I am going to learn French.

I’ve had it with not being able to understand 20% of my countrymen. This has been a source of shame to me for years.

As I’ve mentioned in a couple of other threads, I once went to Montreal and was terrified to open my mouth, even to ask for a metro pass. (That was in '91. I’ve done better since.) The problem was that I was really didn’t want to open my mouth and make a fool of myself.

Lately I’ve been reading the blog of Benny the Irish Polyglot, who speaks about ‘conversational intimacy’. His main idea is for learners seeking conversational abilities to just dive in and be willing to make mistakes, instead of trying to amass a vast theoretical knowledge beforehand.

When I was first learning Esperanto, I took an email grammar course, then an in-person course, then spent months instant-messaging and visiting speakers (gradually conversing more and more easily), and only then did I try talking on the phone. I still remember how difficult that first time talking without face-to-face communication was: I was sweating from the effort and ended up with a vast headache.

Obviously you need a certain amount of the language to start with, but Benny notes that most conversations take place within a body of common everyday words. They also note that learning the glue phrases that help to ease conversations along can sustain you in conversation while you are building up your language resources.

To that end, then, I’ve been posting the occasional comment on FB in French. I’d like to find people to chat/IM with, and even meet in person eventually.

I haven’t the bucks for formal courses, like that UWO immersion course in Quebec, so I’m just going to have to wing it, by reading French comics and listening to French media (fortunately easily findable here). I hope to find someone to IM with, at least; that was very fruitful in learning Esperanto. I looked on meetup.com and found a couple of groups who meet in Toronto. I also looked at livemocha.com, which may be able to link me to people to chat with.

So…

Do any Dopers know of a group where aspiring French learners can chat? I’ll ask on Facebook as well. I seem to be spending a lot of time there these days.

Je ne sais pas. I don’t know, but I wish you well in your studies, Sunspace! Bonne chance! (Good luck!)

Well, where are you? I’m in Vancouver and there are all sorts of francophone organizations, formal and informal, to promote the use of the language. I would imagine that’s the case in most Canadian cities. There’s also a local meetup group (search meetup.com for French in your area) that was a good way to practice with patient people, some native speakers and some advanced learners.

I don’t know about chat; I leave that kind of computer stuff to the kids.

A couple of things in Toronto you should know about. Théâtre Français de Toronto does a season of French theatre at the Berekley Street space. Café à Go-Go is a great place to hang out and speak French. I’ve also latched onto taking the French tour at places like the ROM, the AGO, etc…

I hadn’t seen your Benny the Irish Polyglot before, but I agree with that premise completely. Just being in an environment where you have to speak the language has a positive effect on your fluency. I had High School French until the end of Grade 11, and when I first went to Montréal, it was pretty grim. From 1994 until 1996, I made huge strides just from occasionally living and working in Montréal and Québec.

I understand that hesitation, that embarrassment at not being able to speak French as well as your interlocutor speaks English. All I can say is get over it and jump in - you have to get past it anyway. It’s not that different from learning a musical instrument - if there are 10,000 mistakes between you and being able to play, you might as well make them all as quickly as possible so you can get on with sounding good.

Bon courage, mon ami!

My problem has always been with understanding someone speaking French. I’ve taken conversation courses, but the conversations were always with other people using largely anglo phonemes and they, of course, are no problem for me to understand, but also no help for conversations with Francophones.

I will give you the advice we give our newly-arrived Chinese graduate students: Find a Canadian-born girl/boy friend. Of course, they rarely do; they mostly stick to other Chinese students for their friends. Understandable, but not helpful. Incidentally, there appears to be massive cheating on the TOEFL exams in China.

Good luck!

See if you can find online a set, used or new, of Princeton’s French In Action DVDs plus any accompanying textbooks. I taught myself simple conversational French using them, and there’s a lot of recordings of French conversations to try to follow.

French in Action! :slight_smile: Online-viewable in the USA and Canada.

The thing is, French is far harder than English to learn by smply “picking it up”. Even if you got the vocabulary (and with the number of words in common between French and English, you have a good starting position) you need a decent understanding of verbs and grammar. And that’s far harder to master (especially with the 10001 rules, and added exceptions, and exceptions to the exceptions that the French have mined their language with).
Immersion is certainly a good way to go, especially in Canada. But you’re gonna hit a language roof pretty early if you dont commit to the tedious chore of studying grammar and verbs.

That said there seems to be a surprising number of Anglo Dopers who are familiar with French. Let’s hope they get to read this thread, as their tips and clues would be far more valuable to you than anything I could think of.

Thing is, I had a lot of grammar lessons but no conversational experience. I’m looking for a bit of balance (on a budget). :slight_smile:

I found my local Alliance française very good, but you had to be a member to participate.

What about the local language bookshops? Here they often have regular conversation groups for those who are learning and want to practise.

Yeah, I’ve never known what to do about this. Is the ultimate goal of an Anglophone learning Canadian French supposed to be to mimic the French phonemes, or do you just sound pretentious if you don’t speak in your own voice?

Well, I don’t know, do you prefer it when a non-native speaker speaks with a distinctly foreign accent, or when you’re surprised at the occasional grammatical slip?

The goal isn’t “being able to pass”, it’s “being able to communicate”. IME, people tend to complain a lot more about vocabulary misuse or mushed-up words than about pronounzink a bit funny - or even a beet fan-nee.

I would also love to learn French.

We get a lot of patients from Noumea and it would be extremely helpful to me (and to the families) if I could speak their language. I did study it way back in High School and know enough to ask certain pertinent questions but the parents often assume, wrongly, that I actually speak the language and so start speaking French a lot faster than I can cope with.

A course, as such, isn’t much use to me because they tend to focus on the traveller, most of whom don’t need to ask others about their bowel habits, if they suffer from nausea or how bad their pain is.

I’m endeavoring to learn Spanish and I have the same fear. I do know enough words and phrases now to ask for a table in a restaurant or order a coffee or an entree but I tend to be too shy about making a mistake to use them. I need a Spanish speaking friend who’s willing to practice with me.

I tried to strike up a friendship with one of the spanish grounds keepers at work but he just thought I was trying to pick him up. Guess I didn’t get that right.

Do you have a coworker who speaks French? Someone you speak to every day and who would be willing to communicate with you in French only? I had a technician move to my office from his home in Montreal. After a couple of weeks I got up the courage to ask if he would communicate with me only in French. He was willing to do so, and would often give me a better choice of words or turn of phrase. It was a start.

Agreed, fluency comes from diving in and speaking the language, no matter how many mistakes you make. I’ve taught languages, and the person who won’t speak until they are sure they are saying it correctly seldom becomes fluent, but the extravert to just speaks, in spite of mistakes, tends to attain fluency more quickly. Sounds like you have the background, so keep on keeping on. There must be severa informal conversational groups in Toronto; good luck finding the right match for you.

I haven’t had French since high school, but have been listening to recordings (why are they all Parisian French, and not any Canadian French?) every so often so that the little I have doesn’t vanish. Last time I was in Montreal, people in shops were very kind to my attempts to speak French. It just takes practice, and the willingness to lose many apparent IQ points while you learn.

Good fucking luck. I’m fluent, and grew up with the language, and I still need to use Grevisse and a shitload of dictionaries to write a good letter – and I worked in France for a couple of years, with all the pain-in-the-ass paperwork and doing favors for my landlord (in Israel) about utilties and the usual taxes for crap like TV service. You won’t learn French, full-stop, unless you fuck a Frenchperson full-time or deal with the bureaucracy full-time.

Well, I’m not planning to be a professional translator or anything; I just want to be able to talk to people. :slight_smile:

I can add you on Facebook, but I don’t use it very often. I am connected on Windows Live Messenger quite often though; if you want we can share usernames.

What do you mean by “recordings”? If you mean music, or television shows, or movies, you can find plenty of them that are made in Canada.

French is not very much like Esperanto at all – to speak with someone, the cultural aspects are extremely important, as are the nuances of the lexicon, IMO. A robust natural language has very much not much to do with an artificial language, arguably.

*Alliance franc,aise" is good, or get a bunch of audiobooks (and read a lot), but the options are fairly clear-cut, IMO.