Can English speakers understand spoken French?

Generally not.

First off, there are definitely cognates, because English borrows a ton of words from French (and modern French borrows some words from English), but in many cases the usage differs substantially.

For example, if I want to describe someone as very "sensitive" in French, I would probably say something like, "il est très sensible." Related word, but in English, "sensible" means something like "shows good judgment." To describe someone as sensible in French, you say, "il est sensé."

Secondly, the pronunciation differs a lot. The French "sensible" sounds something like "sonseebluh" to native English speakers. You have to have already tuned your ear to the sounds of French words to pick out most cognates.

Here's a comparison between French and Swedish on a random news story of the day:

https://www.lemonde.fr/international/article/2026/06/22/le-premier-ministre-britannique-keir-starmer-annonce-sa-demission_6706580_3210.html

Keir Starmer annonce sa démission de son poste de premier ministre du Royaume-Uni

https://www.svt.se/nyheter/utrikes/keir-starmer-avgar-som-storbritanniens-premiarminister

Keir Starmer avgår som Storbritanniens premiärminister

I can tell it's about Keir Starmer and being a prime minister, but nothing beyond that (annonce = announce, but that doesn't help). The French one is a bit worse IMO because of false cognates. He decommissions his son from the post of prime minister of the royal university? I translated it and I was way off. Looked at a few others, and I can see cognates after I translate them to English, but it's not something I would be able to figure out just by reading it.

No. I've never met anyone who was monolingual in English who could also understand French.

No.

Languages have to be very similar to be mutually intelligible. French and English are too far apart.

Example of how similar languages have to be to bee mutually intelligible:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Danish,_Norwegian_and_Swedish

No, they can't. In fact most English speakers can't understand English when spoken by most French people either.

I am an English speaker. I have studied French for several years. I cannot understand a thing when it's spoken. I can read basic stuff alright though.

This is a bot.

Do you think a real person who speaks fluent English and knows the difference between a Romance Language and a Germanic one is unaware if they themselves understand spoken French?

see i was kinda the opposite. I just went with the default. Thing is I was never very good at language to begin with. and foregn language im even worse. I wish I had a heck of a time with sentence structure and wish I went with something that was more subject verb object.

Je ne parle pas Francais.

I felt so confident moving to Norway from the US because of this very phenomenon. And then someone asked me out loud if I needed a bag (in Norwegian) and I completely froze. Like what? Spoken Norwegian does sound much like how it’s written (once you know the sounds and combos) but like any language, the space between words in writing and spoken aloud are just different. And that difference is the reason I am still on kampbussen 6 years later.

I heard the word “orderves” maybe 100 times, and read the word Hors d’Oeuvres also like a hundred times before I realized they were the same word. So no.

Or they're Japanese and not a nqtive English speaker? Maybe give their profile a look.

No.

for one thing the pronunciation is pretty fucked

It’a related to this one too. They go quiet for a while then start back up again, usually around the same time. I guess language is the new topic.

https://lemmy.world/post/48496256

Yes I'm becoming convinced that these two accounts have the same operator.