Practicing My French

[AGBF]

I have been talking about my niece in various threads. She is currently working on a Ph.D in Spanish at the University of Michigan, but has finished her academic year. She is already fluent in Spanish and Italian (she had a double major in them in college and then lived in Spain for two years). She does not speak French, however. And now she is married to a Senegalese man whose native languages are Wolof (which she mastered) and French. This summer she is studying French, which she has always avoided, and I said that I would renew my French studies to keep her company. I supposedly speak French, but the reality is that my French is pretty battered. I stopped practicing on Duolingo a couple of years ago and my husband (who had been following me there) kept urging me to return.

Well, my niece begins her studies Tuesday and I promised her I would start by Tuesday, so went to the website today. I got excited at the (very, very childish) review lessons I was able to do and sat at the computer compulsively doing French lessons instead of reading Pricescope political threads. It's just that i was overconfident and found myself translating French into English when I was just supposed to be typing the French I heard and once I translated "the cat is an animal" from the French as "the horse is an animal". When I got it wrong, I couldn't stop laughing. I mean those are very, very basic words. All in all I have had a lot of fun.

Does anyone else study any languages using Duolingo or other programs? I have also used Rosetta Stone for different languages. I like both of them a lot.

Deb

 

[redwood66]

Great Deb! Learning new languages is fun! I have not used Rosetta Stone and most of my language learning was from a Berlitz School teacher in San Francisco and of course the requisite Spanish in HS. It is my understanding the new style of teaching is helpful in learning. My son did buy the Rosetta Stone for Russian as he has an affinity for languages. He thoroughly enjoyed his visit to Vladivostok but the interaction with the locals and Russian military was highly monitored.

 

[Matata]

The only one I've used is Pimsleur. Hubs and I try to get up to 2nd year college course fluency with each country we visit. We do ok with Italian and German and learned enough Russian to sound like tourists trying hard when we visited St. Petersburg. The Pimsleur method is compatible with my learning style and when I was working, it was easy to knock out 2 lessons a day driving between work and home.

 

[AGBF]

The only one I've used is Pimsleur. Hubs and I try to get up to 2nd year college course fluency with each country we visit. We do ok with Italian and German and learned enough Russian to sound like tourists trying hard when we visited St. Petersburg. The Pimsleur method is compatible with my learning style and when I was working, it was easy to knock out 2 lessons a day driving between work and home.

Matata-

I think you inspired me. I never used Duolingo for any language other than French before, although I have studied other languages, but tonight I went back and did two units of Italian, too. (That is another one of the languages I studied and lost.) I figure if your husband and you can tackle all the languages of countries you visit, including ones with languages as difficult as Russian, I can at least refresh my Italian!

Deb

 

[Matata]

The frustrating part for me is that neither he nor I practice speaking after the trip so most of it fades away. I retain phrases such as "where's the bathroom" (which became increasingly important the older I got) and general phrases that help us get around but always need to refresh via Pimsleur on repeat visits. It's a lot of fun to speak with people in their native language. Most people I meet appreciate foreign tourists making the attempt and also appreciate the opportunity to practice their English while helping the Americans practice.

 

[Matata]

Forgot to say -- good on you for refreshing your Italian! And for tackling French which was a difficult language for me and I gave up rather than continuing to try.

 

[Sungura]

Im impressed to find some fellow language learners here on Pricescope! Deb your niece will pick up French quickly. It is the closest of the Romance languages to English since all our English words of Latin origin came to English via French (thanks to the Normans arriving in 1066.) I also love your your niece's thesis topic. Being so close to North Africa, Spain has lots of Moroccan immigrants. They were followed by Francophones from other African countries. I know many have found Catalunya to be more welcoming than other regions. I have family there so I have mostly anecdotal evidence.

I recently used Duolingo as a French refresher when I was interviewing at International Rescue Committe. I didn't make the final cut for the job but I did ok with my French in one of the interviews. I liked Duolingo very much. I have also used Rosetta Stone before the World Cup in Brazil. It like the teaching method but it takes a while before you can actually say anything useful.

I've had the greatest success combining some type of self paced learning with an online tutor. I had tutoring via Skype for six weeks each for Catalan and for Moroccan Darija. The sessions were reasonably priced and there is nothing like speaking with a native speaker to move me take me to the next level in my self study

I have also done in-country immersion with homestays for some other languages and my Colombian husband and I maintain a bilingual home

 

[OreoRosies86]

I adore French, I took it all through high school and wish I had stuck with it! Pimsleur was excellent for my brief attempt at becoming fluent.

 

[AGBF]

I have also done in-country immersion with homestays for some other languages and my Colombian husband and I maintain a bilingual home

Another point of contact between us, Sungura: Colombia. Although my husband is an Italian native (I will post an article from the travel section of "The New York Times" I saw on-line today about his native city of Genoa which is my favorite city on Italy), my daughter is Colombian. We adopted her in what was then Santafe de Bogota, Colombia when she was 7 weeks old. In those days one's infant child did not, automatically, get one's citizenship although now he does. So we had to bring our daughter (because the adoption had been finalized) with her Colombian passport to the US embassy to get a visa to enter the United States!

Here is a link to the article on Genoa, Italy. I sent it to everyone in my husband's family...https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/25/...-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well

PS-I wanted to raise my daughter bi-lingual in Italian and English, and some friends sent us material from the Netherlands in the best way to do it. They did it that way with their children. Each parent spoke to the children only in his native language. Our friends lived in Japan. My husband's best friend was American, so he spoke only English; his wife was Japanese so she spoke only Japanese. The children were completely bi-lingual easily. But my husband refused to speak Italian to our daughter, so at age 4 months I started bringing her to the home of a friend, a Belgian woman who used to teach French where I taught history, and we spoke only French with the baby while we were there. I feel that languages are very important.

Deb