The hidden difference between English and French (a dual native speaker's thoughts)

[@mathieujvc]

Ma maman est anglaise, mon père est français. Je suis également bilingue, comme vous. Je souscris entièrement à vos intuitions. J'ajouterais un point : j'ai l'impression que deux mots signifiant la même chose dans les deux langues ne sont pas nécessairement chargés de la même manière émotionnellement. Je ne sais pas si c'est une expérience purement personnelle, mais par exemple, 'letter box' et 'boîte aux lettres', qui sémantiquement sont identiques, ne procurent pas la même émotion. Une 'letter box' me semble plus associée à la surprise, notamment aux surprises positives (par exemple, à des cartes postales), alors qu'une 'boîte aux lettres' m'apparaît plus neutre et purement administrative.

[@ouicommunicate]

Merci merci! Mes speculations sont tres dures a verifier de facon scientifique - c'est toute l difficulte. Oui voila, "letter box" est sans doute associe a la couleur rouge, les Ladybird Books, Postman Pat et autres. C'est plus "joyful". Boites aux lettres est froid. Merci du comment!

[@AI-xs4fp]

A very cerebral breakdown on the approach to language I have never heard before. Wonderful insight. It really showcases how the hurdle of subject/object and even the tonal emphasis differ.

[@ouicommunicate]

Thank you so much !

[@mh1606you]

Really fascinating discussion. In trying to learn as a beginner, I always find myself asking “what are French speakers actually thinking” when they speak, hoping to get a grasp on the patterns that will make speaking and especially understanding easier. You are the first person I’ve seen from the dozens of videos I’ve watched who has the insight to understand the importance of this question. Thank you.

[@ouicommunicate]

Thanks for the comment ! I think it is indeed very complex because a speaker would have to have a foot in both worlds, and also have an interest in the question. All my life I never even wondered about the mental pictures that both languages brought up. Thanks for watching!

[@ilonabaier6042]

Some time ago I had a few French colleagues and every morning when they came into the office they would immediately shake hands with each other. One of them told me that if something came up and they were unable to do that then he would feel his day was incomplete. When in France I also noticed in a restaurant when there was a shift change the colleagues would approach one another and shake hands. This stood out to me.

[@ouicommunicate]

Interesting! What does that tell you about French customs?

[@ilonabaier6042]

@@ouicommunicate Good question. Shaking hands seems rather formal to me. I have noticed that native speakers of English very seldom shake hands after they have met for the first time. Germans used to me more on the French side with frequent hand--shaking but starting about 15-20 years ago this has become more infrequent. Almost never do colleagues shake hands every day when arriving at word, whereas before they often did. Also, in Germany there are many more "du" firms i.e. the familiar you form using first names instead of the Sie form with titles, Frau/Herr/Dr. etc. I wonder sometimes if the advent af emailing has anything to with the change.

[@ouicommunicate]

​@@ilonabaier6042 Ah yes! It's true that in the UK there is no need to touch each other. We just say hello. For the longest time you had to kiss on the cheek in francophone contexts and even in school as a teenager. Handshakes were a big thing in francophone culture but then posher people started to do cheek kisses between male friends: you didn't shake hands like a labourer anymore. It was almost a social class thing. Then "working class" men started to do the same. These days I would assume less people shake hands than 30 years ago. In the English-speaking world there's this sort of touching of the chests/shoulder between men. In a French-speaking context, it used to annoy me to have to touch people. I found it dirty as well as being unnecessarily ritualistic.

[@ilonabaier6042]

@@ouicommunicate Recently I spent about 18 months reading Proust's In Search of Lost Time and whenever I learn something new about France and the French I try to put it in context within this massive novel. It's a fun hobby in any case.

[@Mlydon888]

I find this viewpoint to be very interesting and also revelatory! As a native English speaker trying to communicate my feelings in French to my French partner is very frustrating. I now realise that he’s focusing on the object of the actions, instead of ME and my feelings as the subject. I think the perfect example is ‘manquer’, ‘to miss (someone/something)’ and how a sentence is structured in French vs in English. In English we say, “I missed you” (SVO), while the French say “Tu m’as manqué” / “You were missing from me”, literally translated. While the subject in English was doing/feeling the action (‘missed’), in French, the person actually doing/feeling the action (‘missing’), is not the subject but the (indirect) object.

[@ouicommunicate]

Brilliant ! I do think there's something to it. And I thank you for sharing your valuable experience. I hadn't thought about "manquer". They always say that French is so romantic but English has many more terms to describe all the actions about love. "fancying" someone, "dating", "liking", "loving", "seeing each other", "having a crush" etc. Thanks again for you input!

[@malinerees4666]

I have watched several of your videos, and your explanation of theory is extremely helpful. The one on the subjunctive was powerful! For me, memorizing rules without understanding the why, and the nuances, is almost futile. And, breaking bad grammar habits is hard! I am reminded of the differences in outcome when a doctor prescribes an anabiotic and says, “Take as directed until finished.” versus, “Take as directed until finished. Do not discontinue when you feel better. The illness causing bacteria could still be in your system and you could become sick again. Stopping early could cause bacteria to become resistant to the antibiotics. It is important to take the full course.”. It seems like your method is taking the full course. Although pen and paper may be what seals the deal. 😊

[@ouicommunicate]

I approach these youtube comments holding an umbrella open, barely peeping over to get a glimpse of the flurry of insults that are thrown my way that underline my limitless foolishness. Then I see this kind comment! 😃Thanks very much for your comment, it is much appreciated. And for giving of your time to watch the videos.

[@RobertTambay]

Fascinating video. French parents but grew up in Canada. In Northern Ontario, French speakers sound English. I realise from your video that it’s their cadence. Their cadence is English but the words are French.

[@ouicommunicate]

Really? I'd love to hear some recordings of this.

[@dancroitoru364]

LOL, I can see why the French find the English pompous. The Englishman sees a mini "I" (the "me") in the first place while it's quite clear that the place where the symbolic resides (thus the repository of meaning) is in the other. So the "wandering of mine" would be totally trivial if it wasn't for Rome because it's Rome that makes the subject a subject.

[@ouicommunicate]

haha! 😀

[@paulg680]

A great subject! As I continue to study, I will be interested to learn how emotion and comedy is projected within the french language.

[@ouicommunicate]

Thank you! Humour is very different also!

[@ryanpmcguire]

By far my favorite part of english is the absolute surplus of vocabulary.

[@ouicommunicate]

Yes it's a true thing. We never know if a word is still a part of the vocabulary or not. There seems to be no expiration date on words.

[@michellestevens2454]

Fascinating. Thank you for this perspective.

[@ouicommunicate]

Thank you!

[@B15F1]

In the spirit of theorization, we can extrapolate from your thesis to provide an explanation for the French penchant for philosophy and criticism. The language itself is more balanced, in that there is much less linguistic emphasis on the speaker’s subjective experience. This then gives rise to more argumentation and logic in discourse and the possibility of dinner arguments that won’t automatically result in hurt feelings. The flip side of this is that it is harder sometimes to express everyday emotions, which is why you get a lot more slang in everyday French than in English in my opinion. We just don’t need “vénère,” the way we say “he’s really annoyed” will get the message across.

[@ouicommunicate]

Oh yes definitely. Just a recent example: the awful case of Gisele Pelicot. Only French speakers would gather a panel of people for a TV show and discuss the essence of the question under a philosophical angle. "sleeps there not in every man a similar criminal?" etc. It is a philosophical frame of mind through and through. I'm not sure about everyday emotions in English though. As I was finalizing a video on adverbs yesterday, it reminded me that French can't say the equivalent of "angrily" or "happily" as applied to the doer of the action. "he angrily packed up his stuff and went" It would indicate that there is no interest in knowing the mood or frame of mind of "je" when doing an action. It's true that French has recently felt the need to create expression to communicate anger: J'avais la rage, venere, and others I probably forgot.

[@WilliamLious]

That is truly ironic that French does not allow the communication of emotions given that French is dressed like the language of love.

[@ouicommunicate]

I once made a video on this very topic (which was seen by no one!) and I found out that it was English that had the more developed vocabulary to speak of love. French has usurped that reputation. I don't quite know how.

[@WilliamLious]

@ouicommunicate Your videos don't allow Watch Later...

[@ouicommunicate]

@@WilliamLious Really? I'll look into it. youtube moves in mysterious ways... I literally just "lost" 80 followers in a second. 2 away from being able to monetize it with 1000. I'll try to find that setting.

[@RobertTambay]

Votre vidéo est fascinante. Je suis parfait trilingue (français, italien et anglais) et vous m’avez éclairé! I would say that French and Italian share the attention on the object rather than the subject. Autre exemple: I swam across the river (I see that I swam). J’ai traversé la rivière à la nage (je vois la rivière). Fascinant

[@ouicommunicate]

Merci! So Italian does the same? Thanks for sharing this with us.

[@RobertTambay]

I am no expert but I “feel” Italian does as in French. Maybe becausenthey are both romance languages. I have always considered French and Italian to be the “same” language except that French would be very poorly pronounced Italian.

[@aeolia80]

A "dual native speaker" is a literal bilingual person. Not everybody can officially claim that term in linguistics

[@ouicommunicate]

Yes! I always found the term bilingual a bit vague. For my part, I see myself as having two native languages. Voila. 😀

[@dancroitoru364]

No wonder that Continental (French) Theory feels intuitively natural to French people. A psychoanalytical concept like the "divided subject" perfectly maps to the distinction between the "He" (grammatical subject) and the "himself" (the subject of enunciation) in "He is sitting himself down". By the "sitting down" one enunciates something about the totally impenetrable "He", therefore the He becomes "himself". We could say that French is more metonymical than English - the subject slides from word to word until the meaning is established backwards but not circular (himself is a He who acquired a "self")

[@ouicommunicate]

Oooh I'm not sure I understand that. But I wouldn't be surprised that this linguistic trait influences other fields of knowledge. Thanks for the input!

[@willbaren]

I liked your ideas about how English filters the message and how we use particular words and expressions to invest the communication with emotional meaning. We will often use French or Latin derived words when we want to appear scholarly or objective. This reminds me of a comment attributed to the writer Joseph Conrad who drafted his stories in French because using English was like trying to crush an ant with a bullwhip. For myself I am a native speaker of English and a Germanic language and I can say that English can seem more flexible, kind and polite, but that I can think up more cutting insults in the other language, partly because of the sounds used in the words.

[@ouicommunicate]

Oh interesting! Yes, it's funny that kids "clap" but adults "applaud" at the theater 😀 We're not "eating", we're "dining" sort of thing. I didn't know this about Joseph Conrad. What's your other language?

[@willbaren]

@@ouicommunicate thanks, yes, you're right. The story about Joseph Conrad is one I came across maybe 25 years ago while reading the novels of Ford Madox Ford (Fifth Queen Trilogy, The Good Soldier, and Parade's End) and reading biographical background about him and his close collaborators. I tried to confirm it today on the internet but had no luck and so it's based on what I remember. Treat it like a dodgy factoid from a Random on the internet. If I do come across it again I'll drop it here especially if my memory has failed me. My interest in French is to read French novels in the original, France is very far away from here. Where I've lived for most of my life, English is the only language you need to speak. Thanks for taking the trouble to reply to me.

[@eddyvandrom6327]

Merci pour cette video très inspirante. Votre hypothèse sur l'accent donné au sujet ou à l'objet selon le locuteur m'a permis de mieux comprendre pourquoi les verbes pronominaux sont importants en français. La question qui m'est venue à l'esprit est celle-ci: est-ce le cas des langues romanes (du latin?) par rapport aux langues germaniques? D'autre part, avez-vous envisagé une comparaison entre les formes passives en anglais et en français? Quelle est l'impression d'un anglophone face à cette forme grammaticale? Quelles impressions évoquent "La souris a été attrapée par le chat." pour un Anglais et un Français? A ce propos, j'ai toujours trouvé surprenant que l'on puisse construire une forme passive sur un object indirect (indirect object complement) en anglais et pas en français. Par exemple: "I've been given that book."(o) n'est pas possible en français: "J'ai été donné ce livre" (x). Comme vous le savez on dira: "On m'a donné ce livre." Vous pensez qu'il y a un rapport avec votre hypothèse? Finalement, j'ai aussi compris pourquoi je trouvais l'accent anglais exagéré, voire déplaisant autrefois. Je prenais sans doute ce pré-filtrage, inconsciemment et à tort, pour de la condescendance. C'est comme si la langue anglaise me disait: "si je ne te souligne pas les mots importants, tu ne pourras pas comprendre, idiot." Aujourd'hui, je n'ai plus cette déplaisante impression. Ce ne sont là que quelques divagations de ma part. Happy New Year Chris!

[@ouicommunicate]

Merci pour votre commentaire! Autant que je sache, le Neerlandais et l'Allemand accentuent aussi les mots importants de la phrase. Il me semble que le francais serait l'exception en tous cas parmi l'Italien et l'Espagnol. Ces langues me semblent plus rhytmees. En francais on prononce TOUT et au meme volume. Je n'ai jamais compare l'emploi du passif entre les deux, si ce n'est grammaticalement. Je sais qu'il y a 7 verbes principaux qui necessitent "on". Comme vous le dites: on m'a ecrit, on m'a donne... I was old/ I was given... je ne sais pas ce que cela indique. Mais peut-etre que de nouveau la langue anglaise permet mieux au sujet d'etre le centre du message. Oui en anglais on pre-filtre! Puis on monte parfois le volume sur les articles et prepositions dependant si ceux-ci sont importants pour un message particulier. Quelle langue!

[@Mlydon888]

I’m all for old-school pen and paper, as well! 👍

[@ouicommunicate]

Good for you ! Yes it's worked so far to produce some of the greatest works of literature and to produce some of the greatest learners also, but I propose we pretend the internet has brought "change" 😀

[@willbaren]

Hi Chris, thank you so much for a very interesting exposition. It answers at least one question I’ve had for a while, why was French the language of international diplomacy for hundreds of years. When you have so many reflexive verbs and you’re focused on what happens to the object then French seems made for that task. I’m sure it ceded that rôle only because of the growing importance of the USA. I have a couple of other comments which I will make separately.

[@ouicommunicate]

Yes. French as a language of diplomacy! In my view, people "use" English as a second language but rarely come to the point of speaking it in all its richness as native speakers do. How would one even teach all those subtle codes if even the teachers weren't taught this? Besides, we can only learn things we know exist. As a results, there are many "users" of English but much less speakers. It's like a watered-down version. French has a much better chance of being pronounced correctly, I find. Since the contents = the message, there would be less problems overall.

[@eziLoreno]

there are different types of listener. See-er, Hear-er or a Feel-er.

[@ouicommunicate]

That's true!

[@joshplante8142]

I use my language to transmit my thoughts to other people, in the manner I seem fit in certain situations/moods. I dont think we humans think with words, yes we can talk to ourselves in our own head but I don’t need to think the words “she’s a nice lady” to notice that she is in fact a nice lady. If I’d like to tell you that, I could say “that women over there looks like she’d be a very very kind person” I’m thinking with you here! but I’m leaning towards language having little to no effect on our thoughts and culture is perhaps a bigger differentiator

[@ouicommunicate]

Yes I think it's true. We pay attention to the situation and the mood and we have many tools to do this in English. I'm still not sure how language shapes our thought is at all it does. Thanks for the input!

[@shweefranglais7900]

Have a twatter !!!! Lol !!!! You're making up words now Chris ! Where's me specs !!! ??? My dad used to say "specs" and "frock" for a dress lol ! I'm watching you on 1.25 speed ; you're too slow for me you old fogey lol !!! ( Oui, je plaisante mais en fait je regarde vos vidéos à 1.25 vitesse mais je le fais avec beaucoup de vidéos. ...La technologie est d'une beauté incroyable! ) I like listening to you because you are English and so am I and I too am an old fogey ! You also like analysing stuff the same way that I do.

[@ouicommunicate]

Young whippersnapper! How dare you??? Come back 'ere and I'll box yer ears! I like yer dad's vocabulary though. Did they say "knickers" and "bloomers" also?

[@rosiebowers1671]

"Between the a of apple, apple is quite rounded". lol what? As a French speaker, I find /æ/ a *lot* sharper and more metallic and agressive--sounding than /a/. /æ/ is the sound I make when I'm expressing disgust! /a/ definitely sounds softer to me.

[@ouicommunicate]

Yes, a question of perception perhaps!

[@RobertTambay]

C’est que le français est plus formel et plus cartésien

[@tulliusagrippa5752]

I don’t think you are right. Italian has virtually the same structure as French, and they most certainly express their feelings through the way that they intonate. In my experience, there is an huge difference between the working class English and the upper class ones. I would accuse the upper class English of everything you claim of the French. They are the real cold fish! If the French can be accused of anything it is of being contemptuously dismissive of those to whom they speak.

[@ouicommunicate]

Based on your comment, I believe we do agree. It would seem that Italian can better communicate feeling through intonation than French can. The whole British upper/lower class thing is a complex one, I agree. There is indeed a tendency to be contemptuously dismissive that francophones put forward and that I've particularly experienced in business. I put it down to a natural distaste for social/economic mobility.

[@barmalini]

If you find French cold and impersonal, try learning Ukrainian. Greetings from Ukraine. I intend to subscribe to your course, but first I'll have to think about how to fool you into believing that my English is native enough for it. Cheers, and have a happy new year!

[@ouicommunicate]

hahaha! I'll be happy to meet you. Thanks for stopping by !

[@rosiebowers1671]

tbh I know what he's saying. In French, the words do more heavy lifting to convey the message than in English, and we tend to be more direct. If someone tells me "je suis content(e) de te voir", I'll have no doubt that they're indeed happy to see me (unless they're very obviously trying to butter me up). If a North American tells me "it's AMAAAZING to see you again, you look fantAstic, let's grab coffee one of these days", I still have no idea what's on their mind apart from acknowledging my presence. They could be happy to see me or merely be polite or God knows.

[@barmalini]

@rosiebowers1671 Being a native of three languages (Ukrainian, Polish and that damn russian, which I wish never existed), agile in English, pretty well grounded in Dutch and somewhat familiar with Italian, I think I can understand what you're saying. There's another phenomenon I've noticed: the louder an American speaks, the more indistinguishable his words seem to me. Perhaps it's of the same nature as the sound of your car's engine. If you drive a quiet Mercedes, you'll notice every little variation in the sound it makes, but you don't pay as much attention to your lawnmower, unless it suddenly stops.

[@Earlofmar1]

Right, now convert this idea to a simple tik tok for the masses 🤕

[@ouicommunicate]

Easy ! Just make a synchronized dance out of it and hey presto!