Originally published December 2010
Published in TEACH Magazine, 50th Anniversary of the Official Languages Act Special Issue, 2019
By Julie Hamel
In the province of Quebec, the experience of learning a new language is shared by many as they either acquire French or English as a second language. As a Francophone, I can attest to the challenges common to all second language learners.
The difficulty of reproducing sound and deciphering oral or written content in a native tongue is difficult enough, let alone in a second language. For Anglophones, they have a tough time getting their mouths around the R’s and the U’s, EU’s or OU’s in French. For Francophones, they have just as difficult a time in English, insisting on pronouncing the silent L parked before the D in would and could. And there’s also the TH’s that are not only pronounced two ways, but leave a feeling of having a hair stuck to one’s tongue. In French the S’s are always silent, in English they are not. In English some GH’s sound like an F (as in laugh) and in French the sound È is written many different ways (ais-aient-è-ê-es).
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