Best way to learn a language (French)

Does your town/suburb have a whatsapps group or Facebook page? you could put up a post a ask if anyone would be prepared to converse with you in French? Alternatively perhaps the local high school has a french teacher who you could hire for a couple of evenings a week?

I've got an app called Language Transfer that I'm using for conversational Spanish and I'm finding it very good indeed. There are a few languages on there, including French. Well worth a shot.

Does your town/suburb have a whatsapps group or Facebook page? you could put up a post a ask if anyone would be prepared to converse with you in French?

That. If you are already at intermediate level then just talking is the best way now. Duolingo is pretty good as is watching Netflix movies is french, but if you want to be able to chat in french them chatting is the best way.  Some in person courses are pretty good at that as well of course if you have choice where you live.  I've also found from the various courses that I've done that there are often french chat groups in cafes/bars in the evenings for people learning.  Again maybe try Facebook or Meetup to find those

If you have internet radio then you can find some french stations that are a bit easier to understand, the radio 4 sort rather than the usual manical inane laughter type stations.  They can be good to have on in the background as you get used to the sound of the speech and it gets easier to pick things up.

Pillow talk. Apparently 🙂

It’s not how I learnt. I had to live there for 4 yrs to be conversational but ‘pillow talk’ would have been quicker and…arguably more fun !!

+1 for Language Transfer. Using it for greek and it's very good indeed. And free.

I found listening to the Easy French News from RFI made a huge difference to my vocabulary and ability to hear and understand the French accent at full speed.

It’s bits of the news broadcast/podcasted daily together with scripts and exercises. I started off barely being able to follow it even if reading the script, and after a year could hear everything and answer most of the exercise questions first time off. But of course it needs systematic use over many months to make real progress.

https://francaisfacile.rfi.fr/en/

For speaking practice you need to use those on line conversation websites, where you trade speaking in English for time spent speaking your foreign language. I’ve not used them but a friend taught himself enough basic Cantonese over a year that way to be able to get around in HK without using English.

I can recommend Paul Noble's learn French part 1, it is much better than duolingo. Part 1 is good as it points out the similarities between English and French and builds conversations based on these similarities. He also has an intermediate course that might suit you better.

I would like to be able to understand and hold conversations in French.

If you want to be good at chatting, you need to spend as much time chatting as possible. Sign up with Tandem App etc to find people to chat with.

I've been learning French over the past 2.5 years, can now chat with someone now for an hour or so on pretty much any subject (making lots of grammatical mistakes, but being understood). I got there by listening to a vast amount of French radio, French TV, reading as many books as I possible could and having 1-2-1 lessons each week. My French teacher (who also teaches English) paired me up with a couple of her French students, so we chat each week for a couple of hours over Skype, swapping between French and English every 30 minutes.

I found watching boxsets set to French with French subtitles a good way of learning without it feeling like learning.

The combination of text, speech and context meant you could generally understand what was going on easily enough and you don't feel like you're having to sit and study.

Francaisfacile is also a good shout, I used to use that a lot.

Another tip, I only read novels which also have the Audio book available, so I get to practice two skills at once. I found signing up to audible.fr made it much easier to find books in French, as the search on Audible.co.uk sees the word 'French' and decides it will only show you audio books on learning French, not actual French novels...

Prior to reading normal French novels, I started off reading the complete set of https://www.hachettefle.com/collections/lff-lire-en-francais-facile

Think there are 50+ or so, starting with A1 and finishing at B1 IIRC. They all come with audio files as well, paced at the grade for the book, so A1 is pretty slow speaking.

I then read the complete Harry Potter in French as that's decent but not super hard level and after that, just reading random best sellers, normally pick something from Fnac's top 10 where there is also an audiobook on audible.

Waves to sprootlet.
nbt helped start up a French group in our local pub. There are people who are French, speak French fluently and some who like me, barely speak a word in this group. Apparently everyone is patient and helps others out.
Just having conversations seems to be the way forward.
I haven't been yet, but I will go along at some point.

Covid did put a stop to the meetings but I think they've started up again.

If you can get to an Alliance Francaise - https://www.afmanchester.org/ - class do it. Mrs Daz did the conversational french course there for a year or so and got to high standard pretty quickly. Even quite a few years later with not much practice she can still hold down a chat in most situations when on holiday in France.

Just having conversations seems to be the way forward.

It's the only way really, the skill set is very unique, you have to understand what someone has said to you (skill one), immediately recall all the necessary words to respond (skill 2) and then apply all the grammar rules to construct a reply (skill three). All in a second or two. Totally different to reading, listening or writing as it's so dynamic and you have to do several things at once. When I first started, my brain would be completely fried after 5-10 minutes...

I also found it very hard to hold the question in my head and formulate the response at the same time, like there wasn't enough room. If the question was a sentence, I'd just forget the second half and only remember the first bit because as soon as I started trying to formulate the start of my response my brain would overflow.

Never having learnt a language before (properly), it's quite a fascinating experience.

It sounds like you're just at the practise and input stage. You need to find a French person to chat with and some French audio input.

The input is easy, just find some radio, netflix etc in a topic that you're interested in.

Finding a French chatting partner should be much easier now with zoom etc. Cheapest is to find a French person in the same position as you, but with English. You can take it in turns to practise.

Interestingly my niece has just gone off to france for 4 weeks for the same reasons. She is 16 so someone else is paying - but for the last 12 months (as she loves music) she listens to FIP radio (web based) as her daily radio.

Just tried Language Transfer for my ongoing Spanish learning. It's the best app I've tried so far.

Finding a French chatting partner should be much easier now with zoom etc. Cheapest is to find a French person in the same position as you, but with English.

https://www.tandem.net/fr

Although it's a bit weird, half language exchange app, half dating app UI..

Might just be an age thing.

There's a lot of good advice up there from Footflaps. Just one gripe: 😉

I then read the complete Harry Potter in French

Even my French born and educated son prefered the English originals, I tried a translation - something was lost. 😉 And more generally avoid reading translations because you need to get used to les tournures de phrases françaises rather than translate your English wording.

Thinking back on what most helped me:

People
A film - Subway
Music - Goldman, Téléphone, Brassens, Vian, Louise Attack, Rita Mitsouko, Renaud... .
France Inter
Jobs in France

Thanks for all the helpful replies, definitely going to try language transfer.
I need to get over my dislike of how I sound when I try to speak french but as everyone has reiterated ......it takes time and practice, practice and practice

The Language Transfer for French seems to only go to a very basic level (unless I'm missing something).

If you use Audible, there's a Paul Noble French course that teaches in a very similar way, but with a French person repeating the phrases rather than a crap student mis-pronouncing them. There's also a more advanced course too.

I find listening to the Duolingo French podcasts quite good for practising comprehending what people are saying. That's always my problem...I can make myself understood but when French people reply it's just a stream of noise, and there's a limit to how often you can ask someone to speak more slowly 😁

but when French people reply it’s just a stream of noise, and there’s a limit to how often you can ask someone to speak more slowly

My anecdote, which blew my mind completely at the time...

Living in the UK, I knew I had to immerse myself as much as possible to learn French, so I started listening to French radio every evening. I chose France Info as it's 100% news, so maximises words spoken per minute (their weather forecast is about 300 wpm!). Anyway, initially I could understand bugger all, not even the start and end of words, then something really weird happened, my brain 'flipped' and suddenly I could hear clearly all the words, but still had no idea what most of them actually meant. Over the last couple of years, my vocab has expanded, so now I pretty much understand 95%+.

But the 'flipping' thing was completely surreal, it happened very quickly, after a few weeks of daily listening. My brain just learnt the intonation and emphasis on words in French, which differs completely from English. It must be what happens to babies, at some point they latch onto their parents language, after which they can start learning the meaning of words.

I still struggle with TV and films. With audiobooks / radio, they talk about a subject for at least, say 30 seconds, so if you miss the start, you can latch on mid way and then your head figures out the bit you missed. With TV, it flips so fast between different characters, who use slang, don't repeat the subject point etc, that if you miss one thing, you never get a chance to catch back up and work out what they said. Also subtitles are always useless, I want a literal translation, but they're always non literal and often change the meaning quite a bit, so whilst they help follow the plot, they're hopeless for figuring out what verb was used etc. I'm always asking my wife what someone said, or 'what verb was that' as she has lived in France and was totally fluent....

Even my French born and educated son prefered the English originals, I tried a translation – something was lost.

Well the last few were just as tedious and drawn out in French as the English ones were, so that bid wasn't lost. I only continued as I'm a stubborn bastard and once I've decided to do something, nothing is getting in my way....

As for not understanding everything in films, do you understand everything you hear in British/US/Australian films? I don't. In some cases I swap language to French for clarity. Sometimes even when I understand everything I swap to French because the French dubbing actors are more likeable or credible. I can't stand the original Barnaby in English but he's much more paletable in French. The guy who does Stalone is great. 🙂

Move to France, get a french partner. When I lived in Japan, the only people who got fluent were those who came single and partnered up. Really, it was pretty much 100% correlation.

@Edukator, I watch a fair bit of French series, and I’m not sure if I’m noticing…in colloquial (so I assume, mostly spoken in say, a police procedural type thing) French, are people dropping the “suis” after Je. Eg I seem to hear “je desolé” amongst multiple others and can’t hear the “suis.” Is it just shortened so much that it’s a bare “sss” sound after “Je” or am I imagining that?

Move to France, get a french partner.

This. Age 14 Mr Powell and his piece of chalk missile did nothing for my French. Age 19,Vivian who worked in a department store on the Dior stand did A LOT for my base understanding of the language. I clearly respond more to the carrot than the stick.

J'schwee désolé, Darcy. It's just run together. Je ne sais pas - shaypa.

Tu n'as qu'à le faire toi-même - t'as qu'à le faire toi-même - taka l'faire toi

The "ne" is often dropped, you just hear the "pas", "que" "guère"... part.

Contractions are used but there's not much colloquial French in TV series. Verlan isn't used much either. I picked it up when junior went to school. He uses a bit of Arab too that he picked up from mates, I'm the daron. Like pretty much everyone I've met he can turn it on and off, playing with language registers. Stick a microphone in front of the coolest rapper from 93 and you'll get quality French:

Hear that, the subjunctive perfectly used by Joey Star, most people on this forum fail to use the subjuctive correctly in English. Great film BTW.

Eg I seem to hear “je desolé” amongst multiple others and can’t hear the “suis.” Is it just shortened so much that it’s a bare “sss” sound after “Je” or am I imagining that?

"Je ne suis" drops the 'ne' almost always when spoken to become "je suis" which then becomes a single blurred word something like "ché"..

Harry Flashman maintained that the best way to learn a foreign language was in bed with a native speaker. 🙂

I would like to be able to understand and hold conversations in French.

Depending on what you mean by 'conversation' this could represent quite a high standard and require a big investment of time.

"Ché" as in "chai", as in Ernesto Lynch? No, nothing like that. "Schwee" !

Quotes from my VTT Whatsapp group

Z'auriez dû
Taf pour moi - work
OK for mi (bémol) - English gets misused
Hola - but Spanish just slips in because we're on the border - Yo tambien
ça roule, à tout' - à tout à l'heure