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Downtime learning french Learning from others’ mistakes
| Learning from others’ mistakes |
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| Wednesday, 14 November 2007 | |
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We’ve always been told
that we can learn from
our own mistakes, and that is
just as true for learning
languages. But one technique
I’ve always found useful is
learning from other people’s
mistakes. One’s instinct is always to want to correct the other person, and although we often refrain from doing so out of politeness, we nonetheless often do so mentally (Ah! He means x or He should have said y), thereby letting ourselves be distracted. We’ve all got French friends and acquaintances who are all too happy to have an opportunity to practise their English with us. Rather than mentally correcting their mistakes, I suggest focusing on them and learning from them, because more often than not they provide valuable pointers to French structures. One obvious one is “Welcome in…” (France etc), from which we can deduce that the right preposition in French is “en” or “dans”, or “Welcome at ….” (Bienvenu à Paris etc). Another common mistake is “Our family is large. We are six” (nous sommes six), usually meaning there are six siblings in the family. This construction is also useful when booking a table at the restaurant, for instance. “I propose to you to go to the cinema” (je te propose d’aller au cinéma); proposer is a false friend when it means ‘suggest’, ‘why don’t we/you…’, etc. If you really want to propose to someone, the correct French expression is demander (quelqu’un) en mariage! “The line is occupied” (meaning engaged, busy): la ligne est occupée. Mistaken use of tense is also very revealing: “I am here since yesterday/for two hours”, or “I work for three years” all suggest that the correct tense in French is the present simple when using ‘for’ or ‘since’: Je suis là depuis hier/deux heures. I have worked here since/for…, je travaille ici depuis… ). Tense is one of the most difficult things to master in a foreign language, so it really is worth listening out for such mistakes. User instructions for appliances and recipes etc, often badly translated, are not only a source of amusement but also highly revealing: “Introduce the key into…” (meaning ‘insert’, ‘put into’) - Introduire la clé. “Introduce 100 grams of butter” (meaning add). “Eventually, I could come tomorrow” (meaning perhaps, possibly) - Eventuellement, je pourrais venir demain. One final word of advice; don’t just focus on false friends, try and focus on the structures (tenses, prepositions etc) and word order of your French friends’ mistakes in English to learn more about how to construct your sentences correctly in French. |
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