Reasons Why You Should Learn French
French has been a second language for most Western Europeans for centuries now. It is one of the four most popular languages (along with English, Spanish, and Mandarin) in which the majority of books are published. French is also an international language with over 220 million speakers worldwide!
If you're looking to add to your professional resume by learning a new language or just do something unique that not many people do, then French may be the perfect choice for you.
The French Language:
French is a Romance language originating from the Latin language. The root of all Romance languages is Latin (which, by the way, is where we get the name "Latin" from). Most Romance languages can be traced back to Latin via Vulgar Latin. This group of romance languages includes Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese among others.
French has about 70 million native speakers around the globe and another 50 million who are bilingual. It is an official language in 31 countries around the world.
How to Learn French:
Before you hop on over to a website like Google Translate to start learning French, you might want to consider taking an online class or getting a tutor. Learning alone can be difficult, and having someone there to help you think about how your pronunciation sounds and answer any questions you may have will make the process much easier and more effective. Plus, you'll learn a lot faster with one-on-one instruction.
Another option is to buy a self-study French course from a site like Udemy.com or Amazon.com. These courses will be dedicated to teaching you one key aspect of the French language and you'll learn about it along with the other aspects of the French language as you progress through each lesson. You can use these courses to supplement whatever you're learning with a teacher, or you may be able to use it as your main source of French instruction.
As always, listening to radio or online French news broadcasts is also a great way to learn a new language. It's more fun than reading a book and you're forced to understand what they're saying without taking your time.
Bonne Chance! (Good Luck!)
Vicky Vlachonis, Writer at French Chat Online
Comment: Thanks, Vicky. The first online French course I ever took was one of the first ones developed in the early 90s by a team of professors at Brigham Young University. There were no audio recordings or video clips available then and indeed there were very few audio recordings available anywhere on the internet even now. I would say that my online French course at BYU was relatively affordable, depending on which one you chose, but still quite expensive when I look at it now. My wife took a traditional classroom course with live lectures (as opposed to the audio lecture format I used) at BYU and it was extremely expensive. Vicky mentioned taking an online French course without being able to hear the language spoken in order to gain a basic comprehension of the language. This is a mistake I don't recommend, but I wish Vicky good luck with the language in whatever way she chooses to pursue it.
2. The French Language Is Not As Difficult As You May Think (via Memrise)
Some people believe they would never be able to learn French just by listening to someone speak. After all, it's so different from English and learning something the hard way is always much more effective than simply trying to memorize lists of vocabulary words. True, traditional learning methods don't appear to be nearly as effective as you might think and you should always consider taking a French class, or hiring a tutor or coach.
There are still plenty of people out there who believe they can learn the language on their own and when you look at some of the success stories, it makes sense that they believe that way. I know someone who learned languages all his life and he never took a single class, but still managed to do quite well. He speaks a couple of languages and he even went to a French language country for a month.
He was an amazing polyglot who spoke some 10 languages and he often said that it was the mentality of being able to learn other languages that allowed him to have such a high success rate as he never needed anyone's help. I'm not saying that his method is the best, but it clearly worked for him and it might work for you, too.
The problem is that there are so many watered down language programs out there today. They might seem to work, but they're not designed to get you results. Instead, they try to impress you with their flashy interfaces and lavish animations. In reality, they're just teaching you key phrases that won't make sense if you were thrown into a French environment.
You need something more real and authentic such as the language courses at Memrise.com – where the focus is on learning how words are used as part of everyday speech.
Conclusion:
The method I just mentioned is the same one that I use to learn new languages. When it works, it really works and you'll be able to converse in a foreign language with ease. The problem is that many people are turned off by the idea as they feel a program like this can't replace a human being. They're right, but there is no reason why you can't mix these programs together in an attempt to learn French more effectively.