Learning French
So I stumbled upon a post about Learning Japanese by @earthangel and felt the need to educate my audience too on the other language i am well familiar about, the French language. Thanks to taking up my French classes very seriously back in the days of elementary school and French-learning institutions, I can proudly say I learnt a whole lot of the well-known language.
WHY SHOULD I LEARN FRENCH?
Now you may ask for the importance to learn such a language, well there are a whole lot of astounding reasons to familiarize oneself with the language ranging from being more connected with the world at large down to sharpening your brain cells. It’s good one knows the benefits with learning the lingo and i would enlighten a few vital ones;
Learning French automatically gets you connected with over 29 countries in the world. Fascinating! With the French language you can travel to any of these countries and still blend in, communicate with their natives and even transact fluid business fluently(which is also another broad reason why you should learn the language). Countries that speak French as an official language include;
Belgium, Benin, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Canada, Chad, the Ivory Coast, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Djibouti, Equatorial Guinea, France, Haiti, Luxembourg, Madagascar, Mali, Monaco, Niger, Rwanda, Senegal, Seychelles, Switzerland, Togo and Vanuatu. Countries from all over the globe; so imagine getting connected with so much, it would really be an appealing adventure to behold.Second solid reason is you can work business better. Imagine having a business deal that requires you to communicate with French enterprises,without knowledge of the French language, it would be a difficult ordeal and may even lead to extra costs of hiring an interpreter and time.
With the French knowledge, one would have the exposure to the wonderful vast French materials out there which could be their articles, books, even design and fashion. This significantly proves that life is far beyond the English community.
And my Final significant point, it helps to sharpen the brain of the learner. This in turns makes one smarter in every other aspect even beyond the prospects connected to French. Knowing french is truly a huge advantage.
THE SOVEREIGN HOME OF FRENCH
I’d like to throw a little light on the origin home of French, France. France is a G6 country located in the great European continent. It’s capital is the famous city of Paris which is a global center for the exquisite French art and culture. Wonderful sights in this land of uniqueness include the famous Eiffel Tower and Château d’annecy . Imagine visiting this nation with the knowledge of French, you can bet on me, you would experience a great lot.
LEARNING THE LANGUAGE
French is one of the easiest languages out there, especially for an English speaker, there are just so many “almost thesame” words which makes it simpler to comprehend. Consider the following relation,
French - télévision , actuel , proces...
English - television , actual, process...
And plenty more words.
The reason for this similarity is that both languages have a common father, and that is the LATIN LANGUAGE. History has it that both languages were birthed from the famous Latin, commonly known as the language of the Catholic Church and spoken by plenty countries and millions of people today.
So you can already feel the simplicity of learning the francophone language. That should give you a proper headstart and zeal to carry on the learning process.
Now one important fact to note about this language is that it assigns gender to nouns, unlike the English that doesn’t require that. This might make it a little complex but don’t worry, it’s very relatable. In French, males are assigned “un” while females “une”, both terms meaning “a” as in “A man, A woman”. And this terms must agree to the rest words in the sentence, I.e it should affect the adjectives and adverbs in thesame sentence modifying the subject.
example,
ENGLISH - A man strolled down to the canteen today.
FRENCH - un homme s'est promené à la cantine aujourd'hui
ENG - A woman strolled down to the canteen today.
FRENCH - une femme s'est promenée à la cantine aujourd'hui
Notice the difference of the bold words in both French sentences. Promené in English means “to walk” and since they are actions describing the subject, they follow suit to favor in which an extra “e” is added to the feminine subject’s sentence.
Without much stories, I’d drop a list of Basic French words one must be acquainted to to give a solid ground in your francophone learning;
ENGLISH 🇬🇧 | FRENCH 🇫🇷
——————— | ———————
A | Un, Une (masculine, feminine respectively)
The | L’, Le, Les (the definite article)
Yes | Oui
No | Ne
I | J’, Je
We | nous
Beautiful | beau(masculine), belle (feminine)
Good - bien
Bad - mal
Good morning | bonjour
Good afternooning | bin aprés midi
Good evening | bonsoir
I love you | je t’aime
How are you? | comment allez-vous
Happy birthday | Bon anniversaire
My name is Nelson | Je m’appelle Nelson
What’s your name? | comment vous appelez-vous?(formal), comment tu t’appelles?(informal)
Welcome | bienvenue
Goodbye | Au revoir
To learn the language, one needs to invest in a good detailed French dictionary, this is a key step to educating one’s self on the language.
Thanks to modern technology, you can download French dictionaries and Learning apps with just the tap of a finger and get studying right away. Special thanks to the wise brains behind this mighty innovation.
You can start the learning process my memorizing as much words as possible on a daily basis. Now good thing with this article you already know the basis. When learning, try to talk to yourself in French, if you make terrible mistakes, laugh over it and see how you will remember that scenario and the memory would be hard to lose, trust me this helps.
If you’re interested in the French learning apps, I’d recommend a well-known app you could use to develop your French skills which is busuu. Atleast it’s the best I know for now and I’d communicate more apps here if i come across better ones. Busuu offers not only teaching the French language, but you can also learn a great variety of other languages, looking at life beyond the bilingual is an amazing experience to behold if you’d ask for my opinion.
So in general conclusions, everyday we learn new crucial, helpful and astounding information, adding French to that list of info is a commendable worth and even I still learn new French words everyday as it’s not my native language but although enlightening . Huge shoutout to the French community and please if spot any “not-so-correct or invalid” piece of info in this post, please feel free to comment your idea. I’m wide open to corrections as we are all one big family in the learning team. Cheers and thanks for reading.
Nice. I think one of the very necessary prerequisites to learning a language is being around people who speak the language also. They play an important part in helping you learn from your mistakes. And also, you easily get to hear how words are pronounced.
Very good bro
Very correct sir. Visiting France and Quebec, Canada would help a whole lot then. Thanks for the additional information.
I don die.. Savage
You put this together? Wow! It is very detailed. Maybe this is where i begin my french language journey. Cheers man.
I’m glad about that. Thanks and I hope you come around next time
Great post Nelson
Now i can work more on my french speaking
Thanks
I’m very glad about that sir. Hope you’d come around next time
Amazing.. I just learnt few things today in French. Thanks a lot for this post
You’re welcome sir, and thank you for stopping by