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Comment by seanc | Hacker News Reader

There's another advantage the toddler has, not mentioned in the article. People expect the toddler to speak poorly, and don't make fun of him or treat him badly for doing so. I found being laughed at was a huge barrier to learning French when I lived in Montreal.

For example, many English speakers (and Quebecers!) I know have stories like this to tell:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kaFf2kWL45U (45s clip from The Monuments Men)

Now, as an English speaker, I feel like I need to do better for the ESL people I know. It's like having guests in my house. I want them to feel welcome. So when they don't know where the bathroom is, or they flip the wrong lightswitch, I don't make fun of them, I just pretend it didn't happen and offer to help if they ask.

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> I found being laughed at was a huge barrier to learning French when I lived in Montreal

Wow, can anyone explain the reasoning behind making fun of a language learner? I'm in Japan right now, and the reaction to me speaking my feeble attempt at Japanese here is more "OMG you can speak Japanese? That's amazing!"

I'm sure this isn't the case everywhere, but I got the same reactions in thailand; any time I tried to say anything in really awful thai, everyone was super appreciative and friendly about it.

It's a cultural thing. The French speaker stereotype is an asshole about that. There's a lot of racism in Vancouver (at least) against immigrant Chinese who are ESL, but an identical person speaking broken English with a Russian or Italian accent would be perceived as sexy.

Funnily enough, living in an English speaking house for a few months in an environment where everyone made fun of my accent has hammered the accent away to such an extent that people can no longer tell where the hell my accent is from. They notice an accent, but can't place it.

Even fellow Slovenians can no longer place my accent despite technically having the same accent.

It's also worth mentioning a similar advantage the toddler has: it's going to have more than a decade before it's expected to have adult fluency. Mind you, depending on the age of the toddler you want to emulate, you might just be able to get away with simply learning the word for 'no'...

You just have to suck it up and don't let it bother you as the majority of people are not really laughing at you. You may say something embarrassing like 'je suis chaud', which actually means you're horny and not feeling hot. That will get a chuckle out of people but the next time you will know to use avoir instead.

Another favourite of teachers is 'je suis fini'.

So, tu es chaud?

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