/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.20970476]

How the FUCK do I learn French? There's so many verb forms, and the pronunciation is totally retarded. I only know English.

[Anonymous No.20970518]

>>20970476
Your brain is purpose built to learn languages. Read french books even if you don't understand any of it (you will understand a good portion because our language shares a large amount with french) and learn the basic connector words est, et, le/la/les and so on. Watch shows or movies in french with english subtitles, then rewatch with french subtitles until you can begin to understand them, and eventually you can turn subtitles off. I learned french many years ago using this method and learned a good deal of spanish as well. You can massively speed up your learning by getting a native tutor who will help you plan the learning a bit. French is one of the easiest languages you can learn as an english speaker.

[Anonymous No.20970527]

>>20970518
I'm trying to do the reading method, starting with Dumas and asterix comics. The hardest part is understanding the grammar and verb tenses. Did you need a grammar book to learn? Also vocabulary, but I guess that just has to be memorized.

[Anonymous No.20970619]

4chan killed my original reply, but basically:
>first, learn the fundamentals
>read and watch a lot of things, starting with simpler ones
>consult every word you don’t know and don’t be lazy about it
>read a couple of grammar books after you are already comfortable with the language
>take some lessons focused on speaking when you are near fluency, since you can’t properly train that by yourself
>check /int/‘s wiki too, it has some nice resources
Also, I’ll leave you with the advice an old teacher of mine gave me once: you’ll know you are fluent when you start thinking on that language.

[Anonymous No.20970637]

>>20970476
I think the only issue with French is that it's not a phonetic language, which means that you can’t really tell the way a word is pronounced by the way it’s written. Other than that, it's one of the easiest languages to learn in the world.

[Anonymous No.20970675]

>>20970637
Op has no right to complain about this as an english speaker.

[Anonymous No.20970702]

>>20970637
True, pronunciation and learning the weird autistic forms is the primary difficulty. The vocabulary is very limited in size

[Anonymous No.20970711]

>>20970675
This is due to its french influence

[Anonymous No.20970723]

>>20970476
I'm learning Russian with Duolingo and a grammar book

[Anonymous No.20970724]

>>20970723
How's that going for you

[Anonymous No.20970749]

Omg just chill, dont try to control or be conscious of everything.

Just work on it with discipline but also with pleasure, being constantly or as much as you can in contact with it. You know, films, music, newspapers, simple books etc, whatever suits you.

And, as time passes, your mind will do the rest: all those freaking exceptions, the subjonctif, the nonsensical pronunciations etc, will just be there if you worked it all properly.

Concerning phonetics, you will keep an accent in function of tour mother tongue no matter what you do, but the rest is just a matter of working what can be worked -grammar and all that- and then just being immersed in it for the rest.

Check this for stuff to listen: https://www.radiofrance.fr/

Trust me, it might not take a couple of months, but the effort is worth it mon ami, c'est une merveille!

[Anonymous No.20970765]

>>20970724
it's only been a week, so idk. I use duoligno as a warm up then do exercises from the book. feels like I'm making progress but I don't know how far it will take me

[Anonymous No.20970768]

Do Assimil's two French courses, then just expose yourself to it as much as you can. That's what I'm doing. I'm slowly getting better at reading. Listening and speaking are more difficult for me but that's probably just due to the emphasis I put on reading over listening and speaking.

[Anonymous No.20970941]

>>20970476
>There's so many verb form
Focus on present, imperfect and past perfect first, they are the most used in everyday language. All the subjunctives will eventually come through with time.
>the pronunciation is totally retarded
Every language's pronunciation sounds gay and retarded to another language's speaker.

[Anonymous No.20971289]

>>20970527
I used a grammar book about 3 months into my study, but it was really just to enforce what I already knew. If you keep studying, you will begin to understand more and more every day. I wouldn't even worry about grammar for now, that's not how anybody really learns a language as a child. You learn mostly by listening, and eventually by reading. Highly reccomend you watch this video, you don't need to follow it to a tee, but what's important is you follow the basic principles he lays out, you dont even need another person to get you started. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=illApgaLgGA&ab_channel=Poly-glot-a-lot

[Anonymous No.20971317]

Currently I'm doing a top 5000 most common words anki deck + French for Reading + French in Action

[Anonymous No.20971325]

>>20971317
Btw I have no interest in speaking with French people so pronunciation isn't a priority for me but I've come to think that having the sounds of the words in my head is important for learning a language and I might as well put a bit of effort into learning the right sounds
Maybe it's a waste of time for me but it's working alright atm
French in Action is incredibly boring unfortunately

[Anonymous No.20971369]

>>20970476
Read la Grammaire de Riegel

[Anonymous No.20971378]

>>20970476
Sandberg

[Anonymous No.20971590]

>>20971369
Holy shit, this seems to be the authoritative French grammar book. Very interesting, I think after a few pages of Sandberg's French for Reading I'll get to this one. Thanks a lot, anon!