Mon voyage à l'apprentissage du français

A post for the language enthusiasts and those who love France.

(image found on tumblr: lenooby)
When people think France, they think: Tour Eiffel.

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French, the language of the romantic-or at least that's what everyone calls it. They say the French are very passionate people, which I guess it is true with their culture but certainly the language just sounds so...cool. I always found languages to be such a fascinating thing hence I'm a language enthusiast, although I have yet to learn others. Danggit. When I'm out and about and hear people speaking in another language (I feel like I've said that word quite a few time already, but then again it's bound to come up a lot in this post), I seem to listen in on their conversion (not eavesdropping BTW) despite the fact that I cannot understand what they are saying I still enjoy listening to them, especially the young kids, they so cute! Now I sound like a weird person that enjoys listening to people speak in different tongues...BUT, I can actually understand-even though not very well-one of those commonly spoken languages of the world: Français!

My 'journey' began when I was back in high school. I think, from the top of my head, I was in either second year or third year when we had French lessons. In primary school, or junior school, we learnt Italian and for some reason the thing I remember most was when the Italian teacher always used to bang either the table or some books since he would be constantly getting stressed at us. However, there were a couple of people that actually took part in the lesson-perhaps only two and yup, one of them was me. Obviously I was much younger then and so languages was not a major thing, but I liked the fact that I could say different words for the same thing. Like with French, I felt like pretty awesome when I said a paragraph or sentence when I started learning it.

I decided to take it further and then further up to now et voilà!

I guess it sounds pretty bad if I add this, but oh well...Google translate often helped me when I couldn't figure out how to form sentences. I did use the dictionary and them booklets we were given! Don't go thinking I used G-Translate to get my grades, HaHa. My grammar was terrible, but I suppose I have improved my French grammar a lot since studying and practising for my exams. My vocabulary is still very limited since there are hundreds and thousands of other words out there. Cependant, I feel rather proud of where I am today in terms of my progress in French. I can understand simple conversations and speak to French people.

For those who are interested in learning this language, most likely students will learn some sort of 'MFL' in their junior and high school days but not everyone takes it further. I really suggest to try it! I know languages isn't for everyone. My sister loves listening to different languages, but the learning part she doesn't really dig.

So, what should you do?
Practice of course! For a foreign language, that's the most important and useful way to learn. All teachers will say so, but for some reason we don't seem to pay much attention to them when they tell you.
Start watching movies or finding songs just to get used to the sound. For French I found some songs but they weren't really the songs I always listen to and it's hard finding some French songs for some reason. Nonetheless, I do like French rap. =) They sound pretty 'flemy' but the fierceness just sounds to cool. An example would be Par Amour by Diam's.
In terms of movies, I've watched a few. Some of them are pretty weird as in they're rather 'wacky' and different or either simplistic like Japanese movies.
Then another thing to do is try to keep note of new words you come across. You don't always remember every single one of them, but occasionally you get them words which seem to stand out. In classes we're made to write a list of new vocabulary and then we test ourselves. Why don't you try it?

I think for me, I like to speak French as much as I can. Most of the people around me do not know French so whenever I slip the occasional words or sentences they're like "Say wha?". Sometimes I find myself thinking in French, like for example I think of something and then suddenly I'm trying to find the French equivalent. Sounds a little weird, I know...

Je pense que the thing that has helped my confidence with French the most is when I went on my exchange. Completely immersing yourself with the language thus being surrounded by French speaking people really gets you going. I found myself at times struggling to make fluid conversations when it came to topics in which I do not have a lot of vocabulary stored in my brain, an example would be when I had a conversation about COD (no, not the fish) to a French kid. I think I learnt some rather-perhaps not the most useful in everyday life-new words, involving shooting a gun at the enemy, hold, and refill ammo (obviously in French). Speaking to this kid was quite funny, because his English wasn't the best and neither was (and still isn't) my French, so to make conversation we had to drop in words instead of sentences at times when we didn't know how to say it in the other language. Another example is when I went to an École primaire, keep in mind they're around the age of 7, 8 or 9, we played games and they kept giving me game tactics-IN REALLY FAST FRENCH. ARGH! HaHa. =') I loved my exchange, basically because it was an experience such as my first time travelling alone without my family, eating a delicacy that moved (oysters) and staying at a random stranger's house for the first time. I could go on longer talking about my trip, but to save you guys from the horror of having strained eyes from reading all of this, I shall leave it there. Well, if any of you guys would like to hear about my trip, I'll see. It may be a future post. ;) If you guys ever get the opportunity to go to France, I suggest going Touristy first like with the family and take lots of pictures and then going with friends or classmates another time for a more 'living in France' kind of feel. Trust me, you'll like it as long as you make the effort to 'try'.

Apologies that I've written (or is it typed?) quite a lot. I guess I do tend to go on for ages, as you can tell with my previous posts already. I won't always be typing this much, but for certain things, they require more words-and when I have the time or when I feel like it. ^ ^
If you've read this far, then go grab yourself a hot chocolate and I dunno, some cookies or marshmallows?

I hope this post has somewhat 'inspired' you guys to learn French, if not another foreign language. They open the doors to a lot of opportunities in terms of businesses, travelling, socialising, etc.
Well, this is my first "Languages" tag. I actually wrote this post like over a month ago, but then again, as with most of my other posts...They're just there on 'Draft' mode, since I'm not sure whether I need to make edits and stuff, but I don't tend to. =')

I anticipate in the future the further improvements with French I will make!