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Why can I easily talk to French-speaking people, but don't understand eg. songs in French?


Sailor Cat

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I've been studying Frech for 5 years now in school and I also spended 10 days in France at a native family. I had absolutely no problems communicating with them, nor did I with other French people that were not speaking German.

But when it comes to French songs, movies in French ect., I just understand a few sentences or words! But why? In English (I've been learning it for 8 years in school) I understand nearly everything they say in songs or movies! But in French I don't even understand half of what they say! Is there anyone having the same problem?

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12 hours ago, Sailor Cat said:

I've been studying Frech for 5 years now in school and I also spended 10 days in France at a native family. I had absolutely no problems communicating with them, nor did I with other French people that were not speaking German.

But when it comes to French songs, movies in French ect., I just understand a few sentences or words! But why? In English (I've been learning it for 8 years in school) I understand nearly everything they say in songs or movies! But in French I don't even understand half of what they say! Is there anyone having the same problem?

Well, I do have a similar problem with Chinese. Maybe in Chinese it is because Chinese is in fact a tonal language, however in songs the tones are not really present, so it is much more difficult to guess the meaning, as your only anchor to guess the meaning is the context. Some languages are just more difficult to listen to and of course it always depends on what your native language is. I would agree that French is pretty difficult in this regard (-->my native language is German).

 

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Same issue with Japanese songs, mostly because Japanese songs often don't stick with grammar rules or use slang.
Or what I've ever noticed in an anime intro: they wrote the word "space" (宇宙・uchuu) and pronounced it as "sky" (空・sora).
Very confusing.

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  • 3 weeks later...

@linguaholic Meine Muttersprache ist auch deutsch. xD Ja, mit chinesisch stelle ich mir das echt schwer vor. (My mother tongue is German, too. Yes, I can imagine that it's very difficult in Chinese.)

 

@Blaveloper I only speak a little bit of Japanese (only a little bit) and I can understand certain words or little sentences in songs. I wonder if I will understand more when I'll be better. But I'm afraid I will have the same problem as you. xD

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