In article ,
Mike Lyle wrote:

Well, up to a point, Lord Copper. Many people have a better talent for
mimicry _and_ picking out sounds than they necessarily recognise. I'd
never discourage an adult learner on those grounds. Among commoner
European languages, I absolutely agree that French is the toughie. But
it can be done. French vowels are a bloody sight easier than Polish
consonants!

I know a lot of people who find the converse is true - the difficulty
of Polish consonants is usually overstated.

I started French only medium-early, at nine, under a retired colonel
whose Hindi-Urdu was pretty shit-hot as far as we could judge, but whose
Latin accent was totally un-Romance, and whose French accent fell a long
way short, as I later discovered when I moved on to better-qualified
teachers at thirteen. But when I gained fluency as a young man,
non-French people thought I was French, and the French couldn't quite
place me, usually plumping for Belgian: that's a perfectly achievable
and honorable target.

It's not achievable for a higher proportion of the population than
you realise - and is certainly not for me.

The only time that I have ever been taken for a French speaker was
by an old Breton woman - and that was a long time ago. Neither of
us was at all happy in our only common language :-)


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.