Watch French people try to say difficult English words

I’m with you here, watching children learn English reminds you of how idiosyncratic our spelling is. French does have one kicker though, written French has verb tenses that you never speak. Oh la la, passé simple.

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there was a post here with a Southern man trying to say “oil” like a Yankee. He could do it all right, but the expression on his face from making into a two-syllable word really grated on him.
The funny thing is that, I grew up in Michigan saying it as “oy-yul.” thought nothing of it, thought the Southern pronunciation was weird.
Having now lived in the South for most of my life, I say “o’l” way down deep in my throat and find the Yankee pronunciation very grating to my ear. :woman_shrugging:

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Firstly, shenanigans. The French also have the word rural so would not have made such a fuss over such a familiar word.
Secondly, they failed to use “lawyer”. I have yet to hear a single French person get that right. Mostly it comes out as some sort of “lower”.

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Pretty sure from the English speaking voice and the US flag at the beginning it was made by an american/

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Yeah, but Americans don’t hate the French quite like the British do. Thus the mystery.

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The British generally don’t hate the French unless they have spent too much time with Parisians.
This is the reason that when the Brits move to France it tends to be places like Dordogne or the Normandy area.

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As a native English speaker I also sometimes have trouble with brewery. Especially when I’ve just been to one.

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Hey, no fair, speaking slowly and louder is the English solution to speaking with foreigners! DO… YOU… UNDER… STAND?!

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Ah, english pronunciation… Working in the souvenir shop of a big museum in Paris, I deal with english-speaking folks on a daily basis. "-Do you speak english ? -I guess so… But is it YOUR english ?
I remember this time when an american student asked me if we sold… any ladder ? Errr… What do you mean by “ladder” ? She mimed something with her hand, moving her thumb while grasping something… Does anybody get it ? :wink:

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What surprised me more than how they started was how they elided the ending, saying

ant EE establishmentar EE ism
instead of
ant EE disestablishmentarEE A nism

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Surely ““rural juror” in a US Southern accent” is “white folk that convicted a black man”.

Trust me, French people can’t say “squirrel” either. The whole reason I watched this video the whole way through was to see them try it. I was sorely disappointed.

That said, I speak French pretty well, yet have never once succeeded in pronouncing the name of the street I have lived on for several years well enough for a French person to understand it. I have to spell it 100% of the time. Non-native speakers usually get it in one or two tries. Show you what we know…

I think she was asking if you had “any lighters.” If she was American, my guess is she was from Texas or the American south. I understand what you mean by “your” English, though – often when my French co-workers ask me questions about English, I have to ask them if they want to sound American or British.

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Understandably, “Harlem” was easy. I’m sure, as Europeans, the French know how to pronounce it since it’s pronounced exactly the same as “Haarlem”.

I used to live in the South and from time to time thought hell was raining down upon us when it was really just hail…

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Honestly, I think american and british people will not understand each other in maybe two generations : I have plenty of examples like the former : another american teenager asked me, to my great confusion, if the stained glass reproductions we sold were hand pinned… They actually were… Hand painted, yep.

Or that old lady, speaking with such a drawl, you thought she was Matthew McConaughey’s grandma, holding a postcard representing a cathedral rose window : “Edison ?” "What ? errr, no m’am, that dates from middle ages… Edison ? No m’am, that was long before Edison’s birth… Edison ?
…And suddenly, I realized all she wanted was… To know if the prize of the postcard was eighty cents.

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The Scots don’t have a reputation for hating the French.

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