NGL, not asking for a friend. Given the current trends in US politics, it seems prudent to at least look into it.
Most of the online content on the topic seems to be by immigration attorneys hustling ultra rich people. I’m not ultra rich. I have a job in tech, could work remotely, also have enough assets to not desperately need money if the cost of living were low enough.
I am a native English speaker, fluent enough in Spanish to survive in a Spanish speaking country. I am old, male, cis, hetero, basically asexual at this point. I am outgoing, comfortable among strangers.
What’s good and bad about where you live? Would it be OK for a outsider, newcomer?
Personally I’m learning French because it’s the language of bande dessinée, and in order to enjoy more BD, plus run my sublemmy more effectively, it’s an obvious choice.
Anyway I find French much harder than Spanish, but am slowly getting the hang of it… I think. Gender is complete BS to me, and it seems like there are tonnes of little grammar rules to follow. Is that why you called it bullshit, yourself?
Yeah, so by all accounts i’m the kind of person most likely to love the french language: native speaker, effortless spelling and grammar, avid reader of BD, i even like the flowery and decorative aspects of the language (language soutenu); but then i also speak other languages, and this gives me the perspective that, from a practical standpoint, there’s a lot of issues with french. There’s layers of sediment accumulated over centuries, a lot of rules and spellings are vestigial and serve no purpose anymore other than make it harder.
Also, a lot of rules and spellings come from grammarians just saying so, and writing prescriptivist style guides to make people spell The Correct Way. To a point, i even think the ability to invent and follow an arbitrary The Correct Way hass been a class signal.
Even native french speakers sometimes have bad grammar, or at least that’s much more common than english speakers having bad grammar.
English speakers say the same things about their language, but they don’t know about ô <— this accent and the agony of trying to guess when it should be used or not. It’s supposed to indicate a difference in pronunciation, but this difference depends on the accent and is also obvious from context. I’ve known teachers to dock points for shit like this, and it radicalized me against arbitrary rules despite being completely capable of following them. In my opinion, people use features that have a purpose; if people don’t use it, then it’s pointless.
And from a global perspective, fewer people speak french than a lot of other languages. On the one hand this doesn’t matter, lots of people speak mandarin, it’s about who you’re likely to interact with; but i’d say your more likely to interact with spanish speakers.
Unless of course you’re that much into BD. That doesn’t surprise me at all, lots of english speakers learned japanese for weeb reasons, i think it’s completely legit to learn a language for the culture. Actually i find it pretty impressive
Hate to sound ignorant here, what’s BD?
There are more French than English speakers with bad grammar? I find that difficult to believe.
BD = Bande Dessinée, the french term for both graphic novels and comics. Both have a huge history in Europe in general and France-Belgium in particular, but it’s extremely unusual for english speakrs to know or care, it’s really appreciated.
I guess i shouldn’t speak so definitively, it’s not like i have data to back up the fact that there are more French than English speakers with bad grammar; but really, french grammar is worse than complex, it’s unintuitive and arbitrary, and it does feel like i see more french speakers with bad grammar. For what that’s worth