Bonjour.
Today I wanna talk about how to improve your French.
This is addressed primarily to people who already have a, at least an intermediate
level in French and would like to improve.
And we all know that there's that long period when we sort of migrate
from B1 to B2 two where we're
facing the headwinds and we're not advancing as quickly as we could.
And the reason why I wanna talk about improving French is because
Canada has a new Prime Minister, Mark Carney, who is an anglophone.
And in Canada, of course, prime Ministers have to be able to speak both
official languages, as do most federal politicians in that leadership position.
And so I want to look at Mark Carney's French and some of the
suggestions that I would give Mark Carney if I were in a position to,
you know, advise him on his French, and I think this might be applicable to a lot
of French, you know, non-native speakers.
First of all, let's say that Mark Carney's French, in my opinion, is very good.
It's very pleasant to listen to, and that should be the first goal.
He makes mistakes with gender.
He makes a lot of mistakes, but it's pleasing.
He's got a nice cadence in his French, and it's French that he learned, apparently
he learned it while he was at Harvard.
He had to speak French as a governor of the Bank of Canada, so
he was in a number of situations where he needed to speak French,
so he obviously put some effort into it, but he is not someone who
grew up in a French environment.
We have had prime ministers in Canada who grew up in, you know, bilingual
families like Justin Trudeau, like Jean Charest, uh, like Brian Mulroney,
who are absolutely fluently bilingual.
And there are many such examples in Canada, but Mark
Carney is not one of them.
So first, I'll let you listen to an interview that he did before he became
Prime Minister, and this was my first opportunity to hear him in French.
So let's listen to that.
So some of my comments there, oh, and by the way, I will also invite
you to listen to Jodie Foster later on, who is an American actress
whose French, is phenomenal, and yet still makes mistakes with gender.
And I use her as an example of just how fluent a person can become in another
language and yet still not be perfect, which is I think the case for most people
who learn foreign languages as adults.
So first comment with regard to Mark Carney is that he has a good vocabulary.
He seems to understand everything that's said to him, which is, I
mean, oral comprehension, listening comprehension is the number one goal.
If you can't understand what people are saying to you, you're not gonna
be able to maintain a conversation.
He does that and he does it on a range of subjects, and he's able to answer
the questions appropriately, and he has enough vocabulary that he can
retrieve in order to participate in this relatively sophisticated conversation.
Of course we can always work to increase our vocabulary.
And uh, I have found that listening to audio books in literature on a variety of
subjects and looking to pick up a few more words, hearing them in different contexts,
all of that helps to upgrade our language level and improves our vocabulary.
But on vocabulary, I give him full marks.
Now the next subject is when we go to speak, then we need to find words,
of course, we need words in order to express our ideas,
but we also need structure.
And there I think it's important to develop certain patterns, certain
structures that we know work, that we're confident that we can use.
And in that regard, Mark Carney keeps saying ça vaut mieux
which is close,
but he really means il vaut mieux.
In other words, it is better.
ça vaut mieux is more if you say this is better than that.
Whereas if you're saying it's better,
It's a minor thing, it's perfectly understood.
But if we are looking to refine our language and to make it more
natural, we should use as many natural expressions as possible.
But usually we don't.
So in my own case, I speak French quite well and I have caught myself on many
occasions when I wanna say, in my opinion, which is something we say quite often,
I find myself saying, de mon avis, which is wrong, it should be, à mon avis.
So we are always using structures, I think as non-native speakers that either
come from our own language or because we have developed certain habits and every
so often, we need to reassess some of the structures that we often use, which
may not be the most natural usage, and to have sort of an inventory of, of
structures that we know we can use, so we can pull 'em out when we need them.
On the subject of structure,
I also think that in French, it's a good idea to use the pronouns
and to use them correctly.
That means in the right order.
Here's a table.
It came from, I think, Babbel languages, and seems to me it has a mistake on it.
But if I look at the table, this table shows the order, uh, in which, you
know, pronouns are used in a sentence.
You have to follow this order.
You can't reverse the order.
It's interesting that there seems to be a typo in this table, which
illustrates the fact that when it comes to language, there are always errors.
Errors in explanation, errors in examples, errors in usage.
We didn't get too worried about it.
However, I do recommend using pronouns as effectively as possible,
putting an effort into getting them right, and in particular using the
pronouns, en and y. So en, is of it.
Y is to it.
And wherever we can find these and maybe study the sentence
and, and save these phrases.
Whenever we can introduce these pronouns that are somewhat unique to French,
it makes our French more natural.
So put a special effort when it comes to pronouns into using en and y. Now I want
to get into two areas that are sort of at the crux of what makes French difficult.
The first is gender, and the second is pronunciation.
So when we listen to Mark Carney, we see that he often gets his genders
wrong, but if we listen to someone like, uh, Jodie Foster, whose
pronunciation is perfect, in my opinion, she also makes mistakes with gender.
That's not surprising.
We don't have gender in English, so whenever you're dealing with
something that exists in another language that doesn't exist in your
own language, you're gonna have trouble developing these new habits.
So in order to increase the likelihood that you'll get the
gender right, the first thing you can do is look up the rules.
So, uh, in French, any noun that ends in MENT or a GE is gonna be masculine.
If it ends in ION and very often, if it ends in E, it's going to
be feminine, but not always.
And that's why, for example, I will often, if I'm uncertain about the gender of a
noun, I will refer to Spanish because if you say grammaire, grammar in French
or if you say vocabulaire, vocabulary.
I think of Spanish grammática versus vocabulario.
So in Spanish it's clearer if it's an O or if it's an A. A is feminine.
O is masculine in French, nouns that end in E could go either way.
So I will often refer to the Spanish, but again, it's not something that's
natural that I automatically do.
The gender comes out in some form or other.
The more I listen, the more I read, the more I speak, the higher the percentage
of nouns that come out correctly.
Now, other things you can do to improve the likelihood of correct gender.
Make sure when you, for example, if you're using link, save
the noun with the article.
So lum, you know, uh, la always include the la or the ma.
The ma. And where possible include the adjective.
So, you know, you could say, uh,
because if you say, then you have to have, it's a feminine form of excellent.
And therefore, by forcing yourself to pronounce the feminine adjective, A,
you're improving your pronunciation and you're sort of solidifying the fact in
your brain that this is a feminine noun.
I should point out that it's sometimes a little confusing, but.
If you say, my friend in French, if it's a masculine friend, of course
Hmong is the masculine ami, but if it's a feminine friend, you can also say
Ami, because the E then at the end of the A MIE am makes it a female friend.
And so very often in French.
To make it clear that you're talking about your girlfriend,
you would say ma petite amie.
Amie, but if it's just my friend Feminine, it's amie.
So the, because the French don't wanna have ma ami, they say ami.
So these are some of the things that we sort of get used to and which can
confuse us when it comes to gender.
And I think that if we can train ourselves to pronounce clearly, it
will improve our accuracy in gender.
So one of the.
Problems we have in English is that our vowels are often not very clear.
So in a word where we have two syllables, one of those syllables, the vowel
will not be clearly spoken, spoken, and is not and spoken, but in French.
Every syllable in principle has to have the vowel clearly enunciated.
So in the excerpt from Carney stock in front of the Elisee Palace with, uh,
Macron, with, uh, president and Macron, if I'm not mistaken, I can't remember which
one, but it's tous jour, it's, uh, Macron.
Every syllable has to get the, the full value of that vowel.
And if that noun or adjective is feminine.
Then we wanna make sure that we pronounce it as clearly as possible.
I use the, the example of ex, let's hear that.
Uh, at the end, let's force ourselves to clearly enunciate every vowel, and that'll
then force us to pronounce the feminine version of the adjective or the noun.
And it makes our pronunciation clearer and also reminds us of the
gender of that noun or adjective.
Now while we're on the subject of vows in French, we have these nasal vowels.
Uh.
All, uh, all, and we have to be very clear as to which nasal sound we are using.
We should practice these.
And you may find in listening to French from different parts of the
French speaking world, from Paris, from the southern part of France,
from Quebec, elsewhere, Africa.
I don't know that to some extent.
These wander, just as in English, the vowels are pronounced a little bit
differently in different parts of the world, but you should be consistent.
And so if you're saying in Quebec, for example, ance, that's not that ance,
which is a region in France, so they're m and the eh, are different sounds.
And uh, like one, uh, is sometimes these days pronounced, eh, so
there's some wandering in these vowel sounds, but you should be consistent.
And when it's une, like one of something.
Make a point of clearly saying une for the feminine form of un, which
Mark Carney sometimes doesn't do.
He just gives it a ah or something that misses it.
You've gotta hit it with a full une, and I think the more clearly
you pronounce your vowels, the better you will do with gender.
Now, another sound that's difficult for some people in French is the guttal
R. You don't have to use the guttal R uh, there are parts of the French
speaking world like Quebec, where some people have a, a trilled R, more like
the Spanish R, but that's a minority.
Most people, in fact, have a guttal RI have found that.
It's difficult for me to pronounce the rol R after certain consonants.
So for example, if I pronounce the name of the place where I live in
Canada, La Columbie-Britannique if I say it quickly, for whatever reason,
I find it difficult that the R coming A right after B is difficult.
So what I do is when I, if I'm gonna say La Columbie-Britannique,
I slow down because if I try to do it too quickly I will stumble.
And so that's another suggestion I have in that because in French, the
vowels have to be pronounced clearly.
The consonants obviously, and the guttal R should be pronounced clearly.
You can sense when you are approaching a sound that you may
have difficulty with, slow down.
The more pressure we put on ourselves, the less well we do.
Pronouncing the vows correctly is going to improve.
Your accuracy in gender, in my opinion, slowing down is going
to improve your ability to pronounce these sounds correctly.
So just slow down.
And I have noticed even with Mark Carney in his casual interview, he was better.
And then I've seen him give certain speeches in Canada, in French
where he gets carried away with a message he's trying to deliver.
And so, because in English we use emphasis to make certain points, so we
will say that's absolutely the case.
Or we get sort of, we wanna make certain points in French
that emphasis is different.
We will say absolutely more like the French is somewhat more monotonous
and the intonation in English is quite different from the intonation in French.
The more we are trying to sort of defend a certain position or convince
people or make certain points, the greater the likelihood that we
will introduce English intonation.
Therefore again, slow down, try to be more calm and you will end up
speaking better French and therefore be in the end more persuasive.
Now, a great place to review all of this is sentence mode in link, or you can
get a hold of sentences that you think contain a lot of the sounds and the
intonation that you wanna be able to use.
Go into that sentence, you know, use the matching pairs to make sure
you know the words there, that you understand the meaning of these words.
You might wanna reconstitute the sentence and then there's an
opportunity to listen to the sentence and then pronounce the sentence.
You can listen to it more than once, pronounce it more than once.
Practice the intonation practice really nailing those vowel sounds,
nailing the Guttal R sound.
And in that way, I think not only will the overall impression
created with your French improve, your pronunciation will improve.
But also I think that if you can nail that.
Then your accuracy in the language will improve.
And I think I would end with this, uh, short excerpt from
Jodie Foster speaking French.
And her pronunciation is excellent, even though she makes the odd mistake
with gender, but she is an actress.
As an actress, her profession is one of imitating or putting herself
into the role of someone else.
So if we can learn to be a bit more like Jodi Foster and project ourselves into the
role of a French person, imagine ourselves as a French woman or a French man.
That attitude is going to help us speak French better, pronounce it better.
If we pronounce it better, we'll have better phrasing.
We'll have better intonation and we'll speak more accurately.
So those are some of the things that I guess I would tell Mark Carney, of
course, he's not gonna listen to me.
I thought that, uh, his, uh, remarks in front of the Elisee Palace with President
Macron were very well delivered.
I thought he absolutely improved from what I heard in, uh, in Canada before
he went over, and I'm sure he spent some time on the airplane practicing.
Thank you for listening.
Bye for now.
