There’s plenty of choice. Dozens of places are offering French language courses in France for people of all levels – [...]]]> What could be better than coming to learn French in France? Get yourself an intensive French language course in the heart of the action – and have a great vacation in France at the same time!

There’s plenty of choice. Dozens of places are offering French language courses in France for people of all levels – but what about serious students. What about people who are looking at university courses in France or French internships?

These students of French want something a bit more than two weeks in Provence and a basic grasp of the French language!

To be honest, until recently I though if you were a French student looking to learn French in Paris (for example) you had to make your own way. I wasn’t even aware that people could help you do this.

Shows what I know! It seems there are services that can sort out all the details for you – at least so a friend of mine tells me. If internships in France or university level French language classes are what you are interested in, this seems like an ideal solution.

The company is called My French Class and I’m amazed what they sort out. They work with a network of partner universities not just in Paris but all over France (La Rochelle is a particularly lovely place in my humble!).

Anyway, it seems that the service is about as comprehensive as you could get. For a start, they’ll help you with your visa. Then they pick you up from the airport when you arrive. They get you settled in accommodation – which they arrange. They even get you a French cell phone!

I’ve had a brief look at their site. There’s a brochure to download and more useful info about their service so there’s no point me going into it in great detail here.

Look I’ll be honest, I’m a bit beyond my student years! However, if learning French in France at this level is something that interests you, the My French Class service seems to offer an easy and worry-free way to sort it out. It’s a French company, by the way, so they really know the system.

One final thing. A friend of mine has been doing some work with them and he’s given me a bit of inside knowledge. If you sign up for one of the Summer or Semester courses you can save €50 by using the code LF4F on the form. If you are taking a full year, that code will save you €100 (about $125 at today’s exchange rate). More than enough to get you a good meal on your first night in Paris!

Full details here.

La bière is what we’re talking about. French [...]]]> OK, so it’s not exactly an online French class – you can’t answer back or pass notes to each other – but I hope this little insight into French beer will give you a slightly better command of the language. It will help you get a drink too!

La bière is what we’re talking about. French beer is mostly a light, lager-type brew and quite weak – around 3%. It’s also not huge on taste, but the french aren’t big beer drinkers. It’s something to satisfy a thirst on a warm day – if they want thoughtful, complex drinking, they have wine.

There are exceptions, of course. The north east is well-known for its beer and you can cross the border into Belgium for all manner of brews – some of which are black as night and strong as whisky! If you go into Paris or any of the large cities you’ll find bottled beers to satisfy the connoisseur too.

Out in the countryside though, in the majority of towns and villages, you’ll normally find just a choice of one on tap, and maybe a couple of others in bottles. The beer on tap is invariably cheaper.

French beer is usually served by the 1/4 litre. You can ask for a pression (which means draught) but it’s more common to ask for a demi – which confusingly means half, although it’s a quarter litre. Don’t ask me why! By the way, that’s une pression or une demi because beer is feminine.

You never hear people ask for un verre de bière which would be a glass of beer (un, because the glass is masculine and comes before the beer).  A bottle of beer is une bouteille de bière (une because bottle – bouteille – is feminine). It’s more likely that you would ask for the beer by name if you are asking for a bottle – une bouteille de Kronenbourg, par example (for example).

In most parts of France you can also have half a half. Confused? You can get half a demi which is known as a bok. You’d probably get a funny look if you asked for une bok in a bar in Paris but out in the sticks, drinking with your French friends, it’s a politely small amount to have if you’re just about to leave but someone insist they buy you a drink. Une bok, merci.

You can also get half litre and even litre glasses in towns and cities. You’ll seldom see the French drinking out of one, so basically it just marks you out as a tourist!

That’s about it for today’s online French class, except a little note about French beer prices and how they vary depending on where you sit. Sound strange? I’ll explain.

Normally you don’t need to go to the bar. Find a table and sit and a waiter will come over. Not always quickly – but that’s France. If you sit inside the bar you will get charged a certain price. If you sit outside the bar – on a sunny terrace or a  street corner – it’s quite normal for you to be charged extra – even if it’s only a couple of feet further away. If you go to the bar and stand there to order your drink, and drink it at the bar, you will pay less than at an inside table – but you might well get frowned at! The bar owner and the waiters will often try to intercept you and steer you to a table.

As a general rule I’ll sit at a table at first, until I get to know the staff. If I go in with friends we’ll sit at a table. If I’m just popping in on my way past, having a quick beer on the way home, I will probably stand at the bar – but only once they’ve got to know me.

There you go – an online French lesson in French beer etiquette – whatever next!

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I don’t mean anything dirty or smutty here – I mean the fact that when you’re learning to speak French you need to remember that everything is either masculine or feminine. It’s either le (male) or la (female) for “the” [...]]]> One of the biggest problems I have had with learning to speak French is the sex!

I don’t mean anything dirty or smutty here – I mean the fact that when you’re learning to speak French you need to remember that everything is either masculine or feminine. It’s either le (male) or la (female) for “the” – or un (male) or une (female) for “a”.

If you’re Spanish, Italian or Portuguese this is no big deal (those languages are constructed in the same way) and Germans have even add a neutral tense so that’s worse – but for us English speakers it’s something completely new. We just say “table” or “knife”, we don’t have to remember it’s Mrs Table and Mr Knife!

What would be useful would be if there were some pointers you could use – like all words beginning with “P” were masculine, for example.

No such luck. What’s worse is that things you would think were one thing, are the opposite. I don’t want to be sexist here but you would think a bra would be feminine, wouldn’t you?

Nope. Not in French. It’s masculine, le soutien-gorge. How can that be!!!?

So unfortunately there really is no way around it. When you learn the French for something you have to learn it’s gender too. It’s not the end of the world, and most times it doesn’t matter, but it can cause confusion on occasions because sometimes words can have le and la variations.

For example, le tour means a tour – like the tour de France cycle race or a tour around the countryside. La tour is a tower – the Eiffel Tower is la Tour Eiffel.

Le poêle is a stove but La poêle is a frying pan. Probably the worst is le mari, husband and la mari, marijuana!

Make the effort though and most French people will either politely correct you or ignore it. It’s frustrating at first if you are putting an effort into learning to speak French but it comes with practice.

Working the other way it’s usually easier. If it’s got an e on the end it’s usually feminine – la chaise, the chair. Stylo is pen. No e on the end so masculine – le stylo. Of course if the word has a vowel at the start they’ve got you again because they hide the le or la. L’enveloppe (yep, envelope) is actually femenine. L’éléphant (yep, elephant) is masculine.

So how can you tell? You can’t, but if you look at the ‘a’ or ‘an’ version it’s some help because an elephant is un éléphant, hence masculine. An envelope is une enveloppe, hence feminine.

Confused yet?

The point of all this, I suppose, is that when you start out learning to speak French you need some kind of structured help. Like the free lessons you can get from either of those two ads on the right. Just coming here and learning French on the fly can be done – but you’re making it more difficult for yourself than you need to.

Learning French in France helps enormously, of course, there’s no better way than immersing yourself in the culture and talking to French people every day. That’s not really practical for most people though – and even then I would still recommend some kind of course or lessons first, just so you get the basics down.

Learning a new language is always a challenge but it’s much easier now than when I was a kid and if you’re going to spend time here it’s well worth it. Not learning French means you miss out, not just on what’s going on around you, but also on a certain je ne sais quoi of French life.

Take advantage of the modern learning systems available and you’ll not only learn quicker, you’ll have more fun.

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Usually I recommend a brain transplant direct from a French native but, as that tends to tick people off, I’ll go with the best way to learn French because, honestly, while a [...]]]> I get asked quite often which I think is the easiest way to learn French. Note, not the best way but the easiest way.

Usually I recommend a brain transplant direct from a French native but, as that tends to tick people off, I’ll go with the best way to learn French because, honestly, while a good course makes it a lot easier and quicker there really is no easy way.

If you are Italian or Spanish – one of the “Latin” languages – then the structure is similar so it will be easier for you. Most French learners are English speaking though and the root of our language is Anglo Saxon, Norse, Germanic… we’re right mongrels – and French is put together about as differently as it could be. I can recommend easier for you, but easy… nah, not really.

Lots of people also ask for the best free French course. Hey I understand that, we all like free and we get kind of used to it with the internet. There are free French lessons all over the place and some of them, like those from the BBC, are a very good introduction.

As is the one I recommend, the free six day introduction to French from Rocket Languages.

The trouble with these is “introduction”. Any free French lessons will only take you so far – maybe far enough for a weekend break but nowhere near fluency.

If that’s what you want then you need the full Rocket French course. Oh, and yes, in my opinion it is about as easy as it gets!

By all means do the six day free French lessons first – it will give you a good idea of whether it appeals to you or not – but if you want to move on to eventually be a competent French speaker, to be able to put French phrases together and to be comfortable in most situations you need a comprehensive course. What’s more, unlike when I was a kid and French was boring repetition of incomprehensible verbs while sat in cold classrooms, Rocket French is quite fun!

It’s that interactivity that you can get from computer-based French learning that books can’t give you. Don’t get me wrong, I like a good book, but when you’re learning French you want to be involved and entertained – more so if the whole family is learning. Rocket French offers that challenge and it just helps you learn that bit quicker.

What’s also very useful is that there are French MP3 components so if you’ve got a player, or a portable CD radio, you can take your French lessons just about anywhere.

It’s not the cheapest course in the world, but if you get the download set it’s about 30% of the price of some of the “big boys”. What’s more it’s voiced by a native French person so you can hear how French should actually sound. I don’t know about you but I don’t want to learn French from an English speaker or someone with a strong Eastern European accent  – it just doesn’t sound right.

Well that’s my opinion anyway. Try the six free French lessons, see how you get on.

Un, deux, trois, by the way. One, two three, just in case…

Anyway, French numbers. We’re pretty safe with a direct translation up to seventy, except twenty one, thirty one, [...]]]> Have you tried French numbers yet? I don’t mean the easy one, two, three stuff, I mean getting above seventy – which actually doesn’t exist in French!

Un, deux, trois, by the way. One, two three, just in case…

Anyway, French numbers. We’re pretty safe with a direct translation up to seventy, except twenty one, thirty one, etc which are actually “twenty and one”, vingt-et-un etc. (etc in French is etc – I blame the Latins).

So where were we? Seventy. In French it’s sixty-ten, soixante-dix. Then sixty eleven, sixty twelve (soixante-onze, soixante-douze) up to eighty – but they’re not finished with messing you about yet!

You’ve guessed, there’s no eighty. It’s not sixty-twenty either, that would be far too simple. For the French it’s literal translation is four-twenty, quatre-vingt!

Bear with me. Eighty one therefore is quatre-vingt-et-un, four twenty and one. Eighty two is quatre-vingt-deux and so on. What happens at ninety? Well of course they mix the lot. It’s four twenty eleven – quatre-vingt-onze. Ninety two is four twenty twelve, then it’s four twenty thirteen, all the way to four twenty nineteen (or ninety nine as we like to say) quatre-vingt-dix-neuf.

How confusing do you think a hundred is going to be then? Actually, it’s not. It’s Cent. Simple as that. A Thousand is Mille, A Million is just getting too easy – million. Yep, same as English. Are you breathing a sigh of relief? Should you ever need billion, it’s milliard.

So how do you make learning French numbers easy? To be honest, I’ve never come across a better way than simple practice and writing it down. There’s something much more powerful about writing stuff down on paper than just thinking it. Don’t ask me why it works, it just does.

If you’ve got some French coins (it will work with any currency but obviously French is better practice) try choosing some at random and adding them up. Every time you see numbers, try converting them. We went to French bingo locally (which you will probably see advertised as “le lotto“). It was quite a laugh but also great practice. I know that’s not practical for everyone but if you try taking every opportunity to try your numbers, and try making it a game so that it’s fun, you’ll get along much quicker. It’s getting the numbers up to a hundred right that is the hardest. It’s relatively easy to add three hundred once you’ve worked out the seventy seven, for example. That’s trois-cents-soixante-dix-sept, by the way.

At first it’s not easy because it’s something we learn from childhood and we’re accustomed to our way of doing it. Practice is the key and, when you hear it from someone else, concentration because French numbers are a little deceptive. We think we’re hearing sixty but if the French follow it with “onze” it becomes seventy-one. The trick is to just wait a second, wait until you’ve heard the whole number. Next year is going to be an easy one, by the way, 2010 is deux-mille-dix. Simple!

You probably can. I know people who live here who can’t speak a word of French. I don’t spend a lot of time with [...]]]> Around 16 million French people actually speak some English – not to mention the hundreds of thousands of ex-pats who do. So why learn French? You can probably get by without it.

You probably can. I know people who live here who can’t speak a word of French. I don’t spend a lot of time with them, but they’re around. Mostly they rely on a partner who speaks French, or someone local. Not very independent-minded but I guess some people are like that.

But never mind my personal opinion (my blog – that’s what you get sometimes ). Why learn French anyway?

Let’s look at it from a French vacation point of view first. If you speak even just a little French you’re simply going to make your your life easier. You will understand more than you realize so you will find it easier to get around. You will also be able to pick up on things that non-French speakers will miss. Interesting events you hadn’t planned on that you see advertised on a poster, for example. If you don’t speak the language you would simply ignore things like that.

Now I’m not suggesting for a minute that you need to be fluent. If you are coming to France often then that would be an advantage but even a few words will help you figure stuff out. Once you begin to understand French phrases you will be surprised how much more sinks in – quickly too.

If you are going to spend more time in France, perhaps as part of a posting, or a gap year, or you’re going to live here, then “why learn French” shouldn’t even be a question. Seriously. If you’re not considerate enough to attempt to learnt he language of the country you’re going to spend months or even years in, we can do without you.

What are you doing in France if part of it is not to absorb something of French culture and life?

Here’s a little tip that, even if you only learn a few words, will help you no end. Don’t start with “Do you speak English”. Not ever. How would you feel if you were at work and someone came up to you and said “excusez-moi, parlez-vous Français?”

Even if you understood them you would probably be fairly stumped. If you were busy, you might be less than polite. Yet you often hear people say that the French are impolite. Are you kidding? Is it any surprise when people keep going up to them and saying “Do you speak English?”

Start with “Bonjour” or “Excusez-moi“. You’ll be amazed the difference it will make, even if your second phrase is still “do you speak English”!

In my experience the French are helpful and patient – provided you are at least considerate enough to make an attempt. Of course they will know you are not French. Even those that speak fluent French are seldom taken as actually being French – it’s a question of accent – but if you try to speak their language, even that introductory word or two, the French appreciate it. They are flattered and will do their very best to help.

Just in case you have no French at all (although you can probably guess), “Bonjour” is hello (in fact it’s good day, but use it like you would hello). “Excusez-moi” is excuse me – yeah, OK, you knew that – and “parlez-vous Français?” is do you speak French?”

Here endeth today’s lesson!

I don’t mean people visiting France on vacation, you’ll get by fine in most places (although a bit of French will help no end), I mean people who come to [...]]]> If there’s one thing that makes me growly about living in France it’s the number of ex-pats who make no attempt to learnt the French language.

I don’t mean people visiting France on vacation, you’ll get by fine in most places (although a bit of French will help no end), I mean people who come to live in France permanently.

Not only is it downright rude, you would miss out on so much of French life and culture. OK, in reality there are so many English, Americans and other English speakers over here now that you can just about get by without speaking French – but why? You want to live in France but not communicate with the French? Give me a break!

Told you I get growly

I’m not suggesting it’s easy. I’m in my late forties and it’s a long time since I failed French badly at school, but even a few words make a huge difference. The French will treat you a hell of a lot better and you’ll save a fortune.

To instal fosse septique, dig big hole!

I’ll give you a real-life example.

A couple of friends of mine bought a French farmhouse that needed renovating. First job is the drains and, like a lot of French rural properties, there are no mains so you need a septic tank (fosse septique). To cut a long story short they got three quotes (never go for the first quote you get).

First guy is French but speaks English: 16,000 Euros. Second guy speaks no English: 9,500 Euros. Third guy speaks no English: 6,500 Euros. That’s a 9,500 Euro difference! I don’t care if you convert that to dollars or pounds that’s a lot of money. If my friends hadn’t been able to speak French they might just have got the quote from the first guy…

Was the first one trying to rip them off? Let’s give him the benefit of the doubt and say he was just maximizing his advantages.

There’s actually a funny conclusion to this story. My friends, not unsurprisingly chose quote 3 and on the appointed day the workers arrived. Monsieur Frenchman number 3 was there to oversee things, but the guy who actually did the work? Monsieur Number 1 – the guy with the highest quote – sub-contracting for the guy with the lowest!

After five years here I wouldn’t say I’m fluent in French but I get by. Because I work in France I’ve had to deal with all kinds of medical, insurance, banking, accounting, you name it… and the French are rightly famous for the amount of paperwork they generate!

Anyway, I’ve learned a bit and while there’s no way I would attempt to teach French I will be doing a few posts on common French language things that trip people up.

In the meantime, if you’re looking into how to learn French I do have someone I would recommend. During my time here I’ve tried a couple and best value by far is Rocket French. You learn from a French person as well, where some of the others – quite expensive courses – have English or East European teachers.  Seems odd to me but there you go.

Last I checked Rocket French have a special offer to learn French for free for 6 days so you can try it for nothing. Seems like a great deal to me!