Over the past three days, I've probably spent twelve hours reading French Without The Fuss, which, as the title indicates, is a non-rigorous approach to learning the French language.
I'm not focusing too much on syntax, punctuation, and the like. For example, I know that there's a French symbol like this - Ç - which means either 'make a hard C soft', or the reverse; I don't recall. When I encounter things like that, I read them, but I don't scurry to my notes and write them down. Okay, some I do - but not most. Instead, I'm focusing on pronunciation, on getting the general tone of the words right. Like any beginning student, I'm mystified by some things, such as why marche and marchent sound the same -- perhaps, to the finely tuned ear, they don't (for example, one of my vocabulary notes, for the word ensemble, notes that the trailing L is only lightly murmured at the end of the word). I try to get them right because now is when I'm learning the reflexes that will make other words sound right, or not, just as when in English you can't pronounce a word, but you have a clue based on what it looks like. That's what I'm working on.
And it is work. I'd promised myself I'd spend from 30 - 60 minutes a day, doing this, but I never stop at 60. Part is, it takes me so long -- I read the first chapter five times before I felt that I had wrung all of the material out of it that I could get. And part is, I am eager to get to the fun stuff, actually making sentences, and I won't be able to do that unless I lock down this initial stuff. I can actually do it, a little, now, but it's very, very basic -- J'habite a Pennsylvanie, Elle est une etudiante (did I get the spelling right? Don't know). I want to be able to converse.
Course, when I listen to the audio part of the book, I think holy hell. Speak slowly, you guys. And then I think: they are speaking slowly!
4 comments:
Yeah, whenever I'm doing things in different languages I feel like I have to go through my brain and flip different switches for all the pronunciation and syntax differences (and remember to keep them switched!).
In college I went to Honduras after Hurricane Mitch hit over spring break for relief work. I took french in high school, but only knew tres un peu Spanish. I'd hear them say something, my brain would recognize it as a foreign language, then respond in French because my brain was so confused. :)
Aren't they both Romance languages, though?
I suspect that for fluency, you have to see the language as real -- not something in a book, or something you do in a language lab, but real. At least, that's my working hypothesis, and its how I'm trying to view it. I want it to feel as real to me as my native language.
As for the Spanish/French thing, when our XG was here, she once had a question she couldn't get out in English. I didn't know enough French to help. But we both knew Spanish, and mime!
Those yellow-boxes at the mall come highly recommended by language speakers. Oh, what the heck are they called? ... ... Rosetta Stone! That's it!
I understand they're a bit expensive, but apparently they are the quickest way to learn a language. :-)
Yeah, I've heard the same thing. I looked -- thnk they're about $450. Oooh la la!
I just spent six bucks for a used copy of French Without The Fuss, and had to think about it....
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