tips on learning french

you could try night classes in an adult learning environment - might help.

Do you have a long commute? - you could either listen to CD's in the car or even on an MP3 player on the bike if you cycle commute - people will look at you funny right enough as you are talking to yourself but it might work.

Good luck with it - some people seem to be just good with langages. My sister in Law and her fella moved to the alps a couple of years back - to chamonix as they are winter sports nuts. He has picked it up real quick while the sister in law hasn't been quite so quick.

My sole, remembered, phrase from my 'o' level french (from some time ago) is:
"ca suffit Thierry - cest pa mal pour les dents"

Which translates as "thats enough terry - it's bad for your teeth"

Just stick a 'a' sound on the end of the last word in a sentence of Franglais, shrug your shoulders a lot and gesture manically and you'll be fine. Works for me

popette wrote:

I studied french for 5 years at school. ...

I'm guessing that you already have a good grasp of the grammar and are really wanting to practice your French rather than learn it. I'm also assuming that speaking and listening are more important than reading / writing. So I'd suggest:

Listening-

Apprendre.TV has numerous short video reports with exercises at different levels. It's got transcripts of the videos so you can look up new vocab.

Stream French radio over the internet. Eg. Radio France International a kind of French 'World Service'. It also has a language learning section.

France Bleu is more like local radio. I should warn you that you may encounter French regge and rap music on the station - tres bizzare.

Speaking-

Speaking practice is more difficult. Ideally you want a native French speaker to converse with - the biggest barrier to verbal communication is poor pronunciation. You could have a look at French Meetup to see if there's a group near you. They've nearly always got native speakers in the group.

French Language and Cultural centres such as The Alliance Française (the link goes to the Glasgow one 'cos it's too late to be Googling, but it'll give you an idea of what's available) do conversation and cookery classes, book club, and other things, all in French.

It's late and I can't be bothered looking through my bookmarks, but if this is the kind of thing your looking for, Popette, I'll try and find time to look out more.

Bon chance.

As Michel Thomas says, 60% of English words are French, so just speak English with a comedy French accent and you're almost there.

I made a big stride in France the other week - I mastered the French 'r' sound for the first time, and all of a sudden I was understood. It was a remarkable change - I used to think that some French people were just being a bit shitty with mee because of my bad accent but I think - and have been told - that they probably genuinely didn't understand what I was saying. Cool.

With Crapaud on Alliance Française for language courses - I have done several at Institut Français (they have a very similar approach I believe) over the years including an intensive two-week job. My native French speaking missus could not have been more impressed with the improvement.
AF ain't cheap and the initial assessment might make you feel like all your DIY effort to date was wasted but you're a cyclist so you must know the pain to gain ratio as well as anyone.
Otherwise, the usual advice about swapping your entire life and family probably holds good.

Bonjour,

I'm glad to see that some English people are actually willing to learn French. It's such a lovely language.

You can buy some french DVDs. Just make sure you have french subtitles though.
We have a lot of very good movies in France (Yes I'm a frenchman in UK 8) )
The first time you can watch it with the subtitles in french to get all the words.

If you have any spare bedroom you can try to accomodate a french student and force him to speak french with you. Or you can speak with me on this forum about bike stuff

Otherwise a French lover might just be what you need :oops: .

Damien

PS:
I would say:
"ca suffit Thierry - c'est mauvais pour les dents"
Because "ca suffit Thierry - cest pa mal pour les dents" is wrong

damien55 wrote:

Bonjour,

I'm glad to see that some English people are actually willing to learn French. It's such a lovely language.

You can buy some french DVDs. Just make sure you have french subtitles though.
We have a lot of very good movies in France (Yes I'm a frenchman in UK 8) )
The first time you can watch it with the subtitles in french to get all the words.

If you have any spare bedroom you can try to accomodate a french student and force him to speak french with you. Or you can speak with me on this forum about bike stuff

Otherwise a French lover might just be what you need :oops: .

Damien

PS:
I would say:
"ca suffit Thierry - c'est mauvais pour les dents"
Because "ca suffit Thierry - cest pa mal pour les dents" is wrong

well - thats interesting - the sole phrase from my french 'o' level 1989 - I got it wrong.

I'll bear that in mind next time I have to reprimand terry for putting too much sugar in his tea

I found reading (eg good story with straightforward French: La Bicyclette Bleu by Regine Deforges series) with a good monolingual dictionary (eg Robert Micro Poche) really helped my vocab and ability to understand rapidly spoken French, reducing the need to translate. Order from amazon.fr - cheap even with postage. Try to do something every day for a min 30min to 1hr without fail and always include some reading on top. My accent is 'correct' but rather English - but I can keep up in conversation and I never get complaints about it! - so I say don't worry too much about accent as long as it is good enough to get through. You have to just ignore possible embarrassment and go for it - don't let any English companions speak English when you are conversing in French - it is confusing and kicks off doing translation rather than just blurting it out straight off in French. BTW I was useless in Fr at school - they nearly persuaded me that I had no 'talent' so couldn't do it!

1892 wrote:

watch allo, allo

Thank goodness for 1892! It was getting frightfully middle class in here ...


Oh, edited to add: "I can't speak French,,, so I'll let the funky music do the talking,"

My suggestions to listen to some spoken French, which sounds like what you want :-

Podcasts : there are a multitude of different languages available in the iTunes Store and the first page displays 5 options which are usually free.

Long wave radio : It tends to break up a bit, but if conditions are in your favour, you might find some programmes of use.

Youtube : look for some Tour de France interviews and news articles, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOCqhaUDWZw is an example.

Best of luck

Get a good teacher - chopper read should do you well:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWoS4nKOSwc



(not safe for work - or kids - or if you don't like swearing!)

This is a really useful forum for vocabulary and usage - from the WordReference site. http://forum.wordreference.com/forumdisplay.php?f=3

It's high volume so you'll have to use the search facility to get the most out of it, but I find the members very helpful - and there's plenty of opportunity to help with French speakers who want to learn English (and stopping them learning American....)

It's cross referenced to the dictionary part of the site. Very useful page to have open while you're surfing la toile...

Salut...

David

Wave your arms, shout and call them a bunch of cheese eating surrender monkeys, far too much pretentious crap talked about French cooking and culture, both of which are highly overrated if you ask me.