Why does the French Language SEEM difficult?

The French Language (français) is clearly different from other Romance Languages, but why? What makes it seem so difficult the ear compared to other languages with Latin roots? In this video, we take a look at a key point in learning French which many overlook to their peril. Hopefully this will help you learn French more quickly, or merely appreciate the uniqueness of this remarkable language.

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[lilliannswinn]

I feel maybe this is a form of unintentional ASMR. Very good video!

[hannat]

I can put up with exotic alphabets, funny vocabulary and complex grammar. But 5 ways of pronouncing “e” of which I could hear only one (unaccented) and the remaining 4 were impossible for me to hear. It felt like Asian tonal languages where I cannot hear the tones at all. And they have those asking words like “what” at the length of an average Norwegian sentence. And then they pronounce as little as 60% of the letters they write 🤷‍♀️
Being very sarcastic and exaggerating here, but thank you for finally making me understand why I struggled so much and gave up French.

[pavlosurzhenko]

6:09 I'm pretty sure "ou" and "où" are pronounced exactly the same way, the accent grave is there to disambiguate them in writing, like "la" and "là" or "a" and "à".

[cardenova]

I was waiting for when you somehow make it seem less intimidating. As if there was some catch waiting for us at the end 😂 I literally just started a few weeks ago. My goal is about 2 years. So far all is as expected. It’s neither easier nor more difficult than I imagined. I taught myself Portuguese to a conversational/B1 level in about a year and a half. Hard to find anyone to practice with. French on the other hand is indeed easier to come by. And yes, I’m actually pretty surprised by how lexical similar French is to both Portuguese & Spanish. It’s like the words that aren’t English cognates are Romance cognates. My listening skills are a little better than I thought they’d be but pronouncing them is a very different story to simply understanding them. Anyway, that’s my rant, nice vid

[travishill]

Very informative and interesting. Thank you!

[lovedbythestars]

Bonjour Ben, merci pour une présentation trés intéressante! En parlant de différents sons qui sont difficile à prononcer, je travaille toujours le 'll' du Cymraeg...😅

[cennethadameveson]

I remember in school most of us habitually using ffenestr for fenetre in French lessons. 😊

[hugues-vi]

J'ai connu beaucoup d'Anglais à Londres ou en France qui parlaient le français à la perfection, sans accent notable. Comme quoi il est difficile de généraliser. Il est vrai qu'il faut avoir l'oreille musicale pour bien appréhender les sons inconnus de sa propre langue. Mon beau-père alsacien, n'a jamais su prononcer les j, d, b, à la française mais disait par exemple "che va terrière le pois" pour " je vais derrière le bois" ou "un boulet chéant" pour "un poulet géant". Et ceci après 30 années passées en Lorraine romane.

[cazimir_gruia]

I think the main difficulties for English speakers arise from the phonology (some sounds that are specific to the French language), from the spelling (however, the French spelling is very regular compared to the English spelling) and the verb conjugation that brings some complexity to the game. The existence of grammatical genders for nouns also plays a role in increasing the degree of difficulty of the French language. For me, as a speaker of another Romance language (Romanian), learning French was not very difficult.

[tobyornottoby]

This is an excellent video, but two little things:
1:13 The two vowels in “intense” shouldn’t be the same.
6:06 Où and ou are homophones.

[michaelhalsall]

I can read French much better than I can speak it, now I know why!

[mercy]

Really interesting points about the vowels. Maybe that's why, as a native English speaker, I'm not fazed so much by pronunciation in languages with fewer vowels like Hebrew and Spanish, but French seems very intimidating. And non-English consonants, while potentially challenging, seem easier to distinguish by ear, such as the French R (which it shares with Hebrew incidentally) or Spanish R.

[DeannaSt]

J'aime la langue française parce que ce n'est pas difficile du tout, j'ai commencé à l'apprendre à l'école quand j'avais 12 ans et je l'ai tellement aimé que je suis devenue la meilleure élève de ma classe de français dès le début. Mais c’était il y a longtemps et à cause du manque de pratique pendant des années, ma conversation est devenue assez rouillée… mon style est devenu démodé et sec.

[ApollonianShy]

I dont find French SOOO hard... but im a romantic dreamer Romanian, so makes sense :))

[AndrewGruffudd]

I wonder how Rimbaud would have fared in Vietnam? I don't know - I wasn't there...

[Ponto-zvvf]

I am way too old to learn another language. All languages have peculiar aspects. My parents spoke Maltese and never mastered English even after living in Australia for 50 years. I cannot speak Maltese, and just speak English. And all languages have idiomatic sayings which you don't learn when being taught a language. English has words with silent consonants like the K in knight, and the gh which can have different pronunciation.

[docteurcuicui]

According to the French linguist André Martinet, the French language has only 28 phonemes (10 vowels and 16 consonants). In order to understand this you HAVE to be a native French speaker (there is no other way around). Sorry to break your myths but "â/a", "(e/a)in/un", "e/eu", "au/o/ô" are pronunced the same in standard French from France.
Certes, il existe aussi quelques différences préservées dans les dialectes les plus conservateurs du français, mais ces prononciations sont purement dialectales. Personnellement je préfèrerais entendre les Bretons parler un français approximatif et un breton parfait que l'inverse (c'est très bien que des gens parlent couramment une langue, mais la prononciation correcte de tous les phonèmes d'une langue est plus importante que la grammaire lexicographomorphe (coined from Greek roots), contrairement à ce que prétend l'écrasante majorité des Français);
I also have a little piece of advice for you B.Ll : Don't smile while speaking French, you'll get a better accent if you do so, trust me (as you can see, I'm a native French speaker). The American youtuber @royaventura (often mistaken for a native French speaker by French people themselves) has made an excellent video about this.

[russelhill]

Great job on the Welsh Zionist vid bro. You've come on a long way since you first started. Maybe a bit much on some of the cheesy fades and effects but the content is gold. Gwych.

[bantorio]

... qu'est-ce que c'est que c'est que ça ... ??? ... French is not difficult ... French is archaic and absurd ... just to say the least ... ... you don't need to study it ... English is enough or Spanish ... !!! ... period ... !!! ... greetings from Miami, the Capital of the Sol ... 🌻

[aureltoniniimperatorecomun]

because just like English, it does not have a written form.