldn't continue! 🤣🤣 French is tough to pronounce and understand learning as an English speaking without the vastly different dialects; add the dialects in and it's nightmare. I grew up hearing Quebecois and still have an easier time trying to learn German, Japanese, Spanish, and Irish than I do French - any dialect of French! 🤣🤣 French is such an interesting language!

Thanks 🙏 for the lesson

Brilliant vlog! 😊

Vidéo amusante ! J’habite dans une région touristique en France (Bourgogne) et je peux je vous assurer que les serveurs font toujours l’effort pour comprendre les clients étrangers mais il est vrai que quelquefois ( et l’on voit ça partout dans le monde ) certains ne veulent pas faire l’effort ou ont peur peut-être ?

Very interesting video. I don't know any French other than small, common words. I had no idea how easy it could be to mispronounce things and come up with much different words, even without context to help. I don't see this as a problem in English. I find that French speakers, tend to have a harder time with English, yet we would rarely have a problem understanding what you are trying to say especially through context. There are so many different accents in English, that a "French" English accent just seems to be another version, to me. My weird pronunciation experience was in Italian, which neither me nor my traveling buddy spoke. We speak English natively. I speak conversational German, and he spoke a bit of French. Our first train stop in a small town in Italy, we hopped off the train and went searching for a bank to exchange money. Two wonderful elderly men saw that we were kind of lost (this is before smart phones) and approached us. I came up with the word "banco"... For some reason, it sounded Italian enough to me that it probably meant bank. So I gesture, "Banco???" and the international hand symbol of rubbing your fingers together to mean "money". These two guys looked like we were aliens. Banco?? And they debated for at least 3-4 minutes what we were trying to say. We went back and forth for easily 15 minutes with zero understanding between us. Then I magically came up with this potential phrase: "Banco d'Italia??" And their eyes lit up! BancA!.... Banca. Banca!! not Banco! Banca is correct word, and then the proceeded to point in dozens of gestures resulting in at least 5-6 different left and right turns at various corners. We thanked them vigorously, smiled, and just headed in the general direction of the majority of their hand directions. How could a single letter change make a word completely unintelligible?!?

That sketch was hilarious! Especially the joue de froute part

Je regarde tes vidéos à double vitesse pour pratiquer ma compréhension orale et elles sont toujours SUPER INTÉRESSANTES ;)

I've worked at McDonald's in France for more than one year and what suprised me the most, was the fact that my coworkers weren't able to speak english. Even the basic sentences were too hard for them...

J'ai vécu en France pendant deux ans à peu près, il y a 15 ans. J'étais à Paris, en queue au guichet pour acheter un carnet de tickets métro, derrière des italiens, qui étaient en train à leur tour d'acheter des tickets. Ils avaient vraiment du mal pour se faire comprendre, car la vendeuse ne faisait même pas aucun effort pour les aider, elle était vraiment un peu arrogante, voilà! Elle faisait semblant de ne pas comprendre et lorsque je l'ai entendue dire "oh encore ces ritals", là j'en avais marre et j'ai demandé les tickets pour eux! Bref, ce n'a pas été un comportement très professionnel !

Génial, merci ❤

Dear Elisa, you content is superb, congratulations. I am a Portuguese speaker, and I am trying my very best to learn this beautiful langue of yours. But the (to me) extremely subtle difference between vin and vent (in sound)... I can only say ooh la la... I will be in for a treat trying to be understood by the Parisiennes lol. Hopefully they will put up with me. Kudos to you!

Je suis un Français qui passe par là par hasard... Et j'ai une chose à dire : Bon courage aux étrangers qui apprennent notre belle langue ! On l'aime, mais on sait bien qu'elle est difficile :) La preuve, même si on passe plus de dix ans à l'apprendre assidument à l'école, certains d'entre nous font encore des fautes à l'âge adulte, notamment sur l'orthographe et beaucoup en font encore au bac, à 18 ans. Je me plains parfois de la difficulté à apprendre l'Espagnol et l'Anglais, mais je peux toujours relativiser en pensant à ceux qui apprennent ma langue maternelle ! Mais disons que vous pouvez relativiser aussi en pensant à ceux qui doivent en plus changer d'alphabet 😅 (pour ceux dont ce n'est pas le cas). Bonne journée !

Very interesting how a small detail can change what you're saying. In the case of your Spanish friend, the reason why he didn't know you were saying "ácido" is because if you change the intonation it would become "ha sido" (it has been). (Sorry for comenting in English but my French is still too basic. J'étudie avec une appli pour portable)

Que je me regale de votre prononciation claire et comprehensible👏❤ Quant à moi, je verifie mon prononciation avec l'intermediaire de Google Translate - je parle au micro un mot que je veux prononcer bien. Si le traducteur m'entend correctement, il ecrirait le mot juste et je suis content. Sinon je repete ce mot deux-trois-quatre fois en essayant de nuancer mon prononciation. Dans le plupart de cas je reussis.

Merci Elisa c'est vraiment utile

If you say Acído instead of Ácido, it sounds like "ha sido", so it's a little tricky ;) Salut :)

Hello, je découvre ton contenu, c'est super. Pour infos, dans les sous-titres en anglais, les phrases qui suivent "since you were a child" (5:38 pour le timestamp) devraient être conjugées au past continuous : "you've been learning" et non pas "you're learning". Keep up the good work

Watched you on the Ecolinguist. It was amazing!

Trés bonne video! J'ai compris tout ce que tu as dit.

En Italie nous sommes élastiques avec les étrangers parce que nous savons qu'il ne peuvent pas prononcer nôtres paroles correctement. Donc nous ne demandons pas la perfection.

I live in Japan and regularly experience pronunciation errors, which come form my English background. As you said in this video, in English the emphasis, and where we put stress in a word matters a lot, while in Japanese they have a pitch accent that changes the meaning of the words, and the pitch of individual words by themselves is different than when they are in a sentence with other words. It is very difficult to hear the pitch when you're used to only listening for where to put stress or emphasis, so my students will tell me when I say a word and it sounds off pretty regularly. There are a lot of words that are very short and the pitch is what determines it's meaning, because otherwise the sounds are the same. Just today a teacher said a compound word, where when the words are said separately I can understand and hear them correctly, but when they were put together the pitch accent of them changed, and it took me a little while to understand what the words were. I think knowing how the common sounds of a language are combined and how to properly say the vowels is very important in any language with vowels, but that we need to figure out what is different from our base language, what kind of thing has importance placed on it, and work to be able to do that well. I've heard that with Mandarin Chinese the sounds don't matter nearly as much as the tones, so learning those improves fluency faster than anything. And of course how languages are spoken varies dramatically based on region, which can make learning another language to any degree of fluency extremely difficult without spending time in a region where the target language is spoken to get experience using and having cause and effect relationships with the language. Just the act of failure to communicate can help teach the learner how to improve to be better understood. I've studied Japanese for over 15 years and lived in Japan for over 7, and have yet to seriously study pitch accent, but recently I've felt like I need to, to get to the next level in my understanding and overall communication abilities. I think a lot of people want to say that pronunciation isn't very important in being understood, but in my opinion the flow, the ups and downs and rhythms of speech combined with the pronunciation are extremely important to comprehension. We all get used to hearing things said in a specific way in our native languages and deviance from that is often quite confusing.

J'étais un étudiant à Chambéry dans l'été de 2017 après avoir pris trois cours de Français des ans avant a l'université. Donc pas beaucoup de Français pratique pour moi. Le plus difficile chose a toujours compris les gens. Mais tu parles parfait littéralement et même après tous ces années avec petite utilisation de Français je te comprends très facile. Je t'adore ta channel et à cause de toi je pense que je serai bien a écouter la langue parlée maintenant je suis prêt à actuellement deviner couramment. Donc merci encore! Et quand je reviens à France j'aimerais te sortir 😘

Merci pour cette vidéo. C'est très bonne

Yeah I had one where I was asking someone where the bathroom was. They had no clue what I was saying even when I said it multiple times. What was worse is that we both spoke English as our native language. Who's to blame, I don't know.

Je suis franco-tunisien, et il est vrai que quand je retourne là-bas on a tendance à me faire répéter quand je parle. Je l'ai longtemps pris pour moi (bon il y a toujours des personnes malveillantes). Mais cette vidéo m'a pas mal fait relativiser, après tout on a souvent tendance à oublier que la prononciation est tout autant, si ce n'est plus, importante que le vocabulaire. Et on fait rarement des efforts dessus, pensant être accueillis avec le tapis rouge quand on case 5 mots de la langue locale. En Tunisie d'ailleurs "poubelle" et "organe génital masculin" sont des mots assez similaires 🙃

Merci pour la video!!

Regarding your comment about where to put the accent in the Spanish word acido. When you put the accent on the second syllable it sounds like you are saying" ha sido" which translates to "has been". This would be confusing because the meaning is so different to the word "acid".

Salut Elisa. J'adore tes videos. Comme on a déjà te racconté, en Espagnol, "acído" peut être interprété comme : "ha sido" (a été) mais aussi come "asido", du verb "asir" (prendre), c'est à dire, "pris" or "held" in English. Cette dernière mot n'est pas très utilisé, mais le contexte a pu confondre l'autre personne, qui attendait: "ácido". Merci pour cette superbe video qui nous aide beaucoup et ¡saludos!

Très bien!

Such a good video. There are so many sounds almost the same but not quite. No wonder the French have a hard time understanding! All good fun though. Communication, not perfection, is the key I think. Good luck everybody, have fun!

merci beaucoup Emily

I've been watching and listening to some french for fun (can't read it at all but sometimes catch myself understanding the gist from listening). I've never had this problem in Spain with Spanish, I did get made fun of a bit for speaking like a Mexican but otherwise could communicate perfectly fine because the vowels are remarkably consistent

I'm not a speaker of French or not even of English, but let me explain. This happens when you are really good at the language and the people assume that you don't make that kind of mistakes. They can't tell if you are pronouncing those words correctly and trying to tell something with those words, or you are just wrong at pronunciation. It's like, a Japanese who is perfect at everything but l/r distinction in English.

Great! Vowels must be handled with precision and care in French. I suppose because of slang non native speakers don’t realize. I had a hard time with au dessus and au dessous in a grocery store in Paris but people were very helpful. Merci!

I'm part French and learning French its sexy. Elisa helps a whole lot with my French, I know I have to create a world around French meaning putting everything in French to challenge myself. which is something I used to do in my high school days. Merci Elisa.🫂🇫🇷