One summer between junior and senior years, I took a road trip to Montreal and tried out my French. I was thoroughly embarrassed and lived the OPs nightmare. The residents I spoke with seemed actively offended by my French and would smile condescendingly and speak to me in English.
During senior year, I was able to spend a week in France. It was a totally different experience. I spoke nothing but French for the week and was able to feed and otherwise care for myself. The locals seemed to genuinely appreciate my efforts to speak the language. The capstone was later in the week when a 2am knock on my door woke me up. A younger member of our group was having serious homesickness and wanted to call home, but couldn't figure out how to make the call. I went to the lobby with her to ask the desk clerk how to make the call. I ended up having a great conversation with the desk clerk who was only a few years older than me and was in Paris for university. We chatted for about 30 minutes about life, things we liked, cool things to see in Paris, etc. It was awesome!
For OP, give it a shot. The only way to get better is to do it!
OTOH, if you wandered out to Shawinigan or Trois-Rivières, or even just Laval/Anjou you'd find a lot more uni-lingual Quebecois speakers, who would be positively delighted to hear your(/my) mangled grammar and grotesque pronunciations.
No, just no, they aren't and I can speak both.
I don't know if you are a native speaker, but It's tiring to have your own language (or 'dialect') explained to you.
For what it's worth, France has dozens of regional dialects as well.
A funny anecdote was when I was working with a guy name Jean-Nicolas and all the Québécois people called him Jean-Nic. That was very funny to the French guys hehe
Obviously they're not different languages - I was a bit exaggeratory in that regard. And I do understand both, in as much as I understand either. French is my third or fourth most proficient language after English, Spanish and maybe German, but I never get to use it (or German for that matter).
The two are however different enough in some pronunciation and idioms that we ultimately had to do a second localization to support both. And the differences reported to us ran the spectrum from simple things, such as how to correctly pronounce the (cardinal) number 1 (a cleaner "un" compared to what sounds to my ear like "arn"), to the longer phrases one might expect to hear in a voicemail prompt. Ultimately our translation department got things ironed out, but it was a (somewhat amusing/bemusing) learning experience for us.
I have another response in this thread about the origins of the Parisian accent (because it really is a new invention) compared to the Québec accent.
Also in Martinique, they speak with a less sing-songy accent than they do on the mainland.
I personally enjoy all the variations of my language, and especially appreciate the language that is 'of the people'.
If people made fun of OP's accent then they were dicks and I don't think the majority of people would do that. We do however switch to English quickly when we determine the other person is anglophone just because most people in Montreal are bilingual and hey, let's make it easier for everyone. If the other person asks me to continue in French, I'll gladly do so.
There were two accents in common use in 18th century France: the 'bel usage' and the 'grand usage'.
The short explanation is that after the French revolution, Parisians adopted the 'grand usage'—a pronunciation which till then had been reserved for public speeches and church sermons—for everyday speech.
The 'bel usage' was the usual French 'code' reserved for every day use. It more closely resembles the French spoken in Quebec.
But the 'bel usage' wasn't just a plebeian accent for the unwashed masses, the King's court spoke in 'bel usage'.
But after the revolution, people wanted to change things up: hence the new pencil head pronunciation they use there, which everyone says is the 'correct' one. lol
In Québec, we retained the original 'bel usage' and never adopted the new accent from Paris. We are the keepers of the proper pronunciation of French, unless you want to give a sermon or make a political speech that is...
I don't see a problem with either accent, as long as you enunciate, you will be understood across the entire Francophonie. (Well to be honest, I do prefer my 'accent' from Québec, because I don't have to lug around a dictionary to make sure I pronounce very si-ng-le sy-la-ble cleanly and correctly.)
Source: http://legoutdufrancais.org/dou-vient-laccent-des-quebecois-...
Have a drink or two. Really. I've noticed I'm much better in a foreign language when I'm mildly drunk (or at least I think I am, which helps get past the self-awareness block).
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/026988111773568...
Speaking wise it helps a lot. You stop worrying about the conjugation or sentence structure etc, and just communicate with the other person.
> but when I record it and play it back, I sound quite soft in the head
> Who would have thought that a phrase ... would be such a big problem for me?? :)
If this is how you envision yourself with speaking French, then is it any wonder you might be stuck or have issues with certain phrases? Good lord.
Learning how to talk like a native in another language is exceedingly difficult. It requires thousands of hours of practice, and by practice I mean actually physically speaking. Babies do this over and over and over and over again. We just gloss over it because, well, they're babies.
The only way to learn a language properly (as an adult) is to get over your fear and nervousness. When I hear obvious ESL people speaking English, my first thoughts are not of criticism. It's the exact same with people with other languages.
I have been learning Korean for almost 2 years now and my pronunciation is still not good in a lot of areas because I haven't practiced them enough, or well enough yet. That's just a part of the learning process. I'm understood most of the time, and the rest I just note down as things to work on.
Of course it sucks to hear myself compared to a native or make a mispronunciation so bad I'm not understood. But this is part of the process. If I -didn't- make mistakes I wouldn't be a learner of Korean, no?
> but if I hear people speaking French, I often cannot bring myself to introduce myself or ask how they are.
If you can't overcome this, you will never learn French. As long as you're afraid of making mistakes, you will never learn French. If you don't actually speak the language, you will never learn French... You don't learn a language only in classroom environments or with very patient friends. You learn it by speaking as much as you can, whenever you can, and making as many mistakes as you possibly can.
Even if you don't know how to say one exact thing in particular, circumlocution is your friend. Or rewording it in another way.
In many English-speaking countries, most people hear foreigners trying to speak English, so we're accustomed to that. French people do hear a lot of non-native speakers of their language as well. But when I lived in Turkey for a summer during college, I made a concerted effort to built up some vocab in a few verb tenses. While I didn't get very far, it was pretty fun since it's so different from the English and Spanish I knew. It was no surprise that the Turks were amused at my pronunciation, etc. But what really stuck out to me was how a group of my Turkish friends were not only tickled, they actually were kind of confused about what they were feeling about how I was sounding until one of them put their finger on it: they thought I sounded like a small child speaking Turkish!
Why did that stand out to me? Because it dawned on me that unlike me, who had heard countless non-native speakers of my own language, they had never ever heard a non-native speaker trying to communicate in Turkish! I was amazed in trying to wrap my head around what that experience was like for them.
I have had a good native Korean friend quite innocently (although randomly) point out that although I rarely make syntax errors I don't speak idiomatically at all and make weird constructs sometimes. Which makes sense, given my almost 2 years of study, but I would never think of saying something that to any ESL learner.
The same friend said something along the lines of "I talk to you a lot, so sometimes I speak like you [non idiomatically/weirdly] with my [native] Korean friends haha".
??!? was my initial reaction, but then I remembered that it's quite rare for a foreigner to actually learn Korean at all, let alone to intermediate+ levels. Internally I got reminded that I will practically always be a foreigner, though.
We're so used to people learning English and using broken English in all manners of dialects that it's not even a blip on our mental radars.
Sure, I find myself doing the same thing with the Spanish language — especially in a country with very different slang than the US. Even in English. Even in America. Think about how many ways there are to say soda. They'll almost all be understood but some will stick out more than others depending on the context.
I would never think of saying something that to any ESL learner.
Perhaps you should, how else would they learn?
Telling someone who speaks a language at an intermediate level that they don't always speak idiomatically is pointless - they already know that.
Sure, but do they know when they're saying something awkward? Recently I struggled in both England and Barcelona to get carbonated water. In San Francisco I'd be saying "soda water". In New York, "seltzer water". In England, apparently, sparkling water is the trick. I'm a native English speaker so it was fairly easy for me to pick up on that.
Meanwhile my Spanish is not great, but enough to sound like I speak Spanish fluently and make casual conversation and order things at a bar. In Havana I learned "agua sin gas" and "agua gaseosa". I tried that a few times in Barcelona (a city you can navigate entirely in English) recently and eventually got a weird look. Next time I asked and was told "agua con gas". Were it not for the weird looks I'd've stuck with awkward phrasing.
I generally tiptoe pretty gently with non-native English speakers, but have one friend who is insistent upon having their mistakes and awkward phrasing corrected. They're also the one friend who seems most like a native English speaker with written communication (the accent is a whole other story).
If you don't know when you're doing something awkwardly you won't ever improve.
My friend, randomly, said that I speak non-idiomatically / kinda awkwardly in general.
Great. What am I supposed to do with this information? I already know that. It's just frustrating, especially since at the time I was in a rut about my progress.
I already know where my skill level is. I know that I make certain mistakes and definitely don't speak idiomatically.
Telling me this is not only useless but a stark reminder of where I'm at. If you're in a rut, or the accursed "intermediate plateau", it really sucks to hear things like this, even if they're 100% accurate.
Pro tip from an immigrant who spent decade and a half trying to get good at English pronunciation - You need to practice in front of he mirror with a recorder and youtube nearby. Find a clip of french person saying a word or a sentence you're having trouble with and mimic them in front of the mirror. Again and again, try to see what muscle engaging on their face and do the same, think of what your tongue is doing. Remember you are building muscle memory and your tongue has literally never been in some of those shapes so you need to work it.
Pro tip two - find a pronunciation workshop or do a couple of sessions with a professional. Sounding like a native speaker is an incredible undertaking, but you'd probably be satisfied with being 75% there frankly.
I had this with English. Then with Russian. Now I have it with German. It goes away with practice.
Languages are hard. Keep it up, it will get better.
Not that it changes your point, but "de rien" is two syllables!
Japanese, for example, has "desu" (a form of "to be" so it's really common) which is nominally "two" syllables, but English speakers simply hear "dess" which they perceive as one syllable.
The issue is that Japanese relies more on time length to delineate syllables while English relies on vowel presence.
English speakers would be tempted to think it as a three syllable phrase because ʁjɛ̃ isn't a possible syllable in English, but in French "de rien" should be two syllables.
This is similar to, e.g., English speakers incorrectly pronouncing the Spanish word "luego" with three syllables.
seu-teu-ra-i-keu
(Well, to be fair, it's more like "an awful lot of sounds that have no business being in the same syllable merged together", and less "five distinct syllables", but still that's how Koreans end up writing the sound in Korean.)
I'm sure that's true, but I don't think it gives rise to any real doubt as to the syllable count. For example, you could stretch out the English word "near" into two syllables in very slow and deliberate speech, but it's definitely a monosyllabic word in most (possibly all?) varieties of English.
For "rien" in particular, I'd say speakers can do that diaeresis as a sort of emphasis. For instance "Tu n'as rien fait! Rien! ("you did nothing! Nothing!"). The first "rien" can be said as a single-syllable world, while the second one can be pronounced as a two-syllables.
It also may be pronounced slightly differently in various places in France (regional accents).
https://www.livelingua.com/french/courses/fsi/French_Phonolo...
All that to say, don't be shy of your accent. Personally, I am simply happy when people make an effort to learn my language. I'll listen patiently if they stumble on words, I'll help where I can, etc. As long as they are also patient with my own horrible accent :)
Yet even last year when I visited France for the first time, I was still somewhat petrified to speak to the locals. After 3 days I got over it, and it started to flow again.
Your angst is natural and common. Accept what you're feeling. You can push through it!
As for speaking a foreign language, you need to take the jump. Know that, you are likely to be judged. However, there are people who find joy in seeing others speak their language and do so in a nurturing environment. You just need to find those people and practice with them, without fear of judgement.
Source: lifelong bilingual in French & English.
As cced already said, common ways of expressing this in American English include “don’t worry about it”, “no worries”, “no big deal”, “no problem”, “you’re welcome”, “my pleasure”, etc.
French also has more built-in structures for formal address/politeness, though many of them are being left by the wayside just as we left feudal lordships with a peasant class.
For what it's worth, I'd say that the more "stuffy" version of "de rien" in French would be "il n'y a pas de quoi".
From nothing is an overly literal translation. You'll hear it in Spanish for sure as de nada (of/from nothing) or por nada (literally for nothing) depending on context though.
I have noticed two things. The first is that when I was a kid, I didn’t care who I spoke French to, how loud I was, or how many words I mangled. It was like a cool code for me. As an adult, I’m damned near petrified to speak the language. This is unlike me. I’ll gladly spend a week cold calling potential clients, but if I hear people speaking French, I often cannot bring myself to introduce myself or ask how they are. I’ll ask a stranger for money in English, but I’ll be damned if I ask a stranger to pass the cream in French.
Another thing I’ve noticed is that it’s a lot harder to learn how to pronounce things. Some sounds seem to be engrained from years of speaking when I was young. Other words, crap.
Consider the word “de rien”. It is so simple. Three syllables. Yet, I could walk into any French speaking country in the world and get a long term disability pension just by saying it. Last week, I even found a French couple to help me and I’ve been doing lots of drills, but when I record it and play it back, I sound quite soft in the head.
Who would have thought that a phrase that translates to ‘it’s nothing’ would be such a big problem for me?? :)