Azzedine Habz moved to France at age 19 with not a word of French. He now speaks French perfectly without accent! Incredible

Some people are liguistically gifted - just like other areas and talents in life. Maybe the case for him. And, perhaps he really applied himself. Having studied French, I would say that attaining accent-less fluency is no small task.

My thought on all of this is that Habz, without wishing to call him a liar, grossly underestimated his French ability when he came to France aged 19, and that he knew a lot more French than he stated, because otherwise, in my mind, it would be virtually impossible to be at the level he's at now with such fluency and vast vocabulary. Not happening, and I've been involved with foreign languages, both as a teacher and as a student, all my life.

This is so interesting. Thank you for this thread. I don’t know what I would do without it.

Morocco is a former French colony and French is widely spoken in the country. Many schools teach in French.

Ha, looks like you're joking, but anyways....

One thing I will say is that Arab speakers in general have a predisposition to learn foreign languages with ease and my theory and others is that perhaps because their own language is complex they can master other languages with relative ease.

Just giving you a hard time :)

Your English seems fine. Did you speak English as a child?

probably a little insincere. it's common for people to boost themselves

Are you saying that Habz is insincere about something?

he can say EPO in many languages then.

What did he speak in Morocco?

Most people from Morocco and Algeria speak pretty good French. So I'm pretty sure he didn't start from zero.

That depends on their economic background. Habz's family were farmers in the valley, where French usage is minimal. It's a compulsory subject in school, but so is French, Spanish and German in many countries.

I taught French in Whitby, Ontario, Canada many years ago, level was not impressive.

Same with English, which I taught in Montreal, Quebec. In Canada both subjects are compulsory, and most Francophone students hate learning English, and opposite is true for Anglophones learning Français. It's forced on them.

Recently, however, I was very impressed with Portugal and students' level in English, far surpassing Spanish students, across the border. I think the fact that nothing is dubbed in Portuguese TV is a big advantage.

Another hidden benefit of EPO?

Idk he has a pretty strong French accent to me

Most people from Morocco (unless they lived in what is called a ‘bled’) speak French.

After highschool, I had numerous buddies from Morocco that came here for studying and they all spoke french pretty good.

I used to have a co-worker who spoke very good French and German. I don't know how young he started learning French, but I'm pretty sure he didn't start studying German until college. He ended up speaking both languages with very good accents, but I think that's because he majored (or at least took a bunch of classes) in linguistics. I think it's possible for some people--if they have a very good ear and an excellent grasp of phonetics--to speak without much of a foreign accent, even if they learned it late.

duplantis did something similar right? i don't think he moved to Sweden until recently. but i guess he still have a bit of an accent when speaking Swedish

But his mom's Swedish. He spoke at least a bit of Swedish growing up, and he'd go to Sweden in the summers. From what I understand his Swedish is a lot better now. In any case, there's a big difference between knowing nothing (as Habz supposedly did) and having some experience with the language growing up.

His French is very good, but he is not speaking it perfectly. If you listen to his intersjections (commons ones in English: ah, um, etc) he consistently says "ah." In French, the proper interjection interjection sounds more like "uhhhhh "