A Hearing-Impaired Immigrant! - Some Advice for Learning French

Speaking French
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Rose Ayling-Ellis. She won the 2019 Strictly Come Dancing and does TV and theatre work.

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This is all golden advice which also made me chuckle. Thank you. I’m lucky to be bilingual, having straddled both languages from a young age, but all your tips and observations are incredibly on point.

I’d add: don’t worry about having a British accent when speaking French. Lean into it. Just like Brits love Eric Cantona, or Antoine de Cannes (eurotrash!). People may take you slighlty less seriously but it does also soften the mood.
And if you can speak well, people will be impressed, accent or not.

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Blimey, you have faced some challenges!

I think you’re right about always being able to learn. We often say that children are better learners than adults, in reality, children and adults are in totally different situations. Children have dedicated teachers for one, and well, as adults, we have no time and a lot of responsibility.

I’ve become a better learner as I’ve got older - so hopefully I will never not be learning!

Thanks for sharing your story, it means a lot :grinning:

Take care :hugs:

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Oh, I’m happy to help!

The bloody tinnitus is sometimes worse than the hearing loss :sweat_smile:

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I love a good old thread hijack! :grinning:

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This is sound advice about accent! In fact, I believe it helps because usually the other person will realise you don’t get idioms or that you don’t have all the necessary vocab.

So, as I mentioned, I teach English as a second language. I simply love other people’s accents and quirky ways of saying things. It’s beautiful.

Thanks for the advice, it makes me feel a bit more confident about my abilities :grin::+1:

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A very interesting post. My OH has serious hearing problems and has been relying on subs provided by Skype to talk to our two sons in the UK. Since we arrived in France I’ve tried to find a package to provide french subs for myself to help me with telephone conversations in french which I always dread’. But I haven’t found anything that works. So now that Skype is about to disappear I am wondering if anyone else has found a package that provides subs especially for international calls

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@geoffrey_Croshaw I followed @JohnH’s recommendation, seconded by a coiple of other posters snd signed up with 12voip. Others suggested Viber also.

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Thanks @Karen we’ll try 12voip this weekend

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I recently discovered that I too have hearing loss. Your points are very well taken and I will be using them! I also watch French movies with closed captioning in English. Write down all the words I don’t know, get the meanings, and then RE-watch the movie! Also–any TV show where there is only one person speaking at a time (speeches, cooking shows, documentaries) are helpful. Repeat the words out loud!!

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If you don’t already view it, the TV channel Arte can be very useful - high quality series and documentaries often with a subtitles option in English or French.

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