Is Russian easier to UNDERSTAND than French?

[issemiyaki]

I'm drying to jump into learning Russian, but I want to know if I might have simular obstacles like I'm having with French.

Just today I was listening to a TedTalk, and the woman said: "ça peut être une," as in that could be A possibility. But I heard, "ça peut êtrune."

Now, of course, "êtrune" is not a word (at least not that I know of). But only after turning on the subtitles did I realize that she was not saying "êtrune," but "être UNE."

The other day, someone said: "Les chance sont bons," and I heard: "Les chansons bons." Clearly nobody was talking about songs, but that is what I heard, despite me clearly knowing that "chance" and "chanson" are two different words in the language.

So, those are some of the slipups I'm having in French.

I'm curious to know if this sort of thing happens in Russian. (Again, I'm trying to figure out if Russian might be easier to UNDERSTAND, not speak!)

I'm dying to learn the language anyway, and it just seems easier to hang on to, sort of like German or Polish. The problem with French is the enormous amount of homonyms and I would say even where the "stress" falls in the sentence create this obstacle, causing one to NOT understand words they ALREADY know.

Let me know what you think.

Thanks in advance.

[Kraut]

You did not hear wrong. Written French like in the subtitles is different from spoken French, where they link the words into what is called "chaine parlée". And in which sounds that you hear in separated words are dropped.

[Speakeasy]

If you are asking if Russian is easier to understand than French from the perspective of an Anglophone, the answer is categorically "non"!

If I recall the old FSI classifications correctly, French is a Category I language; that is, it is one of the easiest languages for an Anglophone to learn. While estimates vary as to the actual number of cognates and near-cognates, one could safely say that at least 30% of the common English lexicon is derived either directly from French or from one of the other Romance languages. While there are obvious differences in grammar, once the initial obstacles have been surmounted, there are very few surprises or genuine difficulties for an Anglophone in adapting to French sentence structure, et cetera. The differences in the sound systems of the two languages are easily broached. A estimate of the time required to achieve that CEFR B1 level would be (very approximately) 600 hours of intensive study.

In contrast, Russian is a Category IV language, that is, it is one of the most difficult languages for an Anglophone to learn. There are virtually no cognates, the differences in grammar, sound systems, and orthography are such that becoming even remotely comfortable with language requires a great deal of time and effort. A estimate of the time required to achieve that CEFR B1 level would be (very approximately) 1,100 hours of intensive study.

[chove]

I don't speak French but I think I see what you mean? I looked at it on duolingo once then ran away because I couldn't hear the individual sounds, it seems to glide together a lot.

[issemiyaki]

Speakeasy:

I hear where you're coming from.

But what I'm trying to figure out is if one might encounter the same phenomenon that I'm experiencing with French, where you think you hear one word, but actually something else entirely different is being said, even though what you thought you heard, and what was actually said SOUND THE SAME.

[reineke]

https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... ing#p83633

[Kraut]

You could train your ear with a text to speech app. the Google one for Firefox seems to be ok.
While for Spanish I prefer the female voice in the Vivaldi browser.
Listen to this with it:
Les chances sont bons.
Les chansons bons.
Les chansons sont bonnes.
Les chances sont bonnes.

[lavengro]

Is Russian easier to UNDERSTAND than French?

нет, товарищ. Not even close. Barely in the same galaxy. I cannot say for sure based on my extremely limited tinkering to date whether you would encounter that specific issue with Russian, but I would hazard a guess that you will be begging to return to only speech segmentation challenges after encountering the various nightmares awaiting you on your possible Russian adventures. Dress warmly....

[sillygoose1]

There's no language that's easier to understand than another. It seems like that to us as learners and I thought that as well at one point, but it's mainly in your head. Everything is about the decoding and in order to do so, you need to feed your brain lots of information in different ways. Yes, I still have problems with French comprehension in some situations. But you know what? I do in English sometimes also. You know what else I discovered? Even native French speakers have problems. I recently rewatched a clip from Les visiteurs where I had a problem understanding a word or two. When someone in the comment section typed it out, a French girl in the comments said something like "thank you I could never understand what they were saying!" Sometimes our brains need time to get caught up in other languages which I have also noticed in my log many times and because I find it so fascinating how at times my comprehension would DROP then after a few weeks get better, I keep noting it every something like that happens.

Right now, I could interpret a French film or TV series to someone if subs weren't available. I do it in my head as a habit and practice. And it took me a long time to be able to do so and lots of sweat. But it happened and I'm living proof that it's possible. But I still don't catch everything. I don't really do so in English either.

You really just need to know the vocab like second nature. When you can read novels without referring to a dictionary and fluently, then you should have the vocab available to be able to increase your listening skills.

[reineke]

A lot will depend on your mother tongue, inner wiring and study methods.

You can search the forum for "segmentation"...

What follows are some excerpts from different sources.

"Learners with larger PM (phonological memory) capacity may be more efficient in the processing of L2 sounds:

- Speech segmentation.
- Phonological and lexical encoding.

Effects of the Native Language on the Learning of Fundamental Frequency in Second-Language Speech Segmentation

This study investigates whether the learning of prosodic cues to word boundaries in speech segmentation is more difficult if the native and second/foreign languages (L1 and L2) have similar (though non-identical) prosodies than if they have markedly different prosodies (Prosodic-Learning Interference Hypothesis)...The results...[suggest] that L1–L2 prosodic similarity can make the learning of an L2 segmentation cue difficult...

Processing Metrical Information in Silent Reading

Metrical stress, patterns of alternations of strong and weak syllables in polysyllabic words, phrases, or sentences, is an important characteristic of spoken language. Metrical regularities in speech have been shown to play an important role in language acquisition and segmentation of words from continuous speech for both infants and adults... Regularity in metrical structures has also been shown to facilitate phonological... lexico-semantic... and syntactic processing...

Given the functional importance of metrical stress for speech processing, it is not surprising that listeners register metrical regularities and inconsistencies even without explicit instructions to do so.

The present study investigated whether participants are similarly sensitive to metrical structure during silent reading. A growing body of recent research has demonstrated that visual language processing covertly activates phonological representations at different levels: individual phonemes (Frost, 1998), sub-phonemic properties such as phonetic length... and supra-segmental features such as prosodic phrase boundaries... Word stress is likewise activated in silent reading...which manifests as interference with the orthographic and lexico-semantic processing of these words...

Speech segmentation in a second language: The role of bi-modal input

Abstract
A number of previous research studies into the effects of simultaneous presentation of speech and text (bi-modal input) on second language (L2) listening have lacked test construct validity, thus rendering the results of their experiments contentious.
The results of this month-long experiment reveal that participants in the bi-modal group improved more than the controls in their ability to segment speech. This included utterances from programmes and speakers to which they had not been exposed, thus suggesting the generalisation of learning.