ugh French is tricky .

Conjugation is not that easy. You have a lot more tenses than in english and it's not always evident to choose the right tense. And I don't even mention the conjugation of the verb "être" (to be) at the "passé composé" (something like past continuous I think, but it correspond to simple past in term of time) which is mainly only exceptions And french grammar has a lot more exceptions than english. Just take gender and number. It's not impossible to learn it, but most of the people I know who tried to learn french told me that it's a difficult language. Even people who speaks french as their mother tongue make a lot of mistakes.

I think French is hard to learn for foreigner, but I'm usually astonished when I see how strangers adapt quicker to French language than French people would ever learn another language.
Especially Scandinavia countries have a lot of easiness to learn languages ! and they talk French without their own country accent. they are very good

French have a lot of irregularity, but maybe it's because it comes from latin ? (I never learn latin though, just a question).


I find it funny when people learn French (especially here on gbatemp, as they always tell the same thing "je m'appelle ..." "bonjour comment ca va ?" "je sais parler le français" <- that one is bad).
I'm curious how French lessons are teach.

I think, foreigners learning French are learning the academic French, but French have a lot of familiar speaking, when we speak daily.
example of transformation : "quelle heure est-il ?" is academic one, -> "il est quelle heure ?" or even "Quelle heure il est ?" is familiar, and I'm sure you never learn that construction form (because it's not correct, but used daily when speaking).
when speaking, we use a lot of contraption too, like :
"il" is often heard as "y" : "il faut" -> "y faut"
"il y a" become "y'a". when speaking with a French person, if hearing "ya", I'm not sure you will understand it's the same as "il y a"
there are many like that.


About the questions I saw on the first page :
Italian is hard (for me at least), while Spanish was a loooot easier !
I took Spanish for 2 years, I learn as much as my 4 years of english. though, I forgot all my Spanish now because I never use it

I have always had a thing for languages! They were my strongest subjects at school... so I wonder why I'm studying biotechnology at university lol.

I've studied both French and Spanish and I really think they're very easy to grasp. Conjugation is sooooo important, and it's the part where many people fall down on. Some students find it really difficult, but I've found that those students are the sort that don't even know what an infinitive is. I don't want to sound really arrogant or pompous when it comes to languages. Initially it definitely starts off really difficult, and even when you're accomplished the tricky parts will always come from those magical verbs that follow their own rules. Learning a language is something I think you have to be... consistant with. You gain momentum as you learn new things, and after you've experienced it enough you can see how things fit together, and that helps it stick in your head more. I don't think you can achieve particularly good results if you do last minute study sessions- though I guess for memorising crazy verbs it might be useful?

If you don't make an effort then I think that it's alot more difficult to grasp. Of course you can say the same for anything, but with other subjects you have set things you can learn and do last minute. I feel languages take a long time to build up! Again, conjugation is extremely important.

i did the test today ,
man , i blanked out on the avoir section ...
it asked something about expressions with avoir .
so to be cold, to be hungry etc .
i can't believe i forgot that part >_<.

[quote name='PharaohsVizier' post='3146397' date='Sep 22 2010, 01:00 AM']But thankfully in BC, we have other options like Japanese and Spanish (and some, even Chinese).[/quote]
JAPANESE IN HIGHSCHOOL ?!
omfg , i would've taken that ALL THE WAAAY !
just cause it's japanese xD .


[quote name='SoulSnatcher' post='3146914' date='Sep 22 2010, 07:34 AM']The only subject I'm bad at. Conjugating is easy, though! Next year, I'm picking applied French. Screw academic.[/quote]
lucky me, i am dropping it next year .
i don't plan on learning french any longer >_>.