I am currently enrolled in French 1 since I really love to learn the French language. I didn't enrol myself in Spanish because of our bitter history. You know what happened right? Hehe
To give you a little "FYI", the French language belongs to the Romance group of languages. Spanish, Romanian, Italian, Catalan, and Portuguese are some of the languages that belong to that group. The Romance Languages are derived from the 'vulgar' or vernacular Latin of the Roman empire in contrast to literary or classical Latin. (Rosal, Anita J., Introduction to Linguistics: General and Applied, 2009. 4th Edition) Common characteristic of these languages is that the sounds and vocabularies of such languages are quite close to Latin.
According to my teacher in French, Americans find French language a very hard-to-learn language. It is because nearly no English sounds can approximate the sounds in French. For example, in English, the letter o can have numerous sounds such as [ow] as in "close", or [ah] as in "clot". But in French, neither of these English sounds approximate the sound of the letter "o" in French.
Surprisingly, Filipinos find French language easy to learn. First, most of "Pinoy" sounds are very close to the French sounds. Second, since we learn English when we were still very young, sentence construction in French is the same as in English; that is, the French language follows this syntax: S-V-O or subject-verb-object. Last, a number of English words are derived from French words. For example, papier is paper, classe is class (be it social class, classroom, or rank), anniversaire is anniversary or even birthday, page is page, and the list goes on.
Many people complain that French language is complicated. Yes, it may be, but SELDOM! Always remember that ALL CONSONANTS that are located at the end of every word are SILENT, except for letters c, f, l, and r. Unlike other languages, some vowel and consonant combination are nasals. When you encounter this combination on and om, pronounce both as if you are uttering the surname "Ong" but don't make that [ng] sound prominent. The vowels are called nasalized because you have to produce the sound through your nose.
Still have a "French-y" problem? Well, a thorough discussion of French vocabulary and sentence construction is not enough for just one post. You can buy a book on how to learn French or you may contact me. I'll keep my site updated as soon as I have lots of free time.
To give you a little "FYI", the French language belongs to the Romance group of languages. Spanish, Romanian, Italian, Catalan, and Portuguese are some of the languages that belong to that group. The Romance Languages are derived from the 'vulgar' or vernacular Latin of the Roman empire in contrast to literary or classical Latin. (Rosal, Anita J., Introduction to Linguistics: General and Applied, 2009. 4th Edition) Common characteristic of these languages is that the sounds and vocabularies of such languages are quite close to Latin.
According to my teacher in French, Americans find French language a very hard-to-learn language. It is because nearly no English sounds can approximate the sounds in French. For example, in English, the letter o can have numerous sounds such as [ow] as in "close", or [ah] as in "clot". But in French, neither of these English sounds approximate the sound of the letter "o" in French.
Surprisingly, Filipinos find French language easy to learn. First, most of "Pinoy" sounds are very close to the French sounds. Second, since we learn English when we were still very young, sentence construction in French is the same as in English; that is, the French language follows this syntax: S-V-O or subject-verb-object. Last, a number of English words are derived from French words. For example, papier is paper, classe is class (be it social class, classroom, or rank), anniversaire is anniversary or even birthday, page is page, and the list goes on.
Many people complain that French language is complicated. Yes, it may be, but SELDOM! Always remember that ALL CONSONANTS that are located at the end of every word are SILENT, except for letters c, f, l, and r. Unlike other languages, some vowel and consonant combination are nasals. When you encounter this combination on and om, pronounce both as if you are uttering the surname "Ong" but don't make that [ng] sound prominent. The vowels are called nasalized because you have to produce the sound through your nose.
Still have a "French-y" problem? Well, a thorough discussion of French vocabulary and sentence construction is not enough for just one post. You can buy a book on how to learn French or you may contact me. I'll keep my site updated as soon as I have lots of free time.
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