Watch French people try to say difficult English words

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Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/03/18/watch-french-people-try-to-say.html

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I thought that was a thoroughly tough test though.

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I was once a TA for a Quebecois art history professor in Toronto. The word she had the most trouble with was “clog” (she was discussing a Dutch painting). She paused, asked one of the other TAs for help, and then proceeded to somehow say the word in three syllables.

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You should have seen me explaining to my son how to pronounce les yeux, (the plural of l’oeil of course.)

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I remember trying to teach my then girlfriend’s little sister how to say “raw” and she me “cru”. Neither of us could manage it. Happy times.

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antEEdisestablishmentarianism!

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Now say “truly rural” three times fast.

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Do you sneeze in the swamp?

No. I cough through the slough, though.

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And hiccough?

Or slough sloughs?

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Watch French people try to say difficult English words in the most demented German dialect.

FTFY.

In fairness, I too would pronounce that “what the fuck.”

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Would those be rough sloughs?

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“Rural Juror”

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FTFY++. 

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“We don’t just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.” ~ James Davis Nicoll

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Language has long been one of this island’s less offensive forms of cultural appropriate - heck, in the past, we’ve appropriate entire cultures; lock, stock and barrel.

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French really is a pretty language, more musical to my ears than English. I don’t necessarily fault the French for being angry when a non-native massacres their pronunciation, and for them to grasp quirky English spelling is understandably hard.

This reminds me of the drummer in my old band – he was really a jazz guy, he could do funk, but straight-ahead 4/4 rock beats were sometimes a problem, particularly speedy hardcore stuff (which is ironically very simple.) It literally wasn’t in his musical vocabulary.

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My French is atrocious, but those Francais I’ve had the pleasure of meeting have been indulgently patient. After all to appreciate a language is to want to share it. Obviously I’m sure there are those who don’t feel that way; anecdotes aren’t universal.

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More likely to rough slough a plough slough…

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Enough! A rough sloth with a cough, thoroughly ploughs a trough across a tough slough in the borough. :crazy_face:

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