I encourage you to take part in the contest! At the beginning of this thread, you said that you considered it but thought you wouldn’t win. However, judging by the reaction of people here it seems that you underestimated both your ability in the language and your chance of winning something in the contest.
Competing in the contest does provide a benefit, and a concrete one at that. Was it not the motivating factor in you creating a video of yourself speaking French? It helps you recognize mistakes that you make and allows you to more accurately correct those mistakes. Specific instances like “I used this word incorrectly” and “I should’ve used this tense” are much more beneficial than general feelings like “my French sucks” and “I’m terrible at speaking”. That being said, you should enjoy the journey as much as possible, as it’s one that never ends.
I’m looking forward to seeing more of your videos in the near future.
Milan, looks like most of us don’t seem to find any major problem with your French. If your friend’s friend thinks you have problems, you can show this video to him/her and let him/her point out the problems.
As for aiming to speak like natives, I don’t think this is part of the LingQ teaching. Of course, I can’t speak for everyone here, but I am quite sure that it is not the immediate goal of most of us.
I thought the video by Milanmaras was very good. His French accent sounds very convincing to me (certainly much better than I could do!)
I can’t speak with any kind of authority on this, but to my ears it definitely seemed more like standard European French, rather than the French of Quebec or Montreal.
(I’d be interested to hear what any Canadian native speakers think about this?)
BTW
Just picking up on something SanneT said: “…Winston Churchill (whose French was good)”
It is surely a matter of opinion whether Winston Churchill’s French was good? (In my experience, most people will tell you that his French accent was hilariously BAD.)
