Explain French

Start each word and then decide it's not worth the effort and trail off

See also English place names.
"Scrumbwickshireford has been continuously inhabited since the reign of Æthelred the Unready, and people could not be arsed at a rate of one letter per generation. Hence its modern pronunciation: Sheffield."
- That can't be the original name. Scrumb wick shire ford? What's a Scrumbwick? Why both -shire and -ford endings? How did both get removed, and now it's a -field ending?
  That makes no sense at all, surely?
  Why not Scrumford? Or Wickford? Might as well change the name to Stavanger for all the sense Sheffield makes.
"Eh you got the gist, let's move on to the next word"

They begin to pronounce words, then suddenly go on strike.

It’s really weird for me as a spanish speaker. I can nearly read french since a lot of the words are cognates but when i hear it spoken i might understand one word in twenty. Their pronunciations are fucked.

Haha, I have the same problem but with spanish as a french speaker. I find italian much easier to understand.
- Honestly same for me with italian.
French phonology was heavily influenced by Germanic languages, unlike Spanish and Italian.
For better or for worse, the orthography (writing system) did not really keep up with the changes.
So instead of French being half way between Italian and Spanish, like you might expect, it's really it's own thing when it comes to pronunciation.
- I don't know how big this effect really is but French changed their orthography during the renaissance to make it more Latin like
The woes of a rather conservative orthography and an aggressively evolved phonology.

And Portuguese is a mix of French and Spanish, but if it was mixed together by drunk who didn't know either of those languages

I'm struggling learning Portuguese is what I'm trying to say

Portuguese is my native language and I struggle with it. Hell, I have an easier time with english. German tho, is impossible to learn in one lifetime
- German here. Can confirm.
I usua'y joke that it's like Ita'ian but whẽ' you just woke up ã'd your tõ'gue did not, so you prõ'õu'ce thĩ's mostly the sã' except for a few missĩ' cõsõ'ãts.
[I usually joke that it's like Italian but when you just woke up and your tongue did not, so you pronounce things mostly the same except for a few missing consonants.]
Serious now. If you want some help feel free to ask. I'm a native speaker.
- That's actually pretty accurate lmao
  My girlfriend speaks Portuguese natively so she helps me with it, but there's only so much she can do when my body also isn't accustomed to the nasal vowels, and I'm also an idiot lol
Portuguese is like catalan which is like occitan (southern French). If you know one of the Latin languages, Portuguese shouldn't be too hard, really.
- Portuguese shouldn’t be too hard, really
  To read? Absolutely. To understand, even though I speak some other Romance languages? Just no.
- Just learn 3-4 latin languages, and latin ofc and you should be ready to go

"Le chateau" is French for "the chateau."

It looks impossibly dainty written down, but when spoken, is just a stream of subtly articulated grunts

Get a load of how the French count 1 to 100.

I learned french in the late nineties, years were hell.
- Kids these days have it good, not needing to count past 25.
Vigesimal. Even their math sounds horny.

Tabarnak.

That's Canadian french!
- Non, c'est du français Québécois ;)

"you got peanut butter in your mouth or something?"

ils schtroumpfent

you have 11 letters. You pronounce 4 of them

The remaining letters are recycled into English. Pronunciation is still based off the same 4 letters you used in French, except you don't have access to them anymore.