"EuroDisney? I spit on your EuroDisney" was all the French I knew

[skeetermonkey]

Dear Rosetta Stone:

I want to complain about French. You see, it doesn’t make sense. For example, “he runs” is Il court. (Pronounced eel couer.) Then we have “They (male) run.” It’s Ils courent. No big deal, the verb conjugates and everything. Pronounced, as far as I can tell, eels couer. Do you see a problem here? The verb spelling changes, the

Comments

[clownburner]

You think that's bad, I've been working on Japanese. Hoo boy.

[peregrinejohn]

Japanese pronunciation, not so bad. Japanese grammar, oy. Japanese writing is entirely beyond me.

Oh, Matt: for French, I suggest augmenting the Rosetta Stone program with some Pimsleur. Gets the jist of things in your head really fast.

[skeetermonkey]

Japanese via Rosetta Stone or something else? I only know how to count to four in that language from too much exposure to Jujitsu black belts.

[clownburner]

Rosetta stone Japanese. Immersion is great, but oy trying to make out the writing is hard on my sad little western roman brain.

[howlgirl]

I beleive if there is an e after the r then it is pronounced.

Les Lumeires is not lum-e-yas, it lum-e-airs.

[irishtempest]

What the frick can't you master? You never cease to amaze me .. teach yourself instruments, languages, gardening .. Im surprised you havet built a boat or a house for the Blonde and the Baby ...

[skeetermonkey]

Oh, but I'm lousy in classroom environments (get bored and restless). High school was a mess and college not much better, the first time around. The second time at college, when I was on my dime and working full time, my GPA went up from a weak 2.0 to a 3.8. But, I was serious about it the second time.

Beyond that, there's so much stuff out there you can learn, and why not? I can immerse myself in the Simpsons and Friends every night, or I can learn French. Unfortunately, all the French people I might talk to are watching the Simpsons and Friends.

And I don't do it alone. I seek help when I need it. I would be much further along on fiddle if I took regular lessons. French is going to be a pain without some additional help, which John suggested above, and I'm going to look into. (Book or tape, John? I presume book.)

[fiddleteacher]

Agreed, about the fiddle - but you're really doing pretty well.

[mchuntley]

Try Gaelic.

As for Japanese, I can advance your vocabulary slightly.
Counting to 5, the word for five is GO. Which is what you should do before the jujitsu blackbelt lays a hand on you!

I learned that in Judo

[skeetermonkey]

Gaelic doesn't influence other languages much, nor is it spoken much outside of a little tiny area of Europe. So, while it's charming and all that, it's not a useful piece for language learning, imo. At least, I have no motivation to learn it. Are there Irish who speak no English?

[nightingale8472]

The rule with consonants at the end of French words: Do not pronounce them unless the next word starts with a vowel. For example, "vous avec" isn't pronounced "voo aveck", it's "voo saveck"... except when it's a verb. Verbs are different. Here's the conjugation of Parler (parlay) with the pronounciations.

je parle (zhe parl)
nous parlons (nou parlon)
tu parles (tu parlay... you will never pronounce the s)
vous parlez (vou parlay... you will never pronounce the z)
il parle (ill parl)
ils parlent (ill parlon)

[skeetermonkey]

Ah, useful! Thanks. My French speaking exchange student, while speaking the language as a native, wasn't able to put it in such clear terms for me.