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| French? Oui, je veux un peu d’amour! |
“Why French?“, they would ask. Everybody in the United States speaks Spanish… My response?
Bubbling champagne, thick moustaches, tons of beautiful women… I’m sure that when many people think of the French they picture: high class models, fashion, wonderful cuisine, and just a sense of luxury associated with the language! Have you ever noticed that if a restaurant, clothing store, or hair salon wanted to appear more “chic” then they would often use French names or words to elevate their products!
(For example: Prêt A Manger is a typical sandwich shop located in New York, UK, and Japan with other 250 locations. They utilize a French phrase Ready to Eat as a business name… sounds classy, eh?)
I personally always loved the way French sounded. Sure, English is beautiful! However, the liaisons, tons of vowels, and eloquent words allow French to roll of your tounge. I’m sure you’ll instantly begin to kindle un peu d’amour (a little love). I always recalled my friend Jeremy saying, “You can never tell if a French man is angry because it always sounds like he wants to make love.”
So do you want to learn French?
Learning a langauge requires a ton of commitment, time, hard work, and in some cases,
money! Funny, all the things that none of us have these days. Although there is an Ideal Time To Learn a Language from a scientific stand-point. It’s NEVER too late to begin learning a new language that will interest you! How long will it take? That’s a good question too and there are many of factors that go into it (thus, check out this link: How Long to Become Fluent in French).
For whatever reason it may be, French remains the 2nd most taught foreign language in the United States. I’m sure that people are still dreaming of Paris: the French sense of fashion and style, the elegant magasins sur les Champs-Élysées, and the little corner street cafés that riddle the avenues. It’s all too much to take in.
The benefits of learning French
Increased communcation skills,
An understanding of another culture,
An increased appreication of both your native language and French,
Usefulness in subject areas such as Chemistry, Cooking, Fashion, Hairdressing, Ballet, etc…,
The possibility to further your career with the understanding of another language,
The ability to go to France or a Francophone country, and truly enjoy the people and the ambience.
Spanish is a beautiful language, but the countries that speak it are poor. If you look at a map of the world’s top ten economies, you will see that none of those countries speak Spanish. According to CNN, France ranks 6th in GDP.
What is the best way to learn French? I hope to spent two or three months in Paris next year and I speak very little French.
P.S. I really think you site is great!
Hey IC-FM! That’s strange that I don’t have such an article, so I’ll get right on that. But to answer your question now, I understand you have roughly one year’s worth of time to get some French knowledge! It’s very hard to get a good beginner’s foothold on a new language without the aid of some sort of teacher (whether that be a real human, a computer program, or videos of people teaching).
I think the first step is for you to start with the beginner vocabulary, which you can find by simply using google. You want to focus on pronunciation and RETENTION of the material you learn (aka. practice with it a lot). Topics which you can start off with is: How to greet people/say goodbye, How to tell time, Talk about the weather, Directions, How to Order food, Vocabulary related to buying things.
I also would recommend you looking into the verbs: être (to be), aller (to go), faire (to do), and avoir (to have) because these are the MOST IMPORTANT verbs in the French language. Learn how to make simple sentences with them, like “I have a dog” = “J’ai un chien”.
You can probably start with about.com’s French language site.. they are really good with beginner material. I hope this answer helped you a little :/
Finally, I was waiting for somebody to comment on my “controversial” line. Spanish is a cool language, I guess I’m giving it a bad rap – to every man his own opinion. I say “Spanish is the language of the poor” to Spanish learners just to annoy them.. it is a very useful language to learn in the United States and the world… (yes it’s beautiful to).
This post is rather bias if you take a good look at it and I wrote it a while ago, so I will probably edit it. Thanks for your insight! I hope this single post does not “turn you off” from my blog.
I strongly disagree about Spanish being the language of the poor. Spanish is a beautiful language spoken by many people around the world.