Thread: French for dummies.

When i was at the bookstore yesterday buying german grammar books, i had a gander at the french section (about an hour and a half gander). they had about 4 or 5 seemingly usefull books, but the most expensive one, and the one that seemed the most practical was French for dummies


Well, im no dummy, and, i've never read any other books from the seriese, but i was wondering if anybody knew of this book ? has anyone used this one ?

I have found it used at amazon.com for 6 - 8 bucks, and at the store it was $25.00 ! So it seems like a good deal... even if it is used, i dont care.

But, my only question is... should i learn french and german (and russian ) at the same time ??

I have already had 2 years of german, but i wasn't paying attention through alot of it, so im mostly remembering german. But could i take on french too ? 3 languaes seems kinda crazy, but, i guess there is no time like the present... and if im gunna go to school in the Marines,
im sure they will want someone who can learn rapidly one for more languages at a time.
(Btw results on my test tomorrow, w00t).

I would wait with learning French. Learning three languages at the same time is rather difficult, especially if two of them are new (or almost) new to you. Maybe you should wait until you have a good base in German and then add French to your studying if you feel that it

I have also been dealing with a problem similar to this! I'm learning French, Japanese, and Russian, or at least that's the order I started in, and I've decided to pursue a career in translation and interpretation. Problem is, the grad school I want to go to will require me to pick one language. I have to be incredibly fluent by the time I get there (in about three or four years.) In other words, I have to get hardcore and quit fooling around.

As of yet, this has probably not helped you! I can however, tell you what the advisor fellow at the grad school told me. Get one down. Doesn't mean you have to quit the others, but keep it casual with French and German if you really want to rock in Russian. You have to be careful about spreading too thin etc. If you're thinking, "But wait! I can do it!" then you are like me. But I just have to remind myself that people will appreciate a hardcore fluent Russian speaker than a semi-fluent Japanese, French, Russian speaker. He also impressed on me the fact that to be USEFUL (translating and interpreting) you have to be far more fluent than someone who just wants to talk. This I knew, but I can get overly ambitious at times. @_@

If all else fails, I say ask the marines! They will be able to give you good advice because they know their stuff! I had consulted other people, but no one really set me straight until that advisor. ^_^ I would bet that the marines would be able to see to you. Just ask them what they want! ^_^

~dUcK!

Heh, yea ok. *Calls Seargent Menze*.

Indeed - I chose to carry on French German and Latin at school and I don't think Russian has suffered - in fact I think it helps. It keeps the language learning muscles pumped up and it's fun too.

I flipped through it at the bookstore, not a thorough examination by any means, but the first thing I noticed were those pronunciation guides. Those are almost ALWAYS bad news. It's just like transliterating Russian. BAD news. heh >_< I'd just keep your ears trained on some native speakers and monkey hear, monkey say. Don't worry about any of the "zhuhn say pah" <---haha that's probably almost too good...they would probably have you say zhuh nuh say pah heh

~dUcK!

Well im not looking to become and expert in french from one book. I mean, my first russian book was "Russian in 10 minutes a day". Full of pronounciation guides and random stupid stuff. But what it did teach me was the basics. How to conjugte verbs, but them in past tense, recognize genders and such... and im just looking for a book (no matter how stupid) for french that can do the same.

I've never seen the book but flipped through a couple "X language for dummies" books and must say they don't look too bad. As for pronunciation guides, all of the language textbooks I've encountered usually include a short guide in the beginning explaining the sounds of the language. Of course, if what you meant was phonetic pronunciation underneath text, that is a bit tacky.

If I'm not wrong, the books take the approach of introducing vocabulary and grammar through situations a tourist might encounter. Though this isn't bad, it leans toward a lot of boring chapters about what to say at the airport and so on. Of course, I haven't really looked through them very much.

About the prospect of learning French at the same time, go for it if you want to, I did the same thing(French and German in school, Russian on my own time). But I noticed that one of the languages tended to suffer if I focused on one. As you might guess, I paid less attention to my French and as such I still don't speak it very well(I can handle conversations alright, although I still miss a lot of what they're saying). I would suggest, like others, for you to really nail Russian(or maybe just wait until you learn it in the military) and sort of look at the others in your spare time.

BTW, it's much harder to learn, say, three languages at a time all by yourself, than three languages with classes. Mais c'est tr

'...la langue la plus romantique...'

N'oublie pas la n

Alas! You see how my French has deteriorated?

I relate totally to the idea of having one priority, all-in language, and a couple on the side.Having a couple on the side actually helps break things up a bit.Learning only one drop off in stimulation.That's when learning the easier levels of the low priority languages can actually help remind you of how exciting it feels to learn.Side-projects are infinitely good at breaking the monotony and the emotional tunnel vision.
Just a little example of how other languages can help your main one;
French was my only language for a couple of years till I stumbled on the idea of learning the basic phrases and basic structures of as many languages as possible.So, for six months or more, I did NOT EVEN TOUCH French.Then late one night, flipping through the channels, I stumbled upon the foreign language channel.A French film was playing, and I understood it 10 fold, compared to six months back.So, learning side languages trained my ears phenomenally well.And my grammar had a little more flow and effortlessness, too.I guess because I wasn't obssessing over it, which is what can happen if you only have one language.So really, I was improving my French without even addressing it directly.
Don't under-estimate side-projects.They will help your main language whether you know it or not.

Originally Posted by Anonymous

I relate totally to the idea of having one priority

F..@# you, 'anonymous', or 'guest', whatever you call urself.PLAGERIST! You stole my post!
No, .That previous post was 'ACTUALLY' me.Tech. difficulties.Or more to the point, competence difficulties.BUGGER!

Yeah, it does seem strange how you seem to "learn" something even when not doing anything with it. I used to suck at understanding spoken French, but after two weeks in Germany, speaking and hearing only German, I talked with a bunch of French people and I understood French much better than I had before.

Originally Posted by brett

F..@# you, 'anonymous', or 'guest', whatever you call urself.PLAGERIST! You stole my post!

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