whats an easy way to learn french?

Also try the software, the rosetta stone, a bit pricey but works extremely well and it’s pretty fun (my kids are both trying it out, one for French & one for Italian).

The best way I found to learn English and Japanese was to actually be around people who spoke it. 80% of the time softwares and dictionaries/phrase books only give the formal(polite) way to say something, whilst actually being around real people will give you a sense of knowledge of the different kinds of slang. While learning Japanese, I found it best to watch Japanese TV shows, listen to Japanese music, interact with real Japanese people so that when I speak, I can understand how a word is supposed to be said in context.

I’d suggest interacting with the French language beyond mere softwares and books.

Aleksandr, Future USMC 0321

my native language is tagalog. when i was a kid, i learned how to speak english because of watching a lot of movies, reading magazines, and talking to people in school. im still learning up to now though :-)

i think a classroom setup for language learning is helpful because at least you’ll have a guide on the sentence structures and stuff like that. practice a lot! :-)

It took me until I was 12 to fully learn English, and I still don’t know it all. Lol. A classroom setting is helpful though because you not only have a guide, but you have friends to practice and help each other. Also, being in a classroom setting helps build interest too because you have worksheets and such instead of just going “Well, today I guess I’ll just learn how to say…”.

ditto.

btw, it would also help to practice ‘speaking’ it or incorporating it in your daily language. like for me, i write English better than i speak it because i dont practice enough and dont use it much when i speak with other people. i guess the problem too with learning another language is that your native ‘accent’ is still heard when you speak the other language you’re learning. :S at least that’s the case for us Filipinos.

Same here, girl. At home I usually speak Russian with my family, and that’s blended in with bits of Uzbek as well so I hardly ever speak English out of school. I write or shall I say type better than I talk in English. I only have an accent when I pronounce words with the letters ‘L’, ‘R’, and ‘H’. Lol, those are like the 3 most common letters in English. Damnnn.

ive been studying english since kindergarten and i still have a Filipino accent. :S I guess the hardest part especially for those learning another language is that we ‘think’ using our native language and before we speak, we translate this idea to the language we’re supposed to speak in. so there’s kind of a lag, if you know what i mean. that’s why when we speak, we’re slow and say ‘uuuuhhh’ a lot :S i hate it, but that’s what happens.

so really, its about practicing with other people. i got to practice my english a lot when my american cousin went for a vacation in our house. so yeah, it will really help to have a native (x language) speaker for you to practice with once you already know the basics of the language.

True that. I always say ‘uhh’ when I talk in English. It’s just so tough to remember the English word for a word we can say in our native tongue. Especially when there sometimes is no word that can be used for a translation. Like the word ‘zanuda’, I still cannot find the proper words to describe what it means in Russian, it’s just one of those words.

yes, i hate it when that happens. there are just some words in our native language that has no English counterpart, we end up describing it because there’s no translation. :S and its like, we’re not doing justice to that word :S

Yep. And sometimes when you describe it, they start to think of something totally opposite of that word. For example, I didn’t know the English word for “calm yourself” and so I described it to be like laying in a grassy area with mushrooms. The woman thought I was telling her to get high. Lol.

lol that’s funny :-) im not sure i have encountered something like that yet hahaha and im not sure i would want to. hahha

but there are times that i speak too formally though and it would sound awkward :S (like its not normally used in everyday speech).

True true. I rarely talk in slang when I speak English and it sounds really weird to people. I tend to mix up the order of speech sometimes and I still have trouble pronouncing words. Like my biggest problem is I say “I don’t want to make it much too trouble.” and some people go “What?”. or I’ll say “I weewee wike that khat.”(I really like that hat.) I feel like a dumb immigrant. Ohs well, I work for minimum wage and they can never fire me cause I’m a minority! :)

people here strive too much to speak in english :S what i hate here is when you got the english pronunciation wrong, people are gonna laugh at you (i.e. Beach and B!tch, yeah, sometimes, people here find it hard to differentiate them) :S but when you pronounce Tagalog (our native language) wrong, its ok. Some dont even use Tagalog at all. i mean, wth?! we should be better at speaking our native language than any other language.

but oh well, i rant, i rant.

Some people have an ear for languages and pick them up easily while other people struggle. Most of my friends in college hardly cracked a book for French, got easy A’s and had a passable accent. I studied quite a bit and struggled to get my B’s and always sounded like an American reading from a phrase book. My best friend in high school was a linguist in the Army and could pick up the basics and be conversational in new languages in a month.

The quickest method is total immersion where you live in a French speaking region.

Rosetta stone is highly reguarded and is favored by the State Department and the Marines. The FBI uses Pimsleur to teach their agents foreign languages. From reading about the two systems I lean toward Pimsleur.

Haha, that is very true though. Most of my relatives who don’t speak Russian anymore pronounce a lot of words wrong, but they don’t care, and they live in a home where the family speaks more Russian than I do. :) I hate how English is becoming so widely spoken in different countries now. Soon, there will be no Russian or Tagalog or Hindi, it’ll all just be a blend of a few words and then 90% will be English. It’s like Communism. When Communists came to Uzbekistan, they made everyone speak Russian and now Uzbek is a blend of 40% Russian and 60% Uzbek or some other Turkic language. Sad how the world is crumbling.

Pimsleur was the predecessor to Rosetta Stone. I’ve used Rosetta Stone a couple of times but found that it’s not really a good tool for talking a human(informal speech). To me, it’s much too formal for some situations. I agree on the linguistic knowledge though, some do pick up a language quicker than others. My sisters can hardly speak or read or even write in Russian. I on the other hand, can do all of them.

rosetta stone lol

I had wanted to learn French for a long time then I just called Pimsleur on 877-566-2629 and they were great in recommending me a course that suited my needs.

I’ve taken local classes, used Rosetta Stone, and purchased Smart French audio CDS. Yes…I am an old dog and its very hard for me to learn new tricks. Pimsleur was effective because of the reviews that occur throughout the audio set. You just don’t memorize it one time and then never hear it again.

The next session builds on the previous session with a some “new material” and by the end you’ve built a “small” but effective vocabulary. I also learned specific language rules that were omitted or assumed common knowledge in my French class. I

understand that other users may want a written book or guide. However, I’ve found that with French, it is better NOT to know how the word is spelled because it doesn’t sound anything like the way it’s spelled. It’s definitely better to learn the correct pronounciation FIRST. I highly recommend this audio series. It was much more effective than the Smart French Audio CDs.

It’s great that you can absorb a new language effortlessly without any reading, writing or computer use. I put them onto my iPod and listen while I am driving and jogging. So many other courses require you to sit at a study desk. Definitely not for me.

If you want to learn French do what I did and call toll free 877-566-2629.

You will be fluent in French before you know it.