- #31
fluidistic
Gold Member
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- 281
When I was your age (to the OP), I was one of the worst Spanish (my average was 4/20) student in my class and a well below average student in English (average about 7/20). I'm a native French speaker, half Quebecer, half French.
I (re)moved to Canada when I was 15.5 years old and I learned some English at school, but I was the worst English student there. I left Canada when I was 17, for France once again. Since then I've been learning English thanks to Internet (so my pronunciation is bad). I'm 22 by the way.
At 18 years old I moved alone to Argentina (I still live there) and met my current girlfriend. I knew some Spanish before coming here but not that much. I learned it so fast that Argentine people couldn't recognize whether I was a foreigner or not (thanks to my girlfriend. I asked her so much), within less than 6 months. I see many orthographic errors almost everyday in newspapers, dictionary and books. I write generally better than the average freshman at university.
I'd say that if my ability with French is 10/10, my Spanish one is 8-9/10 while my English one is somewhere between 2 and 4/10, with the utmost sincerity.
That said you can see that if you can't grasp French at school, it really doesn't mean you can't grasp it. You have to learn some grammar with books, listen to French sentences subtitled in order to being able to think in French, little by little. Vocabulary is also very important, but to begin : GRAMMAR. Without grammar you won't be able to start to think in French.
About age : I don't think there's a big difference between being 15 and 35. It might not be true for all people and as I'm only 22 I can't confirm it but this is what I think.
About your question, 1 year... will be hard if you self study at home and has no contact with French people. Very hard to pronounce the many vowels. For instance if you read books that teach to learn French within a few time (like Assimil) you'll learn wrongly. They make errors such as "J'habite à Paris" instead of "J'habite Paris", though I agree most French people do the error. Another bad point, about the pronunciation : "eu" makes a vowel. In all introductory French books I've seen they say it is pronounced only one way. While it is false. It depends where the "eu" is in the word. For example the "eu" in "Europe" is not pronounced the same as in "peur". I guess only linguistic books talk about it. This apply for many other vowels. These are things you can't self teach. You need to listen and communicate to learn the language within a year.
Good luck.
I (re)moved to Canada when I was 15.5 years old and I learned some English at school, but I was the worst English student there. I left Canada when I was 17, for France once again. Since then I've been learning English thanks to Internet (so my pronunciation is bad). I'm 22 by the way.
At 18 years old I moved alone to Argentina (I still live there) and met my current girlfriend. I knew some Spanish before coming here but not that much. I learned it so fast that Argentine people couldn't recognize whether I was a foreigner or not (thanks to my girlfriend. I asked her so much), within less than 6 months. I see many orthographic errors almost everyday in newspapers, dictionary and books. I write generally better than the average freshman at university.
I'd say that if my ability with French is 10/10, my Spanish one is 8-9/10 while my English one is somewhere between 2 and 4/10, with the utmost sincerity.
That said you can see that if you can't grasp French at school, it really doesn't mean you can't grasp it. You have to learn some grammar with books, listen to French sentences subtitled in order to being able to think in French, little by little. Vocabulary is also very important, but to begin : GRAMMAR. Without grammar you won't be able to start to think in French.
About age : I don't think there's a big difference between being 15 and 35. It might not be true for all people and as I'm only 22 I can't confirm it but this is what I think.
About your question, 1 year... will be hard if you self study at home and has no contact with French people. Very hard to pronounce the many vowels. For instance if you read books that teach to learn French within a few time (like Assimil) you'll learn wrongly. They make errors such as "J'habite à Paris" instead of "J'habite Paris", though I agree most French people do the error. Another bad point, about the pronunciation : "eu" makes a vowel. In all introductory French books I've seen they say it is pronounced only one way. While it is false. It depends where the "eu" is in the word. For example the "eu" in "Europe" is not pronounced the same as in "peur". I guess only linguistic books talk about it. This apply for many other vowels. These are things you can't self teach. You need to listen and communicate to learn the language within a year.
Good luck.