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I WANT TO LEARN FRENCH! are you nice enough to help?

Posted: Mon Feb 11, 2008 8:31 am
by Holy Crap
ok, so there are several reasons why i want to learn french.
A- to fuel my interest in languages
B- to be able to read/write french stuff
C- to be more active on PC i.e. the french section.

now, thanks to basic previous knowledge, similarities between the two languages and BabelFish translator, i have already managed to read sections of the french forum and even post in "Mot a Mot" (the french "word to word"). but there are several problems:
A: babelfish is not always right. there are some words it doesn't know, some that can be interpreted incorrectly and sometimes...its just plain wrong.
B: french grammar and word order are a little different in French. babelfish can only translate word for word but doesn't correctly order them.

so, who can speak both english and french and is willing to help me out? (and yes there may be rewards of thanks)

Re: I WANT TO LEARN FRENCH! are you nice enough to help?

Posted: Mon Feb 11, 2008 10:22 pm
by Termonaptir
I know a bit of French...
Donc, vous vouloir à apprendre Francais, hein?
Ugh, hopefully that came out right... People who DO know French (very well) are probably gonna laugh at me...

Re: I WANT TO LEARN FRENCH! are you nice enough to help?

Posted: Tue Feb 12, 2008 7:14 am
by Holy Crap
if the two languages had the same word ordering, it'd be easy, i'd just translate everything with BabelFishand learn it like that. but french puts words in different order eg. in Crash Team Racing, "Coco Park" in french is "Parc Coco".

Re: I WANT TO LEARN FRENCH! are you nice enough to help?

Posted: Tue Feb 12, 2008 11:43 am
by Limely
Play videogames in French. It helps, seriously. Or at least it helps if you already have some basic knowledge, err...

Re: I WANT TO LEARN FRENCH! are you nice enough to help?

Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 12:28 am
by Hunchman801
If ever you need help, feel free to ask me. You can also try to post in the French forums, no one's gonna laugh at your mistakes and I'm sure you'll be given help. However, keep in mind that French is not an easy language, and that many native speakers still make loads of spelling mistakes. I can try to give you a non-comprehensive list of members whose spelling is almost perfect though.
Brayissimo wrote:I know a bit of French...
Donc, vous vouloir à apprendre Francais, hein?
Ugh, hopefully that came out right... People who DO know French (very well) are probably gonna laugh at me...
You should have written: Donc, vous voulez apprendre le français or Donc, tu veux apprendre le français (on the Internet, almost everyone uses the tu pronoun) ;)

Re: I WANT TO LEARN FRENCH! are you nice enough to help?

Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 1:19 am
by Termonaptir
Argh, back to the drawing board for me! Why must you guys use so complicated words? ;) I feel so insignificant compared to you, Hunch... 83 Tu, vous, etc, etc... Which one is it? And la, les... I get confused extremely easily... Heheh....

Re: I WANT TO LEARN FRENCH! are you nice enough to help?

Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 9:37 am
by Holy Crap
hmmm...from what i hear, English is THE HARDEST language to learn, but seeing as the two are kinda similar, and come from the same area (and england was invaded by france which had a significant impact on the english language) i can see how french would be hard to. but yeah, as Brayissimo (mind if i just shorten that to "Bray"?) said, french can get confusing with all the "la" and "le" etc. how does that go exactly?

Re: I WANT TO LEARN FRENCH! are you nice enough to help?

Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 5:54 pm
by Limely
La is feminine, le is masculine, or something.

I think French is harder to learn than English, but that's probably because I've been learning English since I was a kid, while I just started learning French. x3

Re: I WANT TO LEARN FRENCH! are you nice enough to help?

Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 8:59 pm
by Termonaptir
In my opinion, English was the easiest language to learn... But it must have been since I listened to people talking in that tongue everyday.... It would help if I listened to some French people.... Even when I DO learn French, I'm gonna have a heavy accent....

Re: I WANT TO LEARN FRENCH! are you nice enough to help?

Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 10:55 pm
by Hunchman801
English is really easy to learn compared to other languages like French and German... Huge conjugations, word genders, declensions in German... Not to mention the loads of exceptions xD

Re: I WANT TO LEARN FRENCH! are you nice enough to help?

Posted: Thu Feb 14, 2008 1:54 am
by Termonaptir
Argh, I don't think I'll ever be able to learn... French is an extremely intricate language. (I wonder if I used 'intricate' correctly... Ugh...)

Re: I WANT TO LEARN FRENCH! are you nice enough to help?

Posted: Thu Feb 14, 2008 10:10 am
by Holy Crap
because there are no exceptions in english. "i before e except after c." and all that crap. oh yeah, then there's "height" and "weight". stupid...well languages in general.

Re: I WANT TO LEARN FRENCH! are you nice enough to help?

Posted: Fri Feb 15, 2008 2:57 am
by Termonaptir
English is too common... It makes me feel none too special knowing it. And yes, it barely has any exceptions. Heheh... I remember when I was... err... younger, I thought English was like gibberish. Alien language. And I tried mimicking it - with failure, obviously.

Re: I WANT TO LEARN FRENCH! are you nice enough to help?

Posted: Sun Feb 17, 2008 12:28 am
by Cairnie
I always found the reading and writing French to be quite easy when I was at school, though the most definitely rock hard part is actually speaking it IRL. When I did my final oral exam, I just bawled because well, the session was being recorded and my nerves totally swallowed me up. The same thing happened when I did my English speaking though, how on earth I got a B for that I don't know.

When I did it at school, I found that having an English-French dictionary helps, and man I remember making contact to fellow French Rayman fans several years ago. If I can cast my memory back, I can remember being in a French forum called Raymancool too. Kinda embarrassing now that I've come to think about it. :oops:

Re: I WANT TO LEARN FRENCH! are you nice enough to help?

Posted: Sun Feb 17, 2008 12:35 am
by Holy Crap
why embarrassing?

Re: I WANT TO LEARN FRENCH! are you nice enough to help?

Posted: Sun Feb 17, 2008 12:40 am
by Cairnie
All of my days as an internet n00b, back in 2001-2002, make me cringe.

Re: I WANT TO LEARN FRENCH! are you nice enough to help?

Posted: Sun Feb 17, 2008 12:41 am
by Holy Crap
oh

Re: I WANT TO LEARN FRENCH! are you nice enough to help?

Posted: Sun Feb 17, 2008 1:25 am
by Termonaptir
Don't worry about it, Stacey. ;) We all have our noob days every now and then.

Re: I WANT TO LEARN FRENCH! are you nice enough to help?

Posted: Sun Feb 17, 2008 6:47 pm
by Hunchman801
StaceyW wrote:If I can cast my memory back, I can remember being in a French forum called Raymancool too.
I remember the Raymancool website, but I didn't know it had a forum. I was friends with the webmaster and he added a page about RaymanBD :)

Re: I WANT TO LEARN FRENCH! are you nice enough to help?

Posted: Sun Feb 17, 2008 8:09 pm
by Termonaptir
*sighs* I remember that place. ;) I used to visit there often just to browse around. Back then, I used to jump so much between Rayman websites.