Use Ears Not Eyes Rule #2

Once one of my French friend told me this  incident;

   "Where is boulevard Cappuccino?"

This is the strange question two American tourists asked him on a sunny summer afternoon as he was sitting on the steps of L'Opera Garnier in Paris.

After asking them to repeat a few times and as they grew increasingly frustrated, he had to confess he really had no idea what they were talking about and didn't believe the street they were looking for existed.

It turns out it did. They had just made one simple mistake. 

Can you guess what this mistake was? 

They saw Boulevard des Capucines written on their map and pronounced it the way they thought it was pronounced which sounded nothing like the way it's actually pronounced. 

Hardly surprising considering most courses and teachers make you read words and phrases long before you hear them pronounced.

At school, you start your journey with lists of words. If you are lucky, you may hear your teacher read them once or twice, if not you may never even hear the words pronounced before you learn them.

Apps often give you the possibility to hear the words pronounced by a robot voice that sounds nothing like a native speaker.

That's how these two tourists ended up saying "boulevard Cappuccino" instead of "Boulevard des Capucines" and that's how many French learners end up with a terrible accent locals can't understand. 

That's why rule #2 is: Learn French with your ears, not with your eyes.

If you want to be understood, you need to make sure you ALWAYS learn with your ears before you learn with your eyes.

So next time you want to learn a new phrase, make sure you listen to it several times before reading it. This simple change will make the difference between being understood and people asking you to repeat or switching to English because they don't understand you.

À demain ! See you tomorrow!

Thank you and wait for the next rule.