Je parle français

Why French?

Bonjour! Comment vous-allez vous? (Hello! How are you?)

Before we start our lessons, let me first introduce myself.

Je m'appelle June. Enchantée. Je suis jeune au coeur, (alors ne demande pas mon âge.) J'aime lire, écrire, peindre, la photographie et mon chien. (Bien sûr, j'aime ma famille!) Je ne suis pas un locuteur natif français mais je voulais parler aussi avec confiance que je le suis avec l'anglais. Je suis un enseignant (la science) donc si vous voyez une grammaire et un sort incorrects, s'il vous plaît, soyez gentil.

My name is June. Nice to meet you. I am young at heart, (so don't ask for my age.) I love reading, writing, painting, photography and my dog. (Of course I love my family!) I am not a native French speaker but I wanted to speak French as confidently as I am in English. I am a teacher (science) so if you see an incorrect grammar and spelling, please be kind.

So why French? Like I said. There's this song that I like very much, and it was sang by a French singer whom I fell in love with her music and I realized one day, I want to speak French! But how?! I don't know any French person nor I haven't been to any part of France!

Long story short, I fell in love with the language.

Seriously, if I was told, 5 years ago, that I will be studying French, I WOULD NOT BELIEVE YOU! French has weird pronunciations, (but hey, Visayan and Tagalog too). Bare in mind that studying foreign language need a lot of patience and time.

You will have a lot of love hate relationship along the way as you progress in your learning. So a bucket of patience isn't enough. Also, marked the day when you started learning the language. (I use the word language instead of French because this advise is not only applicable in French but to whatever language studies you are pursuing.)

I started my French learning journey last January 12, 2018, however, I temporarily stopped last February 12, 2018 until March 12, 2018 (due to personal reason, hey I was on vacation and I wanted to have fun). Exactly a month, for balance and monitoring purposes.

Marking the date you started dating with these languages help you move on and continue. As I mentioned earlier, you will have a lot of love and hate relationship as you progress, so having an anniversary date helps you continue and never give up. (Trust me! I have been there!)

Make sure you do regular exercises. It's not a song that you can download to your brain and play. I told you, it is not an easy process. Set timeline for each of your goals. For me, I started with French vocabularies. 700 vocabularies in 7 days but I was only able to get 500+ words. It wasn't easy but it help me a lot. These vocabularies includes correct spelling and pronunciations. From colors, to the numbers, to the days of the week and even as simple as the eyes, the nose, the ears, the neck and so on. Spelling is quite challenging as the last letters in French words are commonly not pronounce. Note, not all the letter of course but most of these are the words that ends with consonants and the vowel e.

Question: How did I do it? Patience of course, repetition, and apps like Duolingo and Anki help me! (There are more other apps but these two are my most favorite.)

https://ankiweb.net/

https://www.duolingo.com

Both Duolingo and Anki have websites and are for free, not to mention that these websites both offer free apps too to help us review. Meaning not just language but as well as any lessons. So grab one.

(Note: anki app is free using computer and android phone, unfortunately it isn't free on IOS. Sorry iPhone users)

Buy a French dictionary book, BUT I HAVE APP! IT IS NOT ENOUGH! (later you will find out why)

When I thought I have enough vocabularies, I tried making simple sentences. Yes, just like grade schools.

The apple is red. La pomme est rouge.

The cat is small. Le chat est petit.

And so on.

These sentences are maybe simple but it's very different with English. There are instances that the noun comes first than the adjective and a lot of articles that we don't normally use in English.

For example: I like red flowers. J'aimes LES fleurs rouges. Literal translation, I like THE flowers red. Also take notice that the pronoun I, singular first person. It's a singular form which happens to be the same as the plural form, therefore the noun and the verb has to be in plural form too, FLEURS ROUGES. Obviously, we don't have reds in English. Only red.

And oh, don't forget the masculine and the feminine on most of the words. Did you know that, "eye", meaning an eye only is a feminine word in French œil. However, if you say, the eyes, meaning two eyes already, the word changes to plural form and so thus the gender. So yes, from the word l'œil (the eye, feminine) it is now les yeux ( the eyes, masculine) Weird? Tell me about it!

So do not translate English to French! That is impossible. Different rules, different grammar.

I will try to share with you all the things that I have learned, tips on how to make your learning more fun and exciting and of course, there are no short cuts but, what can we do avoid delays or slow learning.

I hope I didn't confuse you.

Salut! À bientôt!