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Studying French

Discussion in 'Chit Chat' started by azrae1, Jan 9, 2014.

  1. azrae1

    azrae1 Guest

    Hi Everyone, i was wondering is there any one on EC that is currently studying french? I'm not creating this thread to attract francophones who already speak it fluently but rather Beginner to intermediate level's. I'm currently studying French for proficiency and its been 4 months now, it has been bit slow the past month because of my university studies but now will be back on it next week. It would be nice to bump into EC members who are currently studying it and sharing methods to learn the language easier and quicker. :icon_bigg
     
  2. LongMayIReign

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    I'm in French 3 this year at school :slight_smile: I've been learning it for a little over two years.
     
  3. Aussie792

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    I study French. My reading's okay, but I can't speak further than asking for coffee, ordering dinner, or introducing myself and saying what I have/haven't. I'm taking French for the next two years at an intermediate level.
     
  4. Daydreamer1

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    I took two years of it in high school. I never retained much though. Speaking, not much. Same goes for hearing it. But reading it, I can do a bit more.

    Personally, if you have experience with another romantic language like Spanish or Italian, it makes learning a bit easier (which is why Latin was easier for me to learn). Making flash cards for yourself and taking small classes will help.
     
  5. Tightrope

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    This is true. However, the first romance language you learn may flavor the approach to and intonation of any subsequent romance language you learn, even defaulting back to the first one, inadvertently picking up a word here and there as an error. That is why many native or "in the house" speakers of Spanish put an "e" in front of so many words that simply start with an "s" in other romance languages they later learn. That's just one example.

    As for learning them, the first thing is to become uninhibited and not be afraid to make a fool of yourself. Practice makes perfect. Also, you would be surprised what an immersion of sorts can do. If you put yourself in a situation where all the signage, news shows, customer service, and traffic signs are all in Spanish and French, it rapidly increases how quickly you will learn.

    Also, while I probably shouldn't say this, they call them romance languages and French the "language of love" for a reason. Haha. Knowing them might just find you in bed with a speaker of that other language more easily than if you didn't know that language.

    Whatever. It's mind expanding. Learning a foreign language is good, and makes Americans look better in other people's eyes.
     
  6. Rakkaus

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    Ha I've always wanted to study French. In high school I had the opportunity to study French, but couldn't fit the class into my schedule because of a stupid uesless Military Science class since my parents forced me to be in the JROTC. (I greatly regret that to this day, I would have had at least 2 years worth of French if MilSci didn't take up my elective slot :angry:)

    (I've formally studied Latin, Greek, Russian, Italian, German, Arabic...but not French :frowning2:)

    I've been thinking of maybe trying some self-study of French, but French pronunciation is such a killer that it seems like it's the sort of language you really need to learn in a classroom with a fluent French speaker teaching you- and correcting your pronunciation.

    I'm hoping though that my studies in Latin and Italian would help me if I ever do study French. Even though pronunciations are totally different (Italian being so simple, just pronounced phonetically as it's spelled, while French seems like such a struggle to learn proper pronunciation), I believe French and Italian are supposed to be the two most closely related Romance languages: the two languages share 89% of the same vocabulary!
     
  7. Bear101

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    I majored in French in college, but haven't done anything with it for at least 10 years. But recently, I've been thinking more and more about picking it back up. My pronunciation was ALWAYS horrible, but I could read it pretty well.
     
  8. Well, french is my first language and I must tell you that it's not easy to learn. One single word can have many meanings and the verbs can get confusing. It's one of those languages that is easier to learn in a class room, believe me.
     
  9. Harve

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    It's true, but I speak French almost fluently now, and from it I can barely understand written Italian and definitely no spoken Italian.

    If you're serious about learning it, I'd recommend exposing yourself to the language as much as possible (try putting your Facebook, phone, etc. in French - most people can navigate around those really well even if they don't understand every word) as well as actually studying its grammar. This might help.

    I'd also recommend being aware of its pronunciation from the get-go to avoid practising incorrect Anglicised (or Arabicised) pronunciations. Most consonants are the same as in English, except for the R, which fortunately exists in Arabic, but the vowels are very different. There's a difference between 'tout' and 'tu' that's very obvious to French speakers but not to English speakers because English speakers use a variety of vowels between the two, for example.
     
    #9 Harve, Jan 9, 2014
    Last edited: Jan 9, 2014
  10. huehue

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    I can understand french nearly perfectly,and used to be able to speak it to an intermediate level.

    Then stopped studying it for 3 years.
    Want to get back into it but don't really know how to.


    And about italian and french.
    I speak italian fluently and I can understand french really well because of it,as lots of the words are very similar.
     
  11. Well, my native language is french and I don't personally see the similarities with the Italian language. In fact, I don't understand it at all but that's just me. Maybe it's different for others.
     
  12. Projectfabulous

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    I've been studying French for 5 or 6 years now. I can listen and comprehend things and read and comprehend things pretty well. Speaking, I have some of the better pronunciation out of the majority of the people at my school. Although it takes me a second or two to come back with a response to a question, I can hold a conversation pretty well. T

    he easiest way is repetition. I naturally have a good memory, so memorizing and learning a language is easy(ish) for me. Another thing that helps is listening to French music, reading books in French, and watching tv shows in French because you get submersed in the language itself. I also find that watching a movie you know pretty well (often Disney movies for me), or in which you know the story line, in French helps pick up on words and phrasings and what not. Hope I helped :slight_smile:
     
  13. azrae1

    azrae1 Guest

     
  14. theskywreck

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    Le Français est une langue difficile à apprende. Apprendre le genre de chaque nom commun, c'est long; et même quelqu'un qui le parle depuis toujours, comme moi, a parfois des problèmes avec ceci.

    Translation: French is a difficult language to learn. It takes a long time to learn the 'gender' of all common nouns; and even someone who has been speaking it since forever, like me, sometimes has problems with that.
     
  15. azrae1

    azrae1 Guest


    That's true, while i tend to know the gender of the nouns very well but when it comes to fast speaking i tend to forget them and this sometimes gets me overly anxious about it that ends me up messing the entire grammar of the whole context :starwars:

    My teacher always advice me to more speak french at class but i tend to avoid that because i hate sounding dumb particularly when i miss pronounce or give a wrong grammatical context xD

    on the side note i understood the entire sentence you wrote (!)
     
  16. Black Swan

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    Yes, it's the tenses that confuse me. Past, present, true future and normal future... so confusing. I've been revising for a couple of weeks now so I don't forget anything.
     
  17. bingostring

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    With learning French.. ... the best thing I ever did was go on a 2 week intensive French course in France. Lessons all day, living with a French family. You really get the basics that way then that is the structure for adding vocabulary.

    I don't know if that is an option for you? (travelling and costs) or whether there is a similar sort of school where you live?
     
  18. SarahRen03

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    I'm on my third school year of studying French :]
     
  19. Tightrope

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    It is somewhat difficult. The genders of nouns is not a such a big problem, once a person becomes conversational. They are usually the same across the romance languages. One exception, from my travels, is the noun bridge. In FR and IT, it's masculine: le pont and il ponte. In SP and PT, it's feminine: la puente and a ponte.

    The issue I have with French is the excessive piling on of vowels in some words. That town near Montreal is crazy this way, and I have to always watch my spelling: Longueuil, just to say Lohn-ghey.
     
  20. Reinnux

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    I've studied French for two years, but then I refused of it, luckily I had the chance. It's a beautiful language, but it was too hard for me.