Comment by yau8edq12i | Hacker News Reader

Comment by yau8edq12i | Hacker News Reader

I must say, I'm really skeptical of all these apps. I've tried pretty much all of them (well, not literally all of them, but a lot). I've had to move/travel quite a lot in my life, and I tried to get a "head start" on learning the language, with a different app. Every time, going to the country, I quickly realized that I could not speak the language. At best I could read it and produce with effort some sentences that natives have trouble understanding themselves. And then, after immersing myself in the language for a couple of weeks, I was much, much better than anything I could have achieved with the app.

Most apps focus too much on impeccable grammar (even if they usually restrict you to a few tenses/moods) and rote, non-contextual vocabulary learning. Both are, well, useless. Having perfect grammar but not knowing when to use which verb in which context won't get you far. It's like trying to learn how to code in some programming language by studying the formal syntax and rote memorizing a bunch of core functions from the standard library. You miss out on everything that actually makes a language.

All in all, it feels like this post was written by someone who mainly communicates (or learns to communicate) in foreign in writing.

> Forget intonation if it’s not entirely necessary. Especially in French, there is no need to learn if a word takes a ` or ‘.

I can't let that one go, sorry. You don't need to learn perfect spelling, but it's going to be obvious most of the time if it's é or è when you hear the word. And if you pronounce it weird, you will get confused looks. In English, do you "need" to learn if a word takes "o" or "u"? People who were raised with certain native languages cannot even hear the difference anyway, so why bother, I guess? I hope this makes my point clear.

> In English, do you "need" to learn if a word takes "o" or "u"?

English semi-famously remains comprehensible if you replace every vowel with a schwa. So sure you'll have an extremely weird accent, but this is acceptable according to the OP's definition of "speaking a language" from the first paragraph of the article.

Hi, OP here. It's not optimal, it's just the way to make you progress fast, not quit and then get a good accent,learn complicated grammar structure etc.

I'm OP. I am not communicating mostly in writing. I think that most people memorize the sound of the word. Ecole is the first word I learned in French and to this day I forget is it's a grave or aigu. What I realized with your comment and thank you is that I didn't mean intonation! I got confused because and I meant the type of accents and I meant spelling. Thank you

> Ecole is the first word I learned in French and to this day I forget is it's a grave or aigu.

What I've noticed with most French words is that initial-è seems to be phonotactically disfavored if not outright forbidden. A quick scan of my dictionary suggests the only word with initial-è is ès which is archaic. In general, I associate è with a sort of final position, using je préfère as the mnemonic (since it has both the accents in that conjugation).

Words that start with a "è" sound typically have an "H" as a first letter.

Really? Try to pronounce "ecole" (I'm omitting the accent on purpose). Does it sound like the end of "café" or the first sound in "mère"? It's impossible to confuse the two. I'm really curious as to how you manage not to distinguish them while claiming to speak the language. That's what I meant when I said I thought you are mostly communicating in writing - if you actually speak the word, you'll never be confused about it...

I'm not only claiming to speak the language, I not only have spoken it with various friends but also I have a formal B1 certificate from institute francais. Which proves that pronouncing the e of mere and the first e of ecole exactly the same is not very important. Also for reference I used to hang out with an examiner from the same institute and told me they only care about your accents unless it's something monstrous only at C1 level. You can pass the exam (official from the state) without writing any accents even in written composition.

This is like the c++ pointers guy complaining "how can this guy write so ugly PHP". I'm the PHP guy and I'm a fan of the way @levelsio is doing things in a simple and effective way that makes others annoyed. But in reality his projects work. And I chat with french friends :)

You do realize that B1 is lower intermediate level...? This isn't exactly the flex you think it is.

Besides, learning a language isn't about exams or certifications. It seemed to me that we have very different ideas of what learning to speak a language means, and your answers confirm it. That's fine, but I'm not sure what there is left to discuss, then.

Glad I’m not alone, have thought the same thing.

Having taken some French in high school, formally learning grammar and such seemed more useful than what the apps do. Of course, doesn’t make for high entertainment.

I feel the apps only try to sell the idea of learning a language, not the actual ability to do so.

Yeah that's a bizarre (or non-) example for a point that might be otherwise sound.

Accents aigu et grave sound completely different, and stand in for a variety of disambiguating spellings you might use (including the grave even for non loanwords: 'bless-id' vs 'blesst', for example) you could never confuse the pronunciation, they serve the opposite purpose.

In fact that example makes it seem more like a point about spelling, don't worry about writing the wrong accent. (Yeah, people will figure it out I'm sure; in English too 'bless-ayed' is nonsense, so the presence of any accent would look like 'bless-id' was intended.)

Don't discount the utility of reading, though maybe it's less useful these days with smartphone camera translation.

Back before widespread internet, I spent two weeks in Korea, and by the end I could basically read & pronounce it (without really understanding anything) because it was that critical to getting around.

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