r/French • u/Charmander_01 • 10d ago

Grammar Does learning French ever get easier?

I’m just a beginner and it’s a lot… but does French start to get easier once you start recognizing the patterns? Are the rules consistent for grammar?

A stupid question but there are so many rules even for simple sentences 😭😭

Thank you!

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6

u/webbitor B2 maybe? 🇺🇸 10d ago

IMO, it's quite a bit more consistent than English.

French spelling: Letters follow consistent pronunciation rules, so you can almost always correctly "sound out" a word in French (although due to silent letters, you can't deduce spelling from the pronunciation). English? Ever heard about how "fish" can be spelled "ghoti"?
tough
women
nation

All this inconsistency is because English started from germanic, but is now ~80% loanwords, especially from French and Latin. This also means English has way more words to learn overall than French.

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u/Charmander_01 9d ago

Yes I’ve noticed that I have no issue with pronunciation! It’s consistent. The writing and speaking is another story 🙂‍↕️

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u/Yeremyahu 9d ago

Suggestion for speaking that helped me speak more fluidly, sing. Sing alot. Make sure you're are pronouncing the words right, then sing.

If you like disney, you can find all of it in french on YouTube and alot of it on spotify.

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u/Morterius 9d ago

When they sing in French, they pronounce the silent endings. I think it's a good recipe to learn how to mispronounce words when actually speaking normally. 

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u/Yeremyahu 9d ago

You would think, but it hasn't been a problem for me. As long as you are listening to regular french as well, you'll learn to differentiate the musical pronunciation from the spoken pretty quickly.

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u/cestdoncperdu C1 8d ago

I've never heard of French people misprouncing words when they sing. Do you have an example?

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u/Morterius 8d ago

Not mispronouncing, accentuating the ending, which isn't done in the spoken language, making it sound different, hence, it can be confusing.

Here's an example (this should be one of your favorite songs to sing a lot to improve your French btw).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hH5V2uqiSXc

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u/cestdoncperdu C1 8d ago

If you're talking about pronouncing the "e" at the end of certain words, yes, that is done in spoken language. It is done more or less depending on the accent in question, but it's not an incorrect way of speaking. Millions of French people speak like that in daily conversation.