Tell me about the French language

[Rainman]

I am fluent in Spanish, and can read and under Italian, but I know little or nothing of French. I know how to say a few phrases, but nothing more. I'm not asking for a list of miscellaneous random phrases that are "common" I'm asking about the structure of the language. I guess it's hard to explain what I mean. What's the form of the language? How is it structured? What is proper grammar? It's hard to explain what I'm trying to ask I guess... In English verbs don't follow as much of a pattern. "I have, we have, they have, you have" for example. The word have is always used. In spanish "I tengo, we tenemos, they tienen, you tienes". The verb changes to suit the person. Is French like that? give me some examples of how to conjugate verbs and such. I'd really like to start learning basic French. Thanks. -Rain

[thegnome54]

In English verbs don't follow as much of a pattern. "I have, we have, they have, you have" for example. The word have is always used. In spanish "I tengo, we tenemos, they tienen, you tienes". The verb changes to suit the person. As far as verb conjugations go, French is a royal pain in the ass. The general format for conjugations is Je (I) Tu (you) Il/elle/ons (he/she/people - a.k.a. he/she says and people say are the same in French) nous (we) vous (you, but either plural or polite - 'you people' or 'you sir', I guess) Ils/Elles (they - masculine and feminine, respectively) There are a whole lot of tenses, but I see them as two general groups - there are the ones where the verb has a different spelling for each pronoun, and ones where the verb is always the same, but there is another word between them which changes. It's a bit hard to explain, so I'll give you some examples. Manger (to eat) conjugated in the present tense (the first type of tense) Je mange Tu manges Il/elle/on mange Nous mangeons Vous mangez Ils/elles mangent Pretty easy. Most verbs that end in -er have identical endings for present tense. But then there's things like the passe compose, the general past tense - J'ai mange Tu as mange Il/elle/on a mange Nous avons mange Vous avez mange Ils/elles ont mange (each of those 'mange' should have an accent going up and to the right on them) As you can see, the verb itself does not change at all. It's the preceding word which changes, the equivalent of the 'did' in "I DID eat" in english. The "eat" doesn't change for the pronoun, but the 'did' part does. The tenses can be put into those two major groups, and that's the general structure of conjugation. There are tons of annoying little exceptions to that structure, but that's the main idea. In reality though, proper conjugation isn't extremely crucial in conversation. You can hear a foreigner say 'we eated' and understand without difficulty, right? French, as I suspect Spanish does, has a gender for every item it has a name for. It's ridiculous, I know, but tables are females and the roof is male. This isn't a crucial point either, but it's a characteristic of the language. I'm trying to think of any peculiar sentence-reversals or anything in French, but none come to mind. Most sentences seem to translate quite readily into english- Je suis assis dans la chaise I am sitting in the chair (word for word) However, I guess if you add in some extra things it can get muddled. For example, Je ME suis assis dans la chaise I myself did sit in the chair (word for word again :p) That should translate to "I sat myself in the chair", so I guess the orders of things aren't quite identical. If you're looking to learn to speak, understand, and read French, I think you'll be very successful with your Spanish background. The languages are supposed to be very close. I would not recommend attempting to WRITE in French, though, as the conjugations are pretty ridiculous at times and the language is very odd for people who didn't grow up with it. Good luck!

[Spartiate]

Well, French is my native language, so maybe I can be of some help. It is similar to Spanish, and very similar (like 80%) to Italian, which is no surprise given that they are all romance languages. The hardest thing about French for an English speaker is the genders, every word's gender must be memorised. For example, "une oreille" (an ear) is feminine while "un orteil" (a toe) is masculine, now who decided this and what logic they used I have no idea, but the point is that word genders in french are quite random and must be memorised (or you get odd looks in public). The verbs are pretty simple once you get used to them (they are seperated into catagories: verbs finishing in er, verbs finishing in ir,...), but the participle, especially with the verb to have (avoir), is a real pain in the ass (legend says that the grammatical rule was created after a monk misprinted a word, so you know that it can't be very logical ). Consonants are often doubled, but there is much less use of illogical letter groupings than in English (like the word "laughing"). French also uses the following letters: é, è, ê (becoming extinct and being replaced by è), ô, à, â, î, ù, û, æ, oe (but stuck together like æ) and ç. Word order (mostly when adjectives come into play) are often reversed from English. For spoken French, we use very nasally sounds for are vowels (which don't exist in English) and our consonants sound much rougher (hence all the spitting :p). Also the letter r is guttural. Feel free to ask if you have anymore questions ! Je suis assis dans la chaise Quick correction, in French, we don't sit in chairs, we sit on chairs (Je suis assis sur la chaise) .

[thegnome54]

Quick correction, in French, we don't sit in chairs, we sit on chairs (Je suis assis sur la chaise) . Haha, that's exactly the sort of thing I always mess up on. I can read and understand French perfectly, but I make stupid mistakes like that when speaking and presumably worse ones when writing. I believe my foreign language centers are atrophying...

[Spartiate]

Haha, that's exactly the sort of thing I always mess up on. I can read and understand French perfectly, but I make stupid mistakes like that when speaking and presumably worse ones when writing. I believe my foreign language centers are atrophying... I know exactly what you mean (being bilingual, I often use what we call "Franglais"). It doesn't help that french people aren't very tolerant of mistakes either (but they are nowhere nearly as bad as Germans for that...).

[Pastro]

Its poorly taught in Canadian high schools

[Spartiate]

Its poorly taught in Canadian high schools *Ahem*, BC high schools maybe ...

[Rainman]

Wow...French is a lot more complicated than I thought. I speak spanish natively so I understand the concept of masculine and feminine for every object, but I'm so used to verb conjugations for Spanish that it seems impossible to get French down! Ok so like...I can read SOME french but I definitely cannot pronounce anything, nor can I understand it...it usually sounds like complete rubbish to me, and i've got no idea how to go about pronouncing things. Any way you could write out how general pronunciation works? I really appreciate your help you all. As for verb conjugations, do you think you guys could just give me a list of commonly used verbs in the infinitive form so I can try to conjugate them myself? I probably have endless questions about French

[Spartiate]

Wow...French is a lot more complicated than I thought. I speak spanish natively so I understand the concept of masculine and feminine for every object, but I'm so used to verb conjugations for Spanish that it seems impossible to get French down! Ok so like...I can read SOME french but I definitely cannot pronounce anything, nor can I understand it...it usually sounds like complete rubbish to me, and i've got no idea how to go about pronouncing things. Any way you could write out how general pronunciation works? I really appreciate your help you all. As for verb conjugations, do you think you guys could just give me a list of commonly used verbs in the infinitive form so I can try to conjugate them myself? I probably have endless questions about French Well I don't think I can help you much for pronounciation, Canadian French sounds immensely different from France French (the one you probably want to learn). The best way to learn the pronounciation is to just constantly listen to the language. Watch french movies, tv shows, listen to french music, radio stations... Eventually after being exposed enough you'll start catching on (subtitles are a big help to). For conjugations, like I said they are seperated into groups, confusing groups... The first group contains all the verbs finishing in er (aimer, manger, jouer,...) except the verb aller, which is irregular. The second group contains most, but not all, of the verbs ending in ir (finir, bâtir, grandir,...), they all have the issons ending for the nous person. The third group contains all the other ir verbs (partir, tenir, venir,...), the oir verbs (voir, pouvoir, avoir,...), the re verbs (lire, mettre, prendre,...) and the verb aller. A conjugation table like this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bescherelle is essential for learning verbs. Also, I find that this site and it's forum http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/e/index.html are a great tool for any language learner. Good luck !

[Rainman]

Excellent! Great, that's good info. Jeez. So many infinite versions of verbs. In Spanish there are only 3 verb types. I appreciate all the help thus far, I know doubt will be needing it in the future Say, is French spoken as fast as Spanish? I hang around alot of Cuban blokes and they speak so fast I can barely understand them myself. I imagine listening to French would probably pretty difficult to understand too with all the pronunciations and whatnot.

[VoyageurNocturne]

A really good movie to watch if you feel like getting a feel of what french is is "bon cop, bad cop". It's billingual movie (french and english) about a cop from Ontario and a cop from Québec working on the same case. Very good canadian film, a must see. You can get the subtiltes for french only if you want to. It's interesting to compare these 2 very different canadian cultures if you're not familiar with it.

[Rainman]

Thanks a lot, I'll definitley check that out