Advice for someone learning French?

One thing that I do from time to time to sharpen my foreign language skills is to find an online news source and read the news in that language.

Immersion works best. Listening to people speak, French movies, French music, etc., etc. helps immensely. Pay attention to conjugations – they are a lot more varied in French than they are in English. Make sure you pay attention to the tu/vous distinction. You don’t want to offend someone by using language that is too familiar (tu) when they should be addressed as “vous.” Only use “tu” with people that you know well.

Mon ami, Jeanne, toujours me dit mon accent est atroce. Pratiquer votre rs.

Get a skype partner who can practice with you. Seriously. Informal French can vary pretty widely from the standard. Spend tons of time on pronunciation if you ever want to sound good (knowing IPA is a HUGE plus). I’ve studied many languages, and French is one where it’s easy to get lazy. Make horrible, awful, embarassing mistakes, it’s how you learn.

Lots of French people I’ve met hate when I don’t get the pronunciation right. That is important.

A good resource for training your ear is to listen to the daily evening TV broadcast of the national news online. Newscasters have great diction and avoid colloquialisms, so it’s a bit more beginner-friendly than movies. You’ll also get a dose of French current events and a sampling of regional accents from the interviews.

Here’s the link

Personally I have found native French speakers and bribed them to have conversations with me. In NYC, for example, there is a wonderful resource with only native speakers. I used to take courses there when I lived in Manhattan.

French Institute/ Alliance Français.

Are you near a university or college that would let you take Intro to French?

Edit: As the inimitable gailcalled points out, I left out the que between dit and mon. Apparently, I can’t type in French either.

1. Find a French pop singer whose work you like, listen to his or her songs, download the lyrics…translate the lyrics with the help of a dictionary, and then follow along as the singer sings. It’s fun, and it’s actually helpful.

2. Most French-speakers I’ve met adore their language and will gladly speak with you and correct you. Find someone to talk to.

3. Listen to french-language radio. If you can pull in French TV, try to find the movies that are geared for people learning the language – they’re in FRench, with French subtitles. Very helpful.

4. Find an Alliance Francais, as @gailcalled suggests – they ususally give great courses, and also have a French language library.

5. If you’ve got the time and money – go to Paris or Montreal!

Bonne chance!

If you take @littlewesternwoman ‘s advice, Yelle is a fun, French artist.

There’s like a gazillion expat blogs out there, written by Anglos teaching English in france. Just google “expat france blog”. That should give you a good starting list. From there you only have to dial through their blog rolls to find hundreds of similar blogs. Most of them will probably give you far more useful tips than native speakers could think of.

bonne chance

@pinkparaluies: Was your username supposed to be “parapluies” instead of “paraluies,” speaking of French?

hahaha yessss. i typo’d!! les parapluies de cherbourg is my favorite movie :)