Learning French

Can anyone recommend a good book to self-teach French?

Go to your local college and hire a hot tutor. Well worth the $20/hour.

Le francais n’est pas une langue facile a apprendre. Bonne chance!

BTW, each time I visit California (I have family there) and purposely speak french, it instantly grabs the attention of HCBs

If you are not in a hurry to grab some basic French, I recommend “Panorama: Methode de Francais”. Another good series is Le Nouvel Espaces; however, personally I think Panorama is better in case of self teaching French. Le Nouvel Espaces series are more advanced compared to Panorama although it teaches us everything from the beginning as well.

The language centers where I studied French switched to other text books such as Campus, Festival, Alter Ago, Le nouveu Taxi… but I like Panorama most. Surprisingly, they didn’t include Le Nouvel Espaces in our studying materials but the book is quite popular among French learners in the place where I live.

For grammar books, I need to check my book shelf to get the exact names…

Hope this helps

I speak precious little French, but, apparently, what little I speak I do with a perfect Parisian accent.

French is easy…and absolutely useless

the local community college or learning annexe at the local university probably has a course

what do want to get out of it ?

be able to read french ? talk french ? both ?

I like the Hugo series (books with CDs), never used the French one (learned in highscool) but their German and Italian are good, more for talking than for the grammar

The Complete Idiots series are also surprisingly good

I can agree with the latter part of that statement. I had to take french in school in Canada despite living in an English speaking city and province. Such a waste of time and energy.

Has anyone used Rosetta Stone?

it helps you get a government job in Canada, not that that’s such a great prize

I had to take French in school too. However, I found it extremely useful when I found myself in the heart of Paris, France years ago and during many visits to the province of Quebec.

There are tons of wasteful classes in high school. Learning another language is not at the bottom of the list.

Ok I’ve heard a lot of “it’s not useful” and got the one suggestion on a book “Panorama: Methode de Francais”. Any others?

Here’s another suggestion. It’s not easy. Grammar and spelling is way harder than english.

^I know. I speak Spanish too (natively). I don’t know if that helps…maybe? I’m not expecting it to be easy but let’s assume a book will be my only resource for now…which would be the best in your experience…or others?

^ I feel like spanish and french are so similar, but not sure if that would make it easier or harder.

And I’m also going to repeat that it isn’t useful unless trying to pick up HCBs in Montreal. If you’re trying to learn a language for professional reasons I’d bet there are others with a better return.

Spanish, french and italian are from the same language family tree.

To be honest, my girl speaks french (not as good as Spanish or English) but well enough, she minored in it, and well I want to learn. I know a book isnt the end all be all and theres more to it to really speak, write, and read the language…but just trying to find out the best starting point.

An outsider like you speaking with a french accent would clean up in Montreal. And you would move here in a heartbeat too when you realize the amount of HCBs. They are as liberal as they get.

You shouldn’t learn to speak it to your current girl. You should learn to speak it to many other girls. She will move on, don’t worry too much about hurting feelings.