7 Immutable Tips to Learn French

If you’re just starting to learn French, you might find it helpful to learn some tips about the language.

They say French the language of love, so it would seem to make sense that you grow your affection for the language. Think French as the language of friendship among people from different countries and races. Imagine yourself gossiping in French with your friends from Algeria, Mali, Tunisia, Canada and France. Below are the tips…..

1.   Start with answering the question- what is your passion or hobby? It is important because you need to read and talk more on this topic in French. If you are a football crazy then you look for the websites, news portals or paper magazines, newspapers related to football in French. If you are a movie freak then you will dedicate your time for movie-related materials. Your passion could be literature, history, business or anything you name. But having a passion is mandatory.

2.   Never try to learn all the grammatical rules at once. If you learn any new sentence structure, practice, practice and practice until it comes from your mouth easily. A misconception needs to be erased that, French has many tenses and grammatical rules. True. But false. You don’t use all the tenses to be a fluent French speaker. For example, past tense is found in written documents but people widely use the present perfect form instead of the past tense. Present indefinite can make the same sense of Future tense and it is well understood. Use present indefinite, present perfect, imperfect, conditional

3.   Do not focus on grammar. Focus on reading more. Because French reading will enhance the familiarity of different tenses and expressions which will eventually enhance the understanding of the grammatical rules.

4.   When you read any article or story, don’t expect to know the meanings of all the words. Try to guess and make yourself realize the gist. Later, consult a dictionary.

5.   To overcome the listening problem, select a few movies, video clips or audio clips. Keep listening those again and again. It is true that French words are not pronounced as they are written. And it’s a huge drawback. Never try new clips before finishing the previous ones properly.

6.   If you want to write French like a native speaker, select a particular newspaper that is easy to understand like 20 minute or rfi.fr. Read everyday and try to copy the common expressions in your writing. When your level gradually increases, you can then follow Le Figaro and Le Monde.

7.   Think like a French while speaking. Copy the body language. French people are reputed to use their hands and facial expressions while talking. If you can pick this habit of using body parts, your speaking ability will improve. Because you are thinking like a French. 

Bonne Chance!

French Vs Spanish: 5 considerable points before choosing any of these two languages

The two most popular languages offered in any language schools are French and Spanish. Choosing any of the languages can be compared with choosing the flavor of ice-creams. Neither flavor is better or worse than the other. Here are 5 considerable points before choosing the language.

1. Number of native speakers and countries: Spanish is the primary language in 20 countries and one dependent entity, totaling around 442 million people. On the other hand, total number of French speakers is 338 million. French enjoys the official status in 29 countries and as the Administrative/Cultural language in 9 more countries- Algeria, Cambodia, laos, Lebanon, morocco, Mauritius, Mauritania, Tunisia, Vietnam. Only English and French are spoken in all five continents.
   
   
   
   
2. Usefulness to non-speakers and to learn another language: Portuguese speakers can understand spoken Spanish without much difficulty. But Spanish speakers cannot even recognize the very similar Portuguese words because of the different pronunciation rules of Portuguese. Both spoken and written French are distant language for Spanish and Portuguese speakers. And Spanish can be understood by the french speakers if they complete the elementary level of Spanish. It is widely said that, French speakers learn Spanish and Italian easier than Spanish and Italian speakers learn French.
3. International organizations: Spanish is one of the six official languages of UN but all its agencies but The Secretariat use two working languages- English and French. Spanish and French both are among the 23 official languages of EU. But the European Commission conducts its internal business in three languages- English, French and German. Apart from English, French is also co-official language in most of the international organizations. Spanish is the official language of only a few organizations that do not give French the official status. Otherwise, French shares the honor with either English or Spanish.
   

   
   

   Countries with Spanish as an official language

   
   

   
   

   
   

   
   
   

    Geographical distribution of French language
   

   
   
   
4. Similarity with English: French shares the large number of vocabulary with English, though the pronunciation is different. Regarding sentence structures, having a good command in English helps form sentences in French but not all french expressions are easy to translate. Spanish grammar is not that much similar to English. Spanish vocabulary is more similar to Italian and Portuguese. Comprehension of Spanish by French speakers who have not studied the language is lower than 50%. But it is much lower for the English speakers.
5. Difficult sections: As we know, 4 sections define the knowledge of any language- speaking, listening, reading and writing. According to the students of elementary level, French is easy to speak, read and write but difficult to understand while listening. On the other hand, first year of learning Spanish goes very smooth since Spanish is written phonetically (you write as you hear), but difficulties arise in upper levels as Spanish grammar is more complicated than French grammar.

Now you make your choice.......