 Poster: A snowHead
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I thought that learning french properly may come in handy as i will be touring france for a month over feb/march and was just wondering the best way of going about it. I did french GCSE but at that age had no real interest in it and 8years on can't remember that much. I can just about get the point over if i think about it but want to do better! I will be going to afghan soon and in my off time want to study so was planning on getting some textbooks/workbooks and some sort of computer program. Can anyone suggest any specific ones which they have used please as i'm sure there are plenty of snowheads that have gone through this themselves. Any advice appreciated. Cheers
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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I second the Michel Thomas thing. I've not used the French course, but have used Spanish and Italian and it's a really good way of picking up / reminding yourself of the basics.
They seem to be quite commonly stocked in libraries too, so saves you shelling out for it yourself.
Amy.
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
You need to Login to know who's really who.
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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Another vote for Michel Thomas.
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You'll need to Register first of course.
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Michel Thomas is good to get you at the getting what you want in a restaurant level; but beyond that I found it of limited use. Not many French people really want to discuss the political and economic situation at the moment! Also, none of them speak in the clear and precise way that Michel and his students do. However it is much better than any of the others I have tried; Earworms just got on my nerves. I do tend to re-listen before each trip, and I can at least explain that people are speaking too quickly for me, although that gets a bit thin after the third saying.
Bear in mind though, you will undoubtedly be better at foreign languages than I am.
I do enjoy the French tongue, but have found that the locals expect you to say something first. 
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And another vote. The vocabulary is a bit limited but I haven't found anything better for embedding basic sentence structure and word order The secondary school that my son goes to has adapted the model for use as their primary strategy for language teaching.
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mark_20vt, if your Hampshire location is anywhere near mine I can recommend my fantastic French teacher, who is based in Langstone (near Havant). She is French, qualified to teach French as a foreign language, has a lot of experience and a great sense of humour. She does one to one or small groups (typically 2 - 4 people).
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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Just remember no piscine in the pool and you'll be fine.
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| Monium wrote: |
They seem to be quite commonly stocked in libraries too, so saves you shelling out for it yourself.
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Or you might find it knocking about on a few popular torrent sites...
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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I was based in France for 6 weeks during the summer with work, I never studied French in my life and purchased a CD learning pack called "Berlitz" shortly before I left. I found it very good for the basics, I was able order food, deal with the hotel, count, read menus and shop in the market after a few weeks......still, I would rather German as a language.
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And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
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mark_20vt, i have found speaking english slowly and loudly and waving my arms about had proved to be very successful as well 
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| pam w wrote: |
| mark_20vt, if your Hampshire location is anywhere near mine I can recommend my fantastic French teacher, who is based in Langstone (near Havant). She is French, qualified to teach French as a foreign language, has a lot of experience and a great sense of humour. She does one to one or small groups (typically 2 - 4 people). |
does she fancy coming out to afghanistan with me as that is where i will be studying! Thanks for the heads up on her though!
chrisb, that has been my method for ages! About time i made an effort though...
I'll look into the Michel Thomas cd's although there seems quite a selection to choose from. Don't know what to make of the no pens, no writing way of learning as i am one of those people that find it hard learning from just listening and need to write things down to remember. Thanks for all the advice so far though!
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You know it makes sense.
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I'm using the Michel Thomas cd's at the moment and enjoying them. There are various levels available, picked up all the courses on ebay.
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Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
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I did a Linguaphone Spanish course the other week prior to going to Spain which I thought was excellent. A GCSE-in-eight-months course 15 years ago had slid to not very much. Met some spanish people in a bar and managed to slip virtually every word from the CDs into the conversation.
Helps if you are learning with somebody else and you can talk foreign to each other to keep the words in the front of your mind.
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Poster: A snowHead
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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About.com do some online lessons which are quite good. There was also someone doing lessons through Skype or MSN, I'll see if I can find the info soon.
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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Personally, I'd start here
http://french.about.com/cs/beginning1/a/begin.htm
And once you start getting the hang of the regular verbs etc do the first michel thomas course (8 disc verison).
Keep going with the about course and supplement it with the additional michel thomas + vocab courses.
You should be quite capable of holding a conversation after this. People also reccomend the Rosetta Stone computer package, but by the time I got around to using it I found it a bit basic, someone else might be able to reccomend it though!
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The French never say that. Although they do say 'ooh la la' quite a lot, which made me laugh as I came out of school French lessons convinced that no-one could possibly say anything so silly and the teacher was evidently a clueless old fool.
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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Although they do say 'ooh la la' quite a lot, which made me laugh as I came out of school French lessons convinced that no-one could possibly say anything so silly
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That was exactly my reaction too - I was amazed to here so many "ooh la la"s too (though it would be more accurately spelt "olala". They do say "zut" though more often something ruder.
Another word worth slinging around a bit is "allez". Crops up all the time. Means a whole range of useful things, such as "I've wasted enough of my time hanging round here talking to you, time to move on"
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You'll need to Register first of course.
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thanks for all the suggestions so far people!
bfg, I will have internet access but it is quite limited to just staying in touch with people back home really, not enough time to do online learning. Luckily one of the lads who will be out there with me is wanting to learn too as his mrs is french so that will be handy to learn together. I can always go have a chat with some of the countless canadians out there too!
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I'm amazed at how many 'ooh la la's' I seem to explete quite unconsciously 
Quand meme gets bandied about too, but I have never worked out why - is it used like British English speakers use 'Do you know what I mean?@
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My favourite word from French lessons that I didn't think existed is bof, of course it isn't pronounced like that instead being a mixture of saying pffft while doing an impression of a horse and essentially accompanied by a shrug and upturned hands. I use this quite a lot when trying to speak French.
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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I think this may have been covered before but, IME, the most oft-used French non-word is 'ben', as in 'ben oui!' or 'ben non!' or 'ben voilà!' etc. (Pronounced like the French word for bath.)
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One of the restaurnt owners speaks with a strong dialect, eg bien has no silent n , other words are unrecognisable. Getting used to it, and even understood a conversation last winter about his friend breaking his coccyx, he was in the 'back bottom hospital' while JulesB was in the 'head hospital'
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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I'd recommend coffee break french,
it's free to download from itunes store, each lesson is about 20mins long and there're about 50 odd lessons up there. It starts out with the basics and has a guy teaching and a girl learning along too, which is good as he can pick up on her mistakes which I find myself making.
I started listening on my ipod in preparation for cycle touring in france and the upcoming season and found it really useful, I could ask most things everywhere we were and was understood straight away, my only problem is that you never really learn the replies you may receive so I often had no idea what the answer was! Just speaking to people out there really helped and you pick up new phrases, maybe give it a go and try and hold some conversations with the french canadians. For some reason I only did gcse german (think I just found it easier!) at a similar time to you but it still jogged my memory of things from french lessons years before that.
All the best out there.
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And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
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properjob, seconded. i try to listen to the coffee break lessons on my commute.
mark_20vt, good luck on the afghanistan tour.
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| MarjMJ wrote: |
Quand meme gets bandied about too, but I have never worked out why - is it used like British English speakers use 'Do you know what I mean? |
didn't in garbure we trust say "quand meme" at the end of his TV interview the other night?
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You know it makes sense.
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MarjMJ,
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Quand meme gets bandied about too, but I have never worked out why - is it used like British English speakers use 'Do you know what I mean
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It covers a range of meanings between 'even so' and 'for goodness' sake!' (But not, I think, 'do you know what I mean?')
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Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
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properjob, Thanks for the recommendation, I've downloaded to my i-Phone for listening to on the train. 
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Poster: A snowHead
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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I love the Hugo "X in 3 months" books. A bit grammary but chock full of meaty goodness.
After a while I've actually found you don't need to bother with the CD: the book is better as you can flick backwards and forwards and do the exercises at your own pace.
The pronunciation is fine without the CD as long as you just do your best Inspector Clouseau with the phonetic spellings. OK, I've only used it for Italian and Portugese, but the latter is the same except you do Sean Connery in "Hunt for Red October" instead of Clouseau. "Doy-ish bill yetish sim plesh para cash kye ish" -- two one-way tickets for Cascais.
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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| Quote: |
It covers a range of meanings between 'even so' and 'for goodness' sake!' (But not, I think, 'do you know what I mean?')
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Cheers Hurtle, - makes sense - it was certainly being used in that sense.
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bien has no silent n
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Yeah - I was told by French school teacher many many moons ago that this was feature of the southern french dialect and things like bien and pain were almost byeng and peng [ to my ears].
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
You need to Login to know who's really who.
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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Where I live, for social interaction you can just about get by with a few adjectives: "sympa", "gay", "chien" (yes the last one is used as an adjective, and the middle one has the old English meaning), plus a liberal sprinkling of "allez". If you include "mec" too, as in "Allez, il est sympa, ce mec" you're already advanced.
What absolutely confused me is that Belgians use "savoir" to mean "pouvoir / être capable de". As in "tu sais jouer tennis demain?" I almost answered "je sais jouer tennis tous les jours..."
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You'll need to Register first of course.
You'll need to Register first of course.
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| horizon wrote: |
| What absolutely confused me is that Belgians use "savoir" to mean "pouvoir / être capable de". As in "tu sais jouer tennis demain?" I almost answered "je sais jouer tennis tous les jours..." |
That's interesting horizon, I never knew that. I rarely come into contact with Francophone Belgians (mostly Vlaams), but I love listening in as I find their French the clearest of all accents and dialects to follow.
mark_20vt, screw French, keep your head down and your eyes open. Good luck!
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andyph,
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Francophone Belgians...the clearest of all accents and dialects to follow.
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Ugh. I used to have to clear out all the ugly intonations and usage (including savoir/pouvoir) every time I left Belgium, when I was living there for a bit. What with that, and having used a lot of my childhood French in the Valais, my accent was NOT great! 
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| Hurtle wrote: |
| I used to have to clear out all the ugly intonations and usage (including savoir/pouvoir) |
What do they do with savoir/pouvoir?
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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Hurtle, cf Parisian? Put me on speed and I might have a chance.
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laundryman, andyph wrote:
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Belgians use "savoir" to mean "pouvoir / être capable de". As in "tu sais jouer tennis demain?" I almost answered "je sais jouer tennis tous les jours..."
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Savoir is used often where good French would have pouvoir, though I must admit that I've never heard quite such a hideous turn of phrase as andyph's example.
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