Learning French, how hard is it?

I came across some French textbooks whilst cleaning up in the attic at the library, and one of the perks is I get to keep any treasures I find while doing it (if it's up there it's well out of circulation).

So I'm going to try to learn me some France-talkin'. I already have some passable German skills, so is French hard to learn?

Rely heavily on language aids like tapes and videos that emphasize how to properly speak the language.

French words never seem to be pronounced the way it looks.

The French in Action series is expensive but the very best. They play these on public television or college tv learning stations sometimes.

is probably the hardest thing about French, IMO. Every freaking tense, every freakin' pronoun has it's own form of the verb.

That, and in French every syllable is pronounced. Unlike English where certain syllables are silent.

At least French has regular verbs and only two genders!

I was fluent as a teenager and had a Parisien accent, thanks to my VERY PROPER Parisien teacher who NEVER spoke Englisch to us. My program crashed when I began learning German (GERMAN IS, well... SPECIAL). To this day I can read and understand spoken French, but if I dare try to speak, only German words come out. I realized I had a problem on a train returning from France when I spoke to the conductor. At first he was quite friendly, but then gave me such a look and quickly went about his business. I suddenly realized I'd started the sentence in French and ended it in German. My travelmate and I had a good laugh over that faux-pas!

honestly - get an audio course and forget about reading and writing this messy language until you have a "head" and "ear" for it. Then the writing may make more sense eventually. As if our spelling does.

French is about as far from being a phonetic language as English. That is to say, French has its own fair share of silent letters (h, for instance, and often e, especially at the end of a word).

I took French for six years in school, and I still have a good reading/writing knowledge of it from the fabled and ubiquitous "cereal box French." It's harder than Spanish, but I would say easier than German (based on my smattering of German and my acquaintance with Old English, which is similar, in terms of deep grammatical structures.)

I have been learning French for about a year and a half and the short answer is yes, it is hard. But there is quite a payoff. It is really neat how somethings just don't translate - therefore your mind will grow through the process and learn new ways of thinking. I agree with some of the other posters, conjugations are difficult, I also recommend "French in Action". Another tip - if you have a DVD player, a large portion of DVDs come with a French soundtrack - often with French subtitles - another good way to get exposure - and the more exposure, the more you hear the language, the better. I also like going to amazon.fr and getting French music. I love a French reggae band called Tryo - great music and great politics.

Bonne chance et vive la France!

Of course, some people are born linguists and some are not. I'm not so I struggled through 6 years of so of hs and college French to get to a point somewhat short of fluency. If you're a gifted linguist, though, you'll probably find French to be a snap.

Some are just "survival", whereas I know some others quite well. (In order of knowledge: Russian, German, Polish, Spanish, French, Czech). Of them all, French is the most difficult in terms of pronunciation, for me, by far... but, as far as reading goes, it and Spanish tie for easiest. So, to echo the others: get tapes if you want to learn it for speaking purposes.

Bonne chance!

:P

:loveya:

They offer the best courses IMHO.

set on CD-ROM. The disc allows you to go with total immersion or a more traditional route. Costs about $50. I found it very good - the results allowed me to conduct biz over there.

Like most language courses, it will only work if you stick to it...daily work & repetition.

www.transparent.com

Bonne chance.

on edit: today's price is $39.95

how smart are you?