Good morning everyone!
Idk if it’s the case with every langages, but with French as my main and English as my second learnt one, everything seems to sound so much better in english! It might be because i’m so used to french as i’ve been using it all my life, and the french that we use is more familiar and less fancy? 😅
Related; In french or in English? (2018)
I have been trying so hard the last couple of years to try to keep reading books in french too, and not to migrate to a fully english library.. however i’ve been having such a hard time finding something. I had been really lucky to fall on my Quebec french Horror Serie because otherwise.. my god everything feels “meh” nowadays!
Whenever I go to the pharmacy, I always snoop at the books that they have.. because BOOKS!! and nope.. the synopsis on french books don’t catch my eyes anymore 😅 And it’s not just for books written in french, even translations! I’ve crossed a blog post mentionning how Ali Hazelwood’s Love on the brain was gonna be translated to French soon – and although i’ve LOVED the book in english, reading the synopsis in french didn’t made me want to read it.. Iknow some things can change meaning and things gets lost in translations sometimes but still!
On other medias, I find French song lyrics to be odd and wierd- and I was laughing quite a bit coming home from work the other day, as I was listening to Enrique iglesias Tonight i’m fucking you.. and I was like «..if we’d translate it it’d be “asoir je vais te fourrer!!” » and that.. is hilarious to me 😆 Not quite as sexy.. (“Ce soir on va baiser” if you want standard French)
Not talking about the badly translate signs around that clearly just used google translate and Fucked up, things translated in french usually sounds worst ahah, ithink the only song i’ve heard that sounds actually good switched in french is Linkin park’s Numb.
Do you feel like that too?
Do you have a language that you think sounds better than another?
I struggle with the same thing! My native language is Finnish but most of the books I read are in English. For some reason the Finnish synopses rarely appeal to me, and I cringe often when listening to music with Finnish lyrics. I think it is a pretty language but for some reason Finnish books and music don’t appeal to be much. I thought this was because it is something I have just gotten used to (and also I had to read plenty of BAD books in Finnish at school as a kid), but I moved to Scotland 10 years ago now but I still struggle with the same thing!! I use English now for most of the time daily but still, Finnish books and music don’t feel like they have the same appeal as they do in English 🤔 Maybe a native language has more emotions bundled to it? For example, I find swearing in Finnish to be much more strong and vulgar compared to English although the words pretty much the same 🤔 It’s pretty odd!
Yes same!! But swearing in french is so much more colourful as we have atleast 6 different words.
Actually you’re right! Our emotions are tied to our native, so sometimes it’s easier to explain or say something in our second languages (since we lived it with our main first one).
I’m a native English speaker, and it’s a testament to how terrible a language English is that I haven’t been able to wrap my brain around another language to be fluent in one. The Spanish I have been exposed to sounds so much more elegant to my ears – I live in the Greater Houston Area in Texas, and Spanish is everywhere. To my ears, English doesn’t have the same sophistication that Spanish does. I’ve only heard a little French, and a smattering of Finnish, but both sound so much more lyrical than English does to me.
Maybe it’s a common issue that people find their native languages lacking when they hear a different language?
That’s interresting! and that was exactly what I was wondering.. We get used to our mother tongue so much that everything else sounds better. We also hear the worst of our language- being using it all our life that a second language learner wouldn’t necessarely know