To the innocent and uninitiated, talking to French native speakers seems like a dead cert way of learning the language. This has not been my experience. If one already speaks a modicum of French, of the sort that can be acquired during five years of schooling for example, encountering native speakers and pressing them into service as auxilliary French teachers might actually improve one's command of the French language. But I used this approach before I spoke any French at all and it did not work for me.
Simply listening to a foreign language does not eventually result, as if by osmosis, in a miraculous comprehension of it. On the contrary, very soon the foreign words cease to be words at all and merge into a mumur which retreats into the background like muzak. Instead of learning French I simply got used to it. It is a very pleasant sounding language, of course, and in my opinion preferable to most muzak. But it is not an easy language to learn just by listening, because the French have several linguistic habits which impede the learning process.
Firstly, in the mouth of most natives, French words behave in a disconcertingly familiar, if not to say jostling, fashion towards each other. Instead of each word keeping its proper distance towards all other words, they continuously bump into each other. Sometimes a word stops halfway, only to be pronounced as the first half of a totally different word! At other times several words are strung together like pearls on a necklace and there is no indication as to where one word ends and the next one starts. So how is one supposed to look it up in a dictionary?
Secondly, for some reason French people speak very quickly. While I am still looking up their first word in my dictionary, they have spouted several hundred new ones! So I only ever understand the first word of every sentence, which does not aid comprehension. Given my language skills, one word every 30 seconds would be ample. But so far I never met anyone who spoke that slowly. As someone told me, by the time I understand their first sentence they have forgotten what they were going to say!
Thirdly, they seem to never use the same word twice. If they only used, say, 100 words, in simple sentences, frequently repeated, at a slow pace, I could no doubt learn French just by listening. For example, when they put a plate on the table they could say, I am putting a plate on the table! Then, when adding a glass, they could say, I am putting a glass on the table! I did suggest this approach, but alas I am surrounded by quick-talking hedonistic types who think it is much more fun to speak English than to teach me French.
That is in fact the basic problem. I have spent any amount of time in France listening all day long to natives who speak beautiful French and have learned practically nothing from them. Some of them, it is true, made great efforts, and spoke to me at lengths in French, but since they never translated anything (well, they couldn't since they don't know English) I learned little. And those who can speak English do just that - they speak English to me.
As a result I have single-handedly raised the level of English competency in France to new giddying hights. I have become very good at speaking English slowly and clearly, pronouncing each word accurately, repeating the same simple phrases, avoiding slang, and explaining difficult words as I go along. As MDL once told me, My English has improved greatly since I met you! Yeah well great, but what about my French?
I should add that I am actually extremely grateful to all those wonderful French people whose company I had/have the pleasure to enjoy for trying to help me learn French. There is no reason why they should, after all I meet them as friends, not as teachers. I love, respect, and admire the French, but the fact remains that mingling with them is not enough to acquire their language.
