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Meanwhile I admit I wasn't the clearest in my explanation, I think the adverb and all that grammar terminology should be avoided when learning grammar like here and not in a structured book. And even in a structured book, I find easier to get the meaning of a rule and to remember it than to remember a rule about adverb and so on that may get me lost quickly. I think grammar should be something natural and I try as much as possible to express it in a natural way, and not like a technical documentation like the laundry's documentation you may find when you buy one washing machine. Anyway, thanks for your contribution.

Sometimes, when you're fluent enough in a language to translate it and understand the meaning, even if you don't use the exact and the same words, you are in a situation where you can help your native speakers, your native community, basically, to understand a conversation by translating what they say and what you say, basically, being a friendly translator. This has its challenges, obviously, you have to hear one language and to speak in another, you have to understand enough the meaning without missing words or you have to ask for explanations if you are in a situation where you can ask the person to explain better and more simply what they are saying, and that way you are acting like a communicator. The thing is, do you feel good when you do it? Do you like to do it and does it provides you satisfaction?

This is a problem you will find in any language, but I will only focus here on the language I know to talk about the problems of common vocabulary you may see. The most common vocabulary is the one used in conversations. Meanwhile it varies greatly depending to who you talks, basically, they will use mainly "passé composé", "présent" and "futur". The conditionals are also common, but outside of that, you don't have to spend too much time on other times in the grammar, they will be used less. As well, the set of words will be kept simple in conversations, meaning that even if there's expressions and the like, you wouldn't see much words from the old French, or from the manuals you will read. Rather, read some French conversations and notice the word you will hear often. People learning tend to speak too much in "Louis XVI" language.

That's not so true about the cultural side. Take the English language. You may be interested about one culture in particular, like some will look at UK, others at US, yet another at Canada, and some at Australia, New Zealand, or India. After all, all these countries speaks English somehow, because of the colonial history of UK. But I don't see a lot of people knows the US and Australia culture at the same time. So language is relatively tied to the culture, but only in a relative way. It is important to take it into account, but hopefully, US people can speak to UK without much problem. Now, about "who is the job to change the language?", the job may be a consortium, or I don't know. I am not questioning about "should we learn gender differences", for the time being we have to and I don't suddenly no longer use "il" or "elle" in French, eh. But if we are able to change our languages to add new words, and even use new times and verb modes, we can change it to make it simpler. In French, we used to use "Passé simple", and then we now use everyday "Passé composé". And then? Is that dramatic?

If you take the 50 years example, common structures and the language itself would have changed, with new words added regarding to the new technologies and habits of the countries, along with trends and fashion. But yes, cultural differences is important, and you're right with your example: it shows easily why it is important to learn the culture. But the problem is that to understand a new culture you don't know yet. How can you manage to know it? How to learn it and to especially translate it in your brain and in your native language if you ever want or need to do translation after all.

Because side-by-side is sometimes better, or I don't know. But often, books, are translated into multiple languages, more than videos and web pages can be. Books are designed to put the meaning of what you read in one language into another, basically, it is a translation, but a more literal translation that you would see on the web when you translate websites. So, as language learners, I thought about something: if you like a book, and if you like to read a book, why not trying to read the "target language" book first, and if you don't get something, read the book in your native language. This way, you would get habits, and meanings rather than exact words definition more easy to find on the web. What do you think of my approach?

French languages has its oddities. And one of the oddity is the problem to accept words from other languages. You wouldn't believe me? You know some words are from Spanish, Latin-languages, Italian, English, etc and you don't think they could be like that? Let me explain you then! For example, take a new word, "hashtag". Hashtag is a famous word on the social media world because it is a way to tag content easily and to associate with a topic on a search. The thing is...French Commission decided to create a new word and basically "deprecate" hashtag: "mot-dièse". Yes. It means, if you wonder, "sharp word", where sharp is the symbol. Another example: "cédérom". Yes, it is intended to be the translation of "CD-ROM", or "Compact Disc Read-Only Memory". Seriously. What do you think of these Frenchization? Shouldn't you ban them somehow?

That's right, when you need to learn a gender-based language, you have to learn the gender distinction, that's part of the learning process and I'm not putting that into question. Rather, I put the purpose on question. If something is really useless, it should be looked at and considered as useless and not stay "as it is" because it is "as it is". I mean, languages are living because they're modifying themselves and trying to evolve, doesn't matter the way, and given the era we got with a lot of population wanting to communicate with other parts of the world, the challenge is also to ease the communication and think about what should be better ruled out. Many technologies were put under the carpet because of that "as it is" reason, and few years after some regrets that. I don't want the same to happens on language.

I didn't complain about English gender, I am questioning the purpose of gender in language like French or Spanish or Italian, since in English we have so much less information about gender and meanwhile it may give some information about the gender of who you speak about, often, you end up being in two cases: you would need to know more about the person you talk about, or you would already infer the gender with he/she used in the sentence. That means that anyway, it is unlikely you really need any gender-based language. However, what I foresee isn't what that applies for everyone and I ask myself if there's a real need for that purpose, or if it's just something cultural but making the matters worst. Yes, I agree that sometimes it is hard to see it change in the future, and it is not so likely, but I think that languages should be changed anyway and ways should be found to apply this change. We put too much in the "cultural" meanwhile a language is a way of communicating, and when it doesn't help the learning, a language isn't fulfilling its purpose. That's all.

Je crois que c'est la fondue, et non pas le fondue. Mais c'est aussi un plat spécifique à la Suisse, donc ça veut dire que vos parents vous l'on appris, et que les grands-parents aussi, et vous comprennez la suite. Après, je me souviens qu'il y a un débat à propos de la fondue et de ses origines. Je crois que c'est la Savoie, une région de France, qui dit que la fondue viendrait à l'origine de chez eux, et non pas de la Suisse. Je risque de vous énerver en parlant de ça, mais je trouverais quand même dommage de ne pas le dire.

You may think that both can be used interchangeably, if only. No, Frenchies are more boring than that when it comes to grammar, and that clearly shows for that peut être or peut-être problem. What's going on? Well, take "Tu es peut-être stressé ?" (Maybe you are too much stressed?). Here, peut-être is written with a "-" (an hyphen, basically) between the peut and être. But, now, take the "Cela peut être causé par une erreur du gouvernement." (This may be caused by an government's error). Here, it is written without hyphen. Why? The problem is more simple taken like this: peut-être is less central on the former sentence, than on the latter sentence. Basically, peut-être means "probably" meanwhile peut être is more like a conditional can. In the hope it helps you!

Okay, apps on your smartphone. I thought about it already when I made the thread. The problem is what kind of app, what can you do on it. Especially, you can have an app with a translation dictionary, and then you have apps that may translate better in real time. After all, it depends of the app. As well, how much people would accept any kind of lag in the waitlines? The fact you're looking for a translation may slow down a waitline and may irritate others. The sound may irritate others. Many factors can, honestly. So the usage is important, but the culture and acceptation is as well.

That's one of the hardest problem you have to face, along with the context (because some ask translator to do tasks without providing a clear context, and this should be forbidden), it is the cultural differences. Basically, in a translation, you can't easily introduce a new context without being out of the topic when doing the translation (you want the text to be understandable, but close enough to the meaning of the original text, and to the intent of the writer, you're not an author when doing translation), and if the word does not exist in the target language because the concept itself is non-sense in the target language, what you have to do? Should you modify? Should you try to find something similar but not the same? Should you explain? That's hard.

J'aime bien manger. En fait, manger est vital pour tout le monde. Donc il vaut mieux que ça soit bon, de toute façon. C'est pour ça que je m'intéresse aux goûts et couleurs de chacuns, parce que après tout, c'est sympa de savoir si le plat qu'on aime est aimé par les autres. Les recettes expliquant comment la préparer sont la bienvenue, parce que nous faire envie sans partager la recette, c'est franchement sournois. Bon, vous avez le droit, mais après tout, on pourra peut être vous lancer des tomates si vous faites un truc mal dans la recette. Non, bien sûr, je rigole. (J'essaye d'avoir un français simple.)

Stopping multitasking requires only few steps: you disconnect any distraction source and you try to put willingness on doing what you're doing. If you can't succeed to that or you find excuses, then it's your problem, but it's not a problem of the age. After all, child are sometimes really, really distracted, and when they become adults they control more what they focus on. So I don't think age is important about focusing, willingness and tiredness will, in a obvious way. Okay, any strong emotion will distract you as well, but they're often exceptional, hence not making it too much relevant to fight against.

To be more precise, Ontario and Quebec both features much of the French-speaking population, and Quebec more than Ontario. But don't forget Quebec features Montreal, a well-known city of Canada, and Ontario features Toronto and Ottawa, the most popular city of the state, and the Canada's capital, respectively. So, there's important cities with "significant" (it is relative, depending of Ontario vs. Quebec) part of the population speaking French. As well, both languages are officially featured and used. So, even if you don't plan to go to Quebec, knowing French when you're in Canada isn't that stupid. The usage will be low if you live outside of these two provinces, but I guess not useless.

You count twice German in the official languages, or I miss something? Because I only think about Italian, French and German (and its friend Switzerland-German). You count the both German because they're different enough, or that's just a commodity, or I'm missing a language? But I understand easily the problem of Switzerland since it feels like the population is polyglot with all these languages. Uh. Wow, I didn't thought about that. French-written Civil laws, but Spanish-speaking country. And no one thinks about translating it instead of keeping it as it is? I mean, law should be easily accessible to the population, that's something severe if they can't understand the laws straight away, since you have to obey to laws you don't understand.

I am talking about industries because some industries are strongly tied against a language. French is believed to be tied to cuisine, since there's chefs learning in France, and the fact some cuisine words are taken straight and directly from French instead of having any other origin than that. We could also say that the mozzarella industry is taken by Italians people maybe and so Italian is a main language inside this industry. You get the idea? Because places where people speak French for example, aren't out of scope here. Just, it feels less "tied" to any real industry. Take the example of cars, why these drivers speaks French? It is not because of their activity I guess.

That's not because others done something that it was relevant for you to do it at their time. You do it at yours and that's all. Why seeking to find a failure when it is not? Maybe in the meantime they learnt it you learn something else or you done something else more valuable than that. Things isn't always brighter elsewhere. I think that the best way is to do it over and over again, doesn't matter when. Just the difference with childs is that, they're fully immersed within their native language, since they live since years inside it. You can get codes quicker like this. When you see that childs' memory fades away more easily in the future, than adult's memory, I might put in doubt this affirmation. But you tend to remember more what you forget, that what you remember, especially because in society it is an "aging" thing.

Accents in English is mainly related to the way you speak. But in French, the word "accent" means more than that, given there's the "accent aigu" é (e-acute) and "accent grave" è (letter with grave accent). But there's as well something else: the circumflex, like "ô". "ô" in French has a special meaning that will help any English speaker. Take the example of forest. In French, it's forêt. Why like this in French? Because in French, the "^" (circumflex) is often indicating that there was the letter S after the circumflexed letter, but it was removed thereafter. That's why forêt is forest in English. The reverse isn't true: the "^" does not mean that in English you will have to add the S letter. It's a general rule, I'm not sure it applies every where (être for example, I'm not sure about its origins). But I wanted to share that with you. In the hope it helps you.

One of the problem of the vocabulary is it depends mainly of what you want to do. Because even native speakers may meet the problem of the vocabulary, honestly, meanwhile it is a bit more specific to learners at start, in the end you have the same exact problem as the native speakers, with one thing less: learners will want probably to learn new vocabulary, but that's not so true when it comes to native speakers often bounding themselves to the vocabulary they just need for their tasks, and if they try to read books with "hard" or "old" vocabulary, they'll learn it, but if they don't, they'll probably not try. So, what's your vocabulary objective and why would you want that objective, after all?

The thing is that in reverse translation, you know what words' string is special, and what feels natural in your language. However, as much rules as possibles will be tried to taken out and extracted from the translated target language text to your native language one. Remember, the purpose is not to give the result, it is to help the correction of your text by watching the mistakes and, if they are relevant, find it. And a computer remembers rules better than you, so it will try to represent these rules in the translated text. What I think about mainly is the missing little word in a sentence, an error about grammar, etc.

When it comes to learning a language, sometimes, you may believe you missed a train. Much like it could have been easier when done before, and now, doing it is too much annoying or even more difficult than you could do it better if you done it younger. In my opinion, motivation and time schedules matters more than any kind of factor like age in the language learning. Sometimes, the difference is more social than really physical, even if some likes to masquerade it as something physical you can't fight much against it. I mean, saying so does rarely help parents to make them aware of the fact that their children could learn more languages easily than them (if we really believe the common thoughts about it, and that's not my case!), it is more for discourage them to do it because "it's too late". It's pointless. So I just wanted to share that feeling.

One point I focus about is often about how to get involved in your target language and doing so without taking always a train ticket or take a boat to reach some country where you could get immersed. Instead, i try to find innovative ways to get there. The thing is that can help is to find a industry or a domain, or something where French language is notoriously commonly used, or at least understood enough to hope to practice with them instead of doing so at home. I think it could be the food hobby, somehow, but I'm not fully convinced, because I have hard time to find better and more well suited for that.

Honestly, I think it's not that worst outside of airports rather than inside, I would even say sometimes it could be better outside, even if in the end, you will only collect mockery or people not doing any efforts at all with you. That's basically what happens with many of them, because they are not really open minded in general, instead why would you care about the fact someone is talking another language you understand or talks your language but with another accent? I mean, people in the language are the first to want it spread out, but they are the first to reject the learning speakers as well. Where's the logic here?