[jakevoytko]

This was my experience too. I haven't taken German in 20 years but I can still understand some things tourists say. I studied French 5 years ago with the help of my wife (fluent in French, professional translator) and even doing hours of listening practice daily for months I never got the hang of more than extremely simple phrases. So much is a near-homophone to my American ears.

Oddly, French people understood my French much easier than Germans understood my German. My guess was that I nailed the French grammar but struggled more with the German grammar.

[ghaff]

One of the funny things with French is what a sometimes traveling companion sometimes says to me with some exasperation: "They don't pronounce half their letters!" :-) Also makes me realize that, bad as my French is, I knew the language a lot more than they did.

[BrandoElFollito]

I would venture that we do not pronounce more than that. "Waters" is "eaux" which is the same sound as "o".

Mot is mo

Phrase is fraz

Maison is mezo (almost)

It would actually be interesting to compute that, possibly by kind of words (verbs, nouns, ...) and prominence.