Hello, I wanted to put a question or two out to people and see what the response is. But first here is the reason behind it.
I have been learning french for a while now and I have had a common reoccurance with regards to a specific "attitude" the french have towards me when I try and speak with them.
What I mean by this, is, I do a lot of travelling and whenever I meet french people at the hostel I'm staying at or in a bar/restraunt, I try and strike up a conversation in french with them so that I can practice, and it always seems to me that they will always just go right to english as soon as they hear the accent.
Furthmore, and this is the main point I want to discuss, when I tell them I would like to speak french with them, on multiple occasions I have been told by these french people "that I can't speak it" and "that I shouldn't even try". Maybe not these exact words everytime but definately something along these lines. This happened as recent as a few weeks ago when I went to visit my gf(who is french) and her roommate asked me if I wanted to join her and a friend for a coffee. The rommate asked her friend over the phone if she knew how to speak english, at which point I said that I could speak french. She then turned to me, still on the phone and said "no you can't".This must have been about the 5th/6th time a french person has done this to me.
I have been learning french for about 5 years now on and off. I don't feel I am even close to the level I should be, partly due to the fact its been on and off but I also loose all motivation to want to learn when something like this happens. Because of where I am working at the moment, there are free french tutors you can sign up for on a hourly basis, and I struggle to muster and energy to go and utilise them anymore. As a matter of fact the only reason I still go is simply because I'm to sutbborn to stop. But when I do go in, I don't speak a word of french!! They will speak to me the entire time in french, and I just don't want to respond in french.
So the questions I have are this.
Have you ever experienced the same thing? And if so how did you handle it and deal with it?
What did you do to get your motivation back?
Did you decide to just learn another language instead?
Please share any experience you have had that is related, and it doesn't have to be just french. It can be any language. I know I would never and have never done something like this to anyone who is trying to learn english. I would like to be able to help people in this discussion group so that they may overcome these difficulties. It is hard enough to learn a language, never mind when people are telling you things like this.
P.S. I should mention that I learned some Hungarian and German when I was younger and not once have I ever had a Hungarian person or German person EVER say anything remotely close like this to me.
Hello, Dylan!
I've heard that native english speakers face this problem all the time - everybody speaks to them in English. As for me, I'm a native speaker of Russian language and since it's quite a difficult language I've never had such a problem. 70% of time we speak their language simply because it's easier to converse.
But if I were you I would choose from the following solutions:
1. I don't know if that has any point, but I'd said that I don't speak English :D
2. This one is more reasonable. Find a person (you've already found) with who you can reach a conversation level to speak the language fluently. I'm sure they will have no need to speak English seeing your level of fluency.
3. Avoid such people and spend more time with those who can only speak French (they have no other choice).
That's probably it. Improve your speaking ability to fluency and avoid that kind of people. And for sure not to stop learning the language. Hope it has a sense. Good luck and keep going! :)
Je pense que je peux t'expliquer cette confusion envers les fançais
rejoint moi sur skype si tu veux pour en parler plus :)
if you really, really want to speak French, make sure you "impose" yourself enough, have a high level of assertiveness in front of people. i've also had students who don't give the people they talk with any chance to speak another language.
what is hurting your feelings is the bluntness those people put you down with, and it's understandable but they are reflecting to you something you're not seeing. use that as a springboard to know yourself better. learning a language is a very humbling experience and not just a cognitive one but also an emotional, psychological and physical one.
so there's a variety of factors. choose the right people, check within yourself what is causing these recurrent situations so you can fix what is in your power to fix, and practice your French in the right environment with someone who will be "at your service" instead of putting you down and undermining your efforts.
bonne continuation !
It's easy to say ' Don't care about them" but at least try to keep on without thinking a lot about those negative remarks, because; in my opinion, if you are influenced about there opinions, You will probably lose your motivation to learn new languages. Maybe you shouldn't care if other people agree with you or not, motivation is important for all learners.
If you lose it with this kind of people you would lose your reason to learn new things not just with languages but with any creative things in your life.
that's cruel ...! :'( they r selfish and rude they cant judge u simply like this while ur trying hardly to learn a foreign language ... i never been throught this before but i can feel u ... don't lose hope and never understimate urself ... french accent is defferent from english for sure and it's way hard abit but it's not impossible .. anyone can do well after trying it's just everyone has an altitude somes may learn it in a week somes might take years ... its ok don't ever worry about that they act like rasists ppls !!! i dare them to try to have ur passion on learning a new language .. there's always a secret abt life it's called the power of the believe and the love to what we do and once we r completly into we will submit all our faith to it and then the magic will happen don't give up so easy bcoz ur already someone with a brave heart ^^ to have such challenge with languages :)
ne t'en fait pas de ce que les autres pensent croie en ce que tu es destiné à faire :) bn courage ^^
