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Proficient French after one year is miraculous (German would be realistic for limited domains), it’s an unforgiving language in a lot of unfathomable ways, just matching gender and number in a phrase can be a nightmare

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Native English speaker, conversationally fluent German speaker, learning French now. I agree. It seems German gets the reputation of being quite hard, and french easier, but I just don't see it. Sure German can be complex but it seems at least a bit more consistent and forgiving as a native english speaker. French seems to be deceptively simple at first "here is a simple rule to follow" and then hits you on the back side with "and here are the 20 pages of exceptions! "

Proficient spoken French (not necessarily correct but usable) is perfectly attainable in an academic year for a native speaker of English. I watched students at my alma mater, which has a summer language program, go from nothing to conversational fluency in a nine-week intensive course. They still made lots of mistakes, but they could freely interact with native speakers and make themselves understood on most topics.

I get that gender especially is hard on learners coming to French from English, but you also get about a quarter of the vocabulary for free, which is a treat.

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