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Comment by VeejayRampay | Hacker News Reader

I'm French and I do realize it's a pretty complicated language to learn. Ridiculous amounts of exceptions to every single rule, dozens of tenses (which no one ever uses), lack of general structure, arbitrary genders, it's got it all.

My personal piece of advice to anyone: don't waste your time learning French, it's a dying language. Go for Spanish if you need a latin language, it's at least used in Spain, the United States, Central and South America. And once you speak Spanish, French comes rather easy (with the benefit of Italian and Portuguese becoming almost trivial).

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French is an official language in 29 countries and spoken by more than 200 million people. It's probably the most widely learned foreign language after English. It's also one of the top 10 languages on the internet. I'm genuinely curious why you would call it a dying language.

Because we're dying as a world power. It's the cycle of history. We're slowing riding the wave of our past glory toward oblivion. Most of the countries in Africa who used to speak French are now switching to other languages like Swahili, Lingala or Wolof, the Belgian, the Swiss and the Québécois all speak French and English, it's only a matter of time.

You can bring up figures and number of speakers, it won't change the fact that we're not relevant as a linguistic group in the world and unlike the other European powers, we haven't yet made the vital switch to having a strong command of English. It's really depressing.

Arguably, it was only after France's inevitable and necessary[1] retreat from the global power sphere that it's "real" source of power -- it's way of living, and vernacular culture -- began to really flourish, and be genuinely appreciated on the global stage.

You "lost" Indochina and Algeria, pretty much all of your "possessions" everywhere else. But in return you got Houellebecq, Goddard, the Gainsbourgs, Hardy, Dutronc, Pussycat, etc (and the world finally discovered Brassens). And now we all eat brie and goat cheese. What's not to like?

[1] In the sense that the retreats of all colonial powers, including the current crop, are inevitable and necessary.

That figure includes partial speakers , so people who learned a little French in school but probably have a much better knowledge of say English. With the exception of France most countries that legitimately speak French as the main language are either tiny or third world.

Being spoken in the least developed countries seems more like a plus for French than a minus. As those countries develop, French will become even more important (assuming they still speak French). A language like German on the other hand will never experience this kind of organic growth because pretty much everywhere that speaks German is already well developed (and has negative or near-zero population growth, which certainly isn't helping the language grow).

Examples of French speaking countries would be Rwanda, Congo, Niger and Madagascar. You could be waiting a very long time for these to become significant economies.

There are many more than that though. Basically you can draw a line from Congo to Algeria, and every country west of that line speaks French. There are 4 exceptions : Nigeria, Ghana, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

That still leaves a huge pool of speakers. Probably not enough to make it the 'most spoken language in the world by 2050'[0] because it is mostly spoken by educated and urban people, and far less in the countryside, but enough to make it a dynamic, growing language.

[0] : http://www.forbes.com/sites/pascalemmanuelgobry/2014/03/21/w...

Well, it's more that French is an official language of those countries, rather than those countries speak French. WP has a list where most of those countries have only around 10%[1] of the population that can speak French. Given that French isn't particularly popular in the world of business (English and Chinese rule there) and that English seems to have become the default in science and engineering, it seems an assumption that a growing African economy would retain its French as it's primary 'international' language.

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_where_French_...

There are some regional shifts involved in some of those countries. Burundi and Rwanda are looking more east than west in recent years, and East Africa uses a mixture of Swahili and English rather than French as the common language.

Rwanda in particular is not in practice really part of French-speaking Africa anymore. The numbers you link show only 3% of Rwandans speak partial French, which is barely more than any other country where a handful of people choose French as a foreign language in school. That's related to the ethnic unrest in the country; much of the current elite are ex-refugees who grew up in Uganda, which is not Francophone, and there's also a political edge to it because they consider France to have been too close to the previous Hutu-dominated government.

Don't forget Montreal. It's the 8th largest city in North America. It has a rich history of bilingualism, but it's essentially French speaking.

I am french and lived in Quebec for a few years. Be aware that the french spoken in Québec is somewhat different in every way (vocabulary, expressions and pronunciation) than the one spoken in France. For instance, up in the thread frandroid wrote "Je vais aller au dépanneur" and translated it to "I will go to the convenience store". For a French the translation would be "I am going to the auto repair shop" ;-) As a French I have hard time understanding french Québec people even after a few years spent there, mostly due to pronunciation (now I know the most common expressions and vocabulary).

My understanding is that 80% of people in Montreal use English as their primary language.

Maybe that was true in 1965, but it's nowhere near the case today.

Historically the downtown business core of Montréal was Anglophone while the poorer, rural areas were completely Francophone. However, rural people could still vote: the result was the 1976 provincial victory for the Parti Québécois who immediately introduced far-reaching legislation requiring the use of French in public places, in the workplace, etc. The effect of this was to make Toronto Canada's primary business center.

There are still some English areas, I think mostly around McGill. Most of the city is completely French though.

As an English-speaker with only a rudimentary knowledge of French, I found Paris a lot easier than Montréal to get around in. In Paris, as long as you can remember to start with a nice "Bonjour"/"Bon soir" everyone I spoke with was happy to help in English as best they could. In Montréal, language is so politicized that doesn't work. To be fair, once people found out I wasn't from Canada they would be friendly and helpful -- their first assumption, though, would be that I was probably just someone from Ontario, must have had some French in school, and now am just refusing to try.

Thanks for the correction! I wasn't aware it had changed that much.

I am well aware of the treatment you get as an English speaker in Quebec. If they think you're non-Canadian, they are super friendly. If they think you're Anglophone Canadian, watch out!

It is the same for French (from France). As soon as they spot your french (from France) accent, and it just starts by saying "Bonjour" , they become less friendly. Exaggerating a little bit French are seen as pedantic, think he knows better than everyone else, and not trustworthy (but it is not exclusive to Québec ;-))

Your understanding is not consistent at all with the government census stats. French only at home: 56%. English only at home: ~10%. French mainly + other climbs higher.

http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2011/as-sa/98-...

It also doesn't seem true that Allophones (born not speaking English or French) necessarily are using English the most as their 2nd language. Allophones using French most often at home is increasing over time.

http://www12.statcan.ca/english/census01/Products/Analytic/c...

Going outside Montreal will yield 90%+ French speakers.

I would also offer my anecdote to the statistics that Tiktaalik provided based on a few trips to Montreal and French Canada over the last couple years--while it's true that many people speak English as well as French, English seems to be popular because of the large number of English speaking tourists that visit the city (in no small part because of its French culture). Even in the touristy areas you're greated with "Bonjour-hello" to see how you choose to respond. There were a few times I've been grateful to have some background in French, as the person I was talking to didn't know any English (this however, was mostly on the outskirts of Montreal and in smaller towns). Overall, I was surprised at how francophone the city/region as a whole were, as before traveling I had anticipated it being equally French and English.

French is a really, really, really formal language! It's perfect to use in literature because it's kind of "pretentious". But on a daily basis, you'd find that the rules are simply not worth it.

Well it's dead to you, obviously.

My counter-advice to the above is that on an extremely deep, life experience level it doesn't matter how popular a language is, in numerical terms. Or what will come of that language 500 years from now.

What matters is what experiences open up to you, as individual, when you go visit (and live) in those countries, in this life, right. It's the people you meet -- and become friends with, perhaps fall in love and start a family with -- and the literature, the music, and poetry that keeps reading and listening into the dead of night and into your dreams -- that matter. Not the gender/case system, of the fact that can speak some generic version of it in 54 countries.

In that sense nearly every (major) language community is infinite, and unique. Maybe the one that's most meaningful for you will be a globally dominant language, like Spanish, Mandarin, or Arabic. Or maybe it will something far more "marginal", like Basque or Pashto.

But whichever it ends up being: whether that language is "alive" or "dead" to you will be a direct function of the energy and enthusiasm you invest in learning it, and (correspondingly) your love for the people who speak it, and their culture.

And not a function of whether you can go to a Barnes and Noble right now and find a shelf with 50 (mostly) mediocre books and interactive learning tools for it.

I was giving you the benefit of the doubt until you put Arabic in the same category as Mandarin or Spanish. Vernacular Arabic is as much a single language as vernacular Germanic. Not at all. Mutually unintelligible languages that qualify as Germanic; Nynorsk, Bokmal, Swedish, Danish, Hochdeutsch, Allemanic, at least 4 varieties of Swiss German, Dutch, Frisian, Scots, English, Jamaican Patois, Tok Pisin.

[Incredibly vulgar abuse]

Learn a language if you feel like it, or it will be useful. Don't learn it for the money or the career. Trust me that aside from English all useless unless you can work in them well enough to translate to English.

Could you provide some metrics, please? I'll be happy to confess my ignorance, but I was under the impression that among countries where some form of Arabic is counted among the official languages spoken, these variants were much closer to Modern Standard Arabic than, say, Swedish is to German.

Mutually unintelligible languages that qualify as Germanic; Nynorsk, Bokmal, Swedish, Danish, Hochdeutsch, Allemanic, at least 4 varieties of Swiss German, Dutch, Frisian, Scots, English, Jamaican Patois, Tok Pisin.

BTW, you forgot Kiezdeutsch.

I don't have any metrics on Arabic but here's what Wikipedia has to say on intelligibility

> From a linguistic standpoint, it is often said that the various spoken varieties of Arabic differ among each other collectively about as much as the Romance languages.[34] This is an apt comparison in a number of ways. The period of divergence from a single spoken form is similar—perhaps 1500 years for Arabic, 2000 years for the Romance languages. Also, while it is comprehensible to people from the Maghreb, a linguistically innovative variety such as Moroccan Arabic is essentially incomprehensible to Arabs from the Mashriq, much as French is incomprehensible to Spanish or Italian speakers. This suggests that the spoken varieties may linguistically be considered separate languages.

I also fogot Afrikaans. Arabic ia really, really diglossic so all educated Arabs will be able to speak and understand fusha but people don't talk like that outside of extremely formal situations. Speaking fusha at home would be as weird as a Romance speaker raising their kids in Latin.

Learn a language if you feel like it, or it will be useful. Don't learn it for the money or the career.

I agree, this is good advice.

Trust me that aside from English all useless unless you can work in them well enough to translate to English.

Useless in career - not necessarily. Useless in life - definitely untrue.

In and of themselves, these languages may not be that "useful."

That said, breaking out of the English-only mindset, and practicing the discipline required to become truly fluent in another language (which can carry over to other endeavors in your life) can be incredibly useful -- and perhaps one of the best long-term strategic decisions regarding your intellectual development that you can make.

Poetic!

I'm an Australian whose wife is Chinese, we just had our first child, who is German, in Thailand and are thinking to move - after 8+ years in China - to France. Neither of us speak French, but we sometimes translate classical Chinese together. You only get out of languages what you put in to them. Speaking of which, there's a great Arabic calligraphy torrent around at the moment...

PS. Pashto's pretty close to Farsi, isn't it? It's not that marginal. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/65/Modernir...

I meant "marginal" in an facetious sense. None of these languages are "marginal" to those who grow up speaking them (or who end up meeting a soul mate, of one kind or another, from which they learn them). That's the main point I was trying to make.

Sorry but could you clarify? How is the child of an Australian and Chinese couple German?

I have three nationalities. Under German law, children of Germans are considered German no matter where they are born.

EDIT: "in this life, right." => "right now."

Interesting change going on in language education. I'm a coordinator for my daughter's elementary school's after school program. I wanted to bring in foreign languages so I started with Spanish because of the large Spanish speaking population (plenty of people to practice with) around our area. I partnered with the foreign language department at a nearby college to get some Spanish education students to teach: they received credit while we received free instruction. The head of the department developed the learning modules with her students. The modules were all cultural - music, food and dining, art, literature, etc. - and emphasized vocabulary and phrases associated with the particular cultural lesson. The department head told me that modern language instruction is no longer about learning rules and exceptions, which is how I was taught French, rather it's about getting kids to use language practically as soon as possible.

An interesting side note is that the department head and her students consciously stayed away from the culture of Spain itself and focused on the countries of people in our area - Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Mexico, Guatemala, and Columbia.

Learning, in general, seems to have changed away from rote learning of rules to "let's get the students doing something practical right away so they get excited about learning". My daughter's music teacher is a fairly recent graduate of Berklee Music College's music education program. When my daughter showed up for her first lesson, she had to pick a song she liked. He had her playing it - albeit crudely - by the end of the hour. She was excited and wanted to play more. When I learned drums I don't think I could play to an actual song for my first year. I had to go through hours of practicing rudiments - basic patterns to develop coordination - before applying them to anything.

I think we're learning more about how people learn. I'm hopeful that "older dogs will be learning new tricks" thanks to teaching methods better aligned with how we learn.

Would you say French is more or less complicated than English (from how much you can evaluate the two fairly, though it seems like your English is excellent)? I'm frequently catching myself on how hard English must be to learn...having it pushed on to me in school is only second in born-privilege to being a U.S. citizen by birth. My Vietnamese parents have been in the states nearly 40 years, speaking English in their jobs and to me everday, and it's still off.

I took French in high school just because most everyone else was taking Spanish...that was not a good attempt at rebelling :). I do love the language though, but liking it has no relation to having the discipline to be fluent in it...having situations where you need to speak it is the key factor, and that's not a frequent situation in the States.

Still, I'm almost certain that if I hadn't taken French (or Spanish), I would've never known what the nuance of something like the subjunctive mood, in French or in English, and I like thinking through sentence structure when writing and reading...not sure if that casual academic pleasure offers the same level of brain benefits the OP refers to.

I'm French, so this will definitely color my judgement.

I find English to be rather simple. The grammar is as simple as can get, and due to it being the international language people are very open to weird accent (including ze frrrrench wane ;). This makes it easy to start, even with a pretty rough command of the language. Then the main challenge (IMHO) to a good mastery is the large vocabulary, and the very irregular pronunciation. But nobody expects that from a foreigner starting in English, which is a benefit of it being the international tongue I guess (spoken by all, mastered by... less).

On the other hand the French grammar is very complex. That's not specific to French, many languages are like this. Spanish and Italian are pretty close, and German is also complex (I tried the two first, but have no experience in the later). Still, it requires a significant upfront investment to get to a working level. There is also a cultural challenge: the expectation in French is that you have to speak properly. For a foreigner there is some tolerance of course, but still the culture has a strong bias on speaking correctly, and for some professional contexts it will matter. There's a lot of history there, but let's say that command of language has long been a class differentiator. Nothing unique to French, I would guess it's the same in British English for Great Britons. But in an "international English" context that's definitely not the case, and it helps get started. Another challenge is that words tend to be more overloaded in French (smaller vocabulary vs. English), which opens the door for a lot of double meaning. This exists in all language, but can be a challenge to a newcomer and is not as common in "international English".

So all in all, I'd guess international English is easier than French. In any case seriously learning another language and its culture is highly recommended, whatever your choice. It's really a mind opening experience, as any one will find that "obvious" things that everybody knows are actually just cultural conventions. So the more remote the culture, the bigger the gain on this account.

As for French dying, the number of speakers is actually increasing, mainly due Africa rising population and the large number of French speakers there.

This is perhaps one of the more insightful comments on learning a foreign language I've ever read. It really crystallizes the tolerance of the listener to foreign speakers as part of the barrier to learning a language.

One thing I'd add, at least as a native English speaker in a very international area, not all foreign accents and mistakes are equally well treated. And this may help contribute to and explain why some populations tend to learn English more poorly than others.

My wife is a non-native speaker (from Korea) and despite speaking and understanding English at relatively high levels, is clearly not a native speaker. But she frequently laments how people we know from different countries seemed to learn English faster or slower than others. It drives her a little crazy to think that all our Persian and Russian speaking friends effectively spoke fluent English inside of a few years (even if they have some lingering accentalisms like w-v confusion), while almost none of our Korean friends have managed the same level, even after decades.

But as an English listener, we definitely tolerate Persian and Russian accents better than Korean accents.

Persian and Russian are part of the same language family as English: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-European_languages

Interesting theory. I think there's also a sociological component as well. We're just far more familiar with them.

Native French speaker here, I think going from "I don't know the language" to "I can hold me end in a conversation" is easier in English than in French. French has a richer set of verb tenses, while with English you can go a long way be knowing present, "<present> + ed" and "will + <present>". You also don't need to understand why a chair feminine and an oven is masculine (hint: there is no reason).

One thing I do think French has over English is ease of pronunciation; although not completely regular, most letters have one pronunciation (unless they have an accent, which gives them a different, but clear pronunciation). If you know the phonemes, French gives you a much easier time. Try reading this [1] out loud for kicks. I probably got 90-95% of that right, but even after 15+ years of speaking English, I still got caught by a few words.

[1] http://pauillac.inria.fr/~xleroy/stuff/english-pronunciation...

I was having the same expectation in French, hoping to survive with only present, passé composé, future proche and "en train de" and avoid more complex things :) And it will probably be enough, if I'd master them, but I still don't remember tons of verbs, words and the pronunciation, oh my god.. As an Italian it shouldn't be that difficult, many things are almost the same, and in some situation it is (e.g. reading it) but the pronunciation is not easy and false friends are everywhere, so most of the time I don't know if I'm saying something that is sort-of French or I'm just mimicking French by removing some vowels and consonants here and there from Italian words...

To be fair, the reason why only 90% of English speakers would get every word in that poem right is because there's a lot of very uncommon words in there. 'Sward' or 'phlegmatic' are not things I've ever heard used in casual conversation. I'm pretty well read, but I have never heard of Terpsichore before today. Similarly, Arkansas is an American peculiarism - I wouldn't expect a non-American to get that one right, same with Islington being a UK peculiarism. Probably should have left names out of the poem, because names have a ridiculously wide allowance for pronunciation.

It's also interesting that the poem writer has a particular accent: Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve, Friend and fiend, alive and live. Where I live, grieve and sieve rhyme, and neither rhyme with any verson of 'live' (though they do rhyme with 'leave'...). To me, sieve is 'seev', to the author, it's 'siv'.

The poem is very, very well put-together, but I think that the uncommon words and names should have been left out - the rest of the words (most of them) are pretty common, and most native English speakers that occasionally pick up a book should be able to get them.

The problem is that lack of diacritics - I was travelling through Vietnam and found it funny that they used so many diacritics where English needed none... then I realised English definitely needs them - for example, how do you pronounce 'wind'? It depends on context. If you're talking about air movement, it's pronounced differently to rolling something up on a spool...

I'd say English is simpler than French because it doesn't have as many arbitrary exceptions. To begin, English doesn't give genders to every idea. English has much fewer irregular verbs. Conjugation in French is a party of special cases. Participes passés?

I'm no authority on the subject, but here's what I gathered: during la Renaissance, some aristocrats made a game of overly complexifying the language such that the plebe couldn't understand what they were saying. Or just grabbing ideas that look good (participe passé) from other languages (Italian), then sticking to them (while Italian apparently got rid of this silly construction). Also, the basis for French evolution is how authors use the language. The Académie Française looks at what famous authors have written and then use that to define what's proper French, what's not. While this is not stuff I've researched (only what I've heard from French profs justifying our usage of insane constructs); those are what I believe make for French a worst language to learn than English.

My wife studied both French and English as second language and found English to be much easier to learn than French. My personal opinion is biased since I'm a native French speaker, but still nowaday I find French to be much more cumbersome than English.

> English has much fewer irregular verbs.

English has, IIRC, far more irregular verbs than French but fewer conjugations to learn (for both regular and irregular verbs) and I think fewer regular patterns to learn.

> Conjugation in French is a party of special cases. Participes passés?

English has those, too. Its superficially simpler because for regular verbs (and some irregular ones that are irregular in other ways), the past participle is the same as the past tense, while in French for regular verbs the participe passé is different from any other conjugation.

But that superficial simplicity is, in a sense, one of the traps of English for non-native speakers.

Non-native French and English speaker (that is both are second languages to me). I find English much easier.

But, I also learned English first, and most of all, I learned it because all the computer stuff was in English and movies were in English. There were powerful external motivating factors to practice and understand English. French was imposed on me in school but I never saw a benefit in learning it aside from saying "I understand some French".

I am a native English speaker (born and raised in the US). In school -- over a decade ago -- I took six semesters of French courses, and I've done some immersive trips to Quebec (which admittedly is a different dialect, but at least helps a bit).

Last week I was in Paris. Even with a refresh on grammar and vocabulary, I struggled a lot to communicate in French.

The most difficult thing, for me, is the sentence structure. I have enough vocabulary and grammar to choose the words I want, but I have a lot of trouble putting them in the correct order. And this is not a rare thing; it shows up in all sorts of simple sentences.

For example, in English I might ask "Where is (X)" or "Is this street (X)". In French, I need to flip those around to "(X), where is it" or "Here, this is (X)?" The sign to hang on the door of the hotel room would, in English, say "Please do not disturb" -- in French, it says "Thanks of not to disturb".

All of those words are, of course, easily recognizable, but the structure is completely alien to an English speaker (especially the way French uses infinitives in so many situations where English does not, giving rise to stereotypes of French speakers attempting English and always saying "Please to tell me..." and such).

I suspect that it would take me many months or perhaps even years of immersion and full-time speaking and thinking in French to get to the point of being able to construct most sentences in "natural French" structure on the first try.

> For example, in English I might ask "Where is (X)" or "Is this street (X)". In French, I need to flip those around to "(X), where is it" or "Here, this is (X), yes?"

I don't know where you got your French lessons but you've been mislead. Both "Where is (X)" and "Is this street (X)" translated directly are more correct than your alternatives:

    "Ou est (X)"
    "Est-ce que c'est la rue (X)"

> "Thanks of not to disturb"

Rather, "Thanks for not disturbing", which has the advantage of being understable in English:

    "Merci de ne pas déranger"

"(X), où est-ce"/"Ici, c'est la rue (X)"/etc. is the form I've consistently heard from native French speakers.

And the point was not to say that the French is un-understandable, but that the structure and the use of infinitive form is alien to an English speaker. It does not naturally occur to an English speaker to use infinitives the way they're often used in French.

> I suspect that it would take me many months or perhaps even years of immersion and full-time speaking and thinking in French to get to the point of being able to construct most sentences in "natural French" structure on the first try.

If you have difficulty learning French, I suggest learning another language with a similar "structure", such as Esperanto.

I'm a French native speaker, and I'm currently learning Esperanto. I find the two languages very similar in their way of constructing sentences, but the later one if a lot easier to learn: conjugation and agreement, in particular, are much simpler, and the absence of suppletion (a verb and its derivative always share the same root) helps greatly for memorizing the vocabulary.

I am neither native French not English speaker who learned both (although I forgot a lot of French ever since).

English is much easier in the beginning, but it is very hard to really master it. Prepositions are main culprit, it is basically random system. French is harder in the beginning (conjugations/ le vs la), but gets easier and more systematic afterwards.

I'm french and I agree,the language is bloated and too complicated.

English might be difficult for a french native that didnt learn it at young age like me but it's much more simple than french.

I wonder though why french is that complicated,in some other countries you have the official language and dialects,but often the core of the official language is tiny,so if one sticks to that core one will write correct sentences.It feels like modern french is the result of trying to shove every french dialects into the core,resulting in the bloat it is today.

Canadian french seems less bloated.They often use old french expressions,which is good because,many expressions in modern french from France just dont make sense,or words have their meaning abused. And Canadian french seems more able to extend itself from its core,instead of using english words like french from France do.French from France definetly doesnt "scale".

It's just my opinion.

Well, having the Académie française doesn't help the language evolve much!

Language should change over time, take on loanwords, simplify grammatical structures, etc. When they don't, they tend to get passed by by more dynamic languages.

One thing we're definitely learning is that adding lots of loanwords to a language does not mean that the language is becoming the same as the source of the loanwords. It's just becoming a newer version of itself. And eliminating baggage doesn't mean the language is no longer "pure", it's just making room in the language for new ideas.

Bof, French does change, all of the time, and the Académie française only codifies and regularises these changes 30 years later -- it is irrelevant to the development of the language. What is different is that 'loanwords' are frenchified almost immediately, my favourite example being the regular -er verb 'liker', to like on Facebook, je like, tu likes, il like, nous likons, ...

> I wonder though why french is that complicated,

Mostly simple really: 1) French has a long history so a long time to accumulate warts 2) (nearly) each time, someone tries to remove some of these warts, purists scream loudly.

Why politicians listen to purists instead of thinking that reducing French's complexity could help foreign people learning French is the thing I wonder though..

Seven years of "learning" French in school. I was more conversant in Japanese after a week. French has two non-exceptions to verb conjugation "rules". Japanese has two exceptions. That was a lot of wasted time and I wish there had been more alternatives offered.

Compared to, say, Russian or Ukrainian French is really not that complicated. It also has way less "exceptions to every single rule" than English. You should choose a language based on your goals, not "how many countries use it" (and even by that metric French would still be really high up). For example, if you ever want to work in Canada knowing French would help you a lot more than knowing Spanish.

>>if you ever want to work in Canada knowing French would help you a lot more than knowing Spanish.

Only if you want to work for the federal government or in the decidedly non dynamic province of Quebec.

New Brunswick is officially a bilingual province. There are lots of opportunities for bilingual (French/English) speakers in Ontario as well.

Pretending Quebec is a small province, it also helps a lot to work in Ontario near Ottawa.

Non dynamic?

Non dynamic:

>From 2000 to 2009, no province had lower so-called “firm entry” than Quebec. In fact, in the manufacturing, retail, transportation and finance sectors, more companies went away than were created. No other province had that level of “destruction” without the customarily accompanying “creative.”

http://www.macleans.ca/economy/business/why-quebec-business-...

Another thing that is hard in French (at least for me) is listening comprehension.

For example, I know many more French words than German ones. Not quite enough to read very much (someday, I hope!) but if I were handed a text in French and German, I'd definitely get more out of the French half.

When it comes to hearing the languages it's reversed. In German, I can spot the words I do know in a spoken sentence and hope to work out the rest of the meaning from them. In French, between the liaisons and the low degree of syllable emphasis I probably couldn't even tell you how many words there were, much less what any of them were! (The exception is in language instruction videos where they carefully enunciate each word one-by-one, but nobody speaks French like that in real life)

I know that with practice picking apart French sentences would become second-nature, but it's a bit of a barrier.

This is such a sad thing to think about. Truthfully almost all languages outside of English, Mandarin, and Spanish will eventually die out. But for me learning a second language has never been about practicality, if it was I already needn't bother knowing anything but English. I've been studying Japanese for 12 years now just for the way I can think about things completely differently, and for the way it sounds. I started with French in school and after I feel more solid in my Japanese I plan to go back to it (this could never happen, Japanese is fantastically difficult). As a language lover it is very disheartening to see the inevitability of the decline in human expression through language.

On the flip side, it's important to consider that different languages are arguably the largest barrier to anyone looking to experience another culture. While different languages have the novelty factor it also prevents you from fully being able to engage individuals in conversation and really get to know them.

This isn't an issue if you're only encountering two or maybe even 3 languages, but when you truly take a global perspective you're looking at French, English, Mandarin, Swahili, Japanese, Hindi, Arabic, German, Portugese, Spanish, and Russian. And that's only the big ones I know off the top of my head!

Learning new languages is great and I have no desire to see them completely forgotten, but I think when push comes to shove having one global language is absolutely preferable to the current mess we have.

It could certainly be worse - there are no declensions.

That's a pretty poor advice. (I'm French myself.)

French is pretty widely used (as a native language, and as a learned language as well) and very relevant in today's economy.

But moreover, learn French if you want to! If you find it fun, just do it. If you already speak English, you can already communicate with a huge chunk of the world's population. Any language you learn besides that is bonus!

(I am currently learning Norwegian on my own, just for the fun of it. There is little interest for me in doing that besides curiosity and the sheer pleasure of expanding my language skills.)

> I'm French and I do realize it's a pretty complicated language to learn.

According to this classification, French is actually in the easiest category of foreign languages to learn, for an English speaker:

http://www.effectivelanguagelearning.com/language-guide/lang...

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