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Parts of the English language that the French find difficult.


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An English friend of mine meets once a week with a group of French women who are trying to improve their English.

Next week they are going to do an item on common mistakes and she has asked me to go along as a back up.

I wonder if anyone can forewarn me about things that are likely to come up.

All the French people I know speak to me in French and so I don't know which bits of English French speakers find difficult.

Please does anyone have any ideas ?

Hoddy
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My observation is that many (but not all) have a problem with anything that has a "th" in it, "w" is another as is "sh" and I am sure there are a couple of others. I use words with those letters in that on them just to show how difficult it is the other way round i.e. my French pronunciation, which I openly admit, is not that good.

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Long and short vowel sounds: it's a common mistake and one of the most difficult things for non-native speakers to get right, leading occasionally to some amusement.

Think about "ship" and "sheep".

I'm sure I've recounted this anecdote before..at my last company the French interns asked for English lessons in the lunch break, which I organised through my language teaching supplier. After one lesson he came into my office, closed the door and burst into tears of laughter.

One student (heavy French accent) said "Rob, every time I ask for a piece of paper, other English people laugh" so he was about to start explaining the long and short vowel sounds, when another student raised her hand.

"I had the same problem" she said, "but I solved it by asking for a sheet of paper instead"

And our then MD had to be actively discouraged from making the comment "The board and I would like you to focus..."

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The "i"s are one of the most difficult, also for us in the opposite direction.

Iron is one, most pronounce it like ironic (I, Ron) which of course they do correctly

Ion is another which they tend to pronounce eon

And then of course there is the prenom Ian

No problem with Brian though!!

I once made up a text as an exercise to show the differences, it ended up being a tongue twister, it was something along the lines of:

Is it ironic that styling hair using an ionic flat iron works due to negative ions?

You could do a similar Ian and Brian thing.

The incorrect use of moreover (en plus) when speaking English is another good one.

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When I first joined our Fete commitee there was one chap called Jill which I thought a strange name for a chap but then it's France so perhaps Jill is K for a male here. When I got the minutes of the first meeting his name was there at the top amonst those attending, Giles.
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Sentence construction generally isn't too bad (I may be a bit out of touch now as I mainly teach advanced level students), but another thing - and good luck with this one, 'cos there aren't any good rules - is correct use of prepositions of place, especially "to", "in", "at", "on".

Another common mistake is the (mis) use of "will" , when most English speakers use "going to" and the confusion of "make" and "do" because most other European (and other) languages have the one verb for both.

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A couple of problems I have noticed among those of my French friends who otherwise speak excellent English:

"guardian" in English comes out as "gwardian"; same with "guard".

and

confusion between pronunciation of "angry" and "hungry"; they always seem to say one when they mean the other.

Angela

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I've noticed that the french tend to emphasise the last syllable in english words, when we usually emphasise the first one.

eg the BeTELLS = the Beatles

McdonALDS =MacDOnalds.

The other day on the phone someone asked for my email address and I had to ask him to spell it because he kept saying u-MYal.

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Pat, shouldn't that be MacDo' ?

A friend tried to help her (Fr) neighbour's daughter with her English singing "old Macdonald had a farm" etc. The little girl said everyone at school sang " old MacDo' because of course that's what the restaurant is called!

edit: just corrected my typos[:$]

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Hard to do more than scratch the surface in a short post, but here goes for a few:

As Betty says the future is a frequent one. No surprising when you see bad examples of "will" in French textbooks.

A frequent problem is that can and must in English don't have future forms, but change to 'will be  able to' and 'will have to'

His and hers, because in French those words depend on the gender of the object but in English on the gender of the person who possesses the object

French sa chaise can mean his chair, and son pantalon can mean her trousers

which brings up also the question of words which are singular in one language but plural in the other

Forming questions with who what when how(far/long/often etc

The sentence construction is very different in the two languages and at school they have always answered the teacher rather than asked the question (very revealing that ) so they have difficulties

Ago  "I did it two hours ago".  if you combine this with the above and get 'how long ago did you move here' there is confusion..

Continuous tenses

They often say I am working/living  etc  for I work/live

To have something done  in French the verb faire is used

There are also the faux amis

A few common ones where the French get it wrong:

Actually meaning 'at the moment' (from French actuellement)

this page isn't bad for those:

http://french.about.com/cs/vocabulary/a/falsecognates.htm

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Sentence construction and different word order ... adverbs in the wrong place (French before, English after verb),

Irregular English verbs (example given by French choir member - begin, begun, began) (I tried to say they were much less difficult than the French irregular ones - as well as being fewer of them but didn't her to agree on that one!!)

Different pronunciations of words spelt the same (eg bow (decoration) bow (verb)) and same pronunciation of words spelt differently (wait, weight)

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I left out the most difficult, which is our use of verbs such as 'get' or 'put' 'take' with lots of separated bits such as 'on' off' 'up' 'out' away' etc.

Ironically English people regard these as simple, and so tend to use them to be helpful whereas it is much easier for a French person to understand Latin-based words which seem harder or even pompous to our ears

Consider:

'Come down'  descend

'Get over' (an illness) recuperate

'Give away'  donate

'take after' resemble

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Very difficult to answer your question. A few here have tried to respond using experience gained with French locals but this won't be true representation of your task ahead.

Talking about personal experience, I still have problems with:

- Ship / Sheep ... Paper / Pepper .... Shit / Sheet and when I am tired I hear myself say " .....She His..." instead of " ...She is ...

But all students being different, you will have to assess them individually and correct accordingly. Good luck !

 

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Thanks to everyone who has taken the time to reply.

I've started to make notes in readiness.

As a result of something Norman wrote I'm wondering if I ought to think about common mistakes that English people make to give examples of what not to say.

Hoddy
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[quote user="NormanH"]I left out the most difficult, which is our use of verbs such as 'get' or 'put' 'take' with lots of separated bits such as 'on' off' 'up' 'out' away' etc.

Ironically English people regard these as simple, and so tend to use them to be helpful whereas it is much easier for a French person to understand Latin-based words which seem harder or even pompous to our ears

Consider:

'Come down'  descend

'Get over' (an illness) recuperate

'Give away'  donate

'take after' resemble

[/quote]

Phrasal verbs are a bit of a minefield, though, Norman. After all, many have two or more meanings, sometimes abstract, sometimes more literal. The average Brit (including me, when I first started teaching) has no clue that phrasal verbs exist, and due to their very randomness, there are no rules governing their makeup, so all you can do is learn them as they crop up. As you say, one of the most difficult, not only to learn but to teach, as you can only teach them by categorising them according to theme, or according to preposition. The tip of a Titanic-stopping iceberg!

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Hi there, Betty!  You've tempted me out of Forum retirement!

"Titanic-stopping iceberg"......hmmm....I'd have said "Tatanic-sinking iceberg" myself.......[:P]

Don't you just love splitting hairs?[:D]  I know I do.........

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And as the smart ship grew

In stature, grace, and hue,

In shadowy silent distance grew the Iceberg too.

IX

Alien they seemed to be;

No mortal eye could see

The intimate welding of their later history,

X

Or sign that they were bent

By paths coincident

On being anon twin halves of one august event,

XI

Till the Spinner of the Years

Said "Now!" And each one hears,

And consummation comes, and jars two hemispheres
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