Tips to learn French – Conseils pour apprendre le francais
French for beginners
How to Learn French by Getting the Most Out of a Class…
After you enrol in a French class, you expect to learn French right away. You might leave it up to the teacher to drill the words and conjugations into your head. You will get more out of it, though, if you do your part to get more out of the class.
As soon as you enter the room for the first time, begin to get to know the other people. You might not think this is necessary to learn French. After all, you didn’t come to socialize, right? The truth is that knowing these people will make it easier to interact and communicate with them. Your learning experience will be much more pleasant.
If the class goes in the traditional way, the teacher will start with a few basic French words. To learn Spanish, begin thinking correctly about these first few words and you will set a precedent that will carry through all your language learning.
To do this, look at the object and think the French word. Don’t think the English word and then translate it in your head. That’s a bad habit to get into and it won’t help you learn French much either. If you start out learning correctly, the rest will go much smoother.
Some things when you learn French are just easier than English. Your teacher will soon get into going through the alphabet. Pay attention. The sounds of the French alphabet go by very strict rules that rarely change. If you want to learn French, it will be easier if you concentrate on letter that differ from English pronunciation as there aren’t that many – see our little clip but my recommendation would be to put them into pronunciation categories or at least to list and memorise the ‘tricky’ ones as there is nothing more frustrating than reaching a good standard and still not being able to differenciate between ‘e’ and ‘i’ but aside from that, it will also help with pronunciation:
Vowels: Les voyelles
A – K – H pronounce like ‘ah’ ‘car’ – ‘ash’
E =’ euh’
I-J = ‘ee’ – jee
U = ‘ uh’ NOT ‘ou’ a lot shorter than ‘ou’ as in ‘la rue’
Y ‘ ee grec’ in alphabet pronounce ‘ee’ in a word – please note it’s a wovel in French
as it works like one!
Consonants: les consonnes
G – ‘ghay’
Q = ‘ku’
R= ‘err’
W = double V (it’s a consonant, right?)
Z = ‘Zed’
All the others sound more or less like English so no need to worry too much about them – just listen to the rap song below and try to spot the tricky letters and or look at the table below… Ecoutez la chanson rap ci-dessous… et pour voir tpoutes les lettres regardez le tableau ci-dessous:
>>>>French Alphabet Rap <<<<<
French Alphabet and Pronunciation of French Language |
The French alphabet is exactly the same as the English alphabet, except the letters are pronounced differently. Following are the approximate French pronunciations for each letter.
Letter | Pronunciation | Letter | Pronunciation |
A | ah | N | En |
B | bay | O | Op |
C | say | P | Pay |
D | day | Q | Koo |
E | uk | R | Her |
F | ef | S | Es |
G | ghay | T | Tay |
H | ash | U | Oo |
I | ee | V | Vay |
J | jee | W | doo-blaw-vay |
K | ka | X | Ex |
L | el | Y | ee-grek |
M | em | Z | Zed |
Some of the individual letters can have accents, which change the way they are pronounced. Following are the different versions: â, ç, é, è, ê, î, ï. These are not different or additional letters, they are merely letters with accents.
The letter H is not pronounced, or to be more accurate, is pronounced very lightly.
The pronunciation of letters is also affected by their position. If the last letter of a word is a consonants, it is not pronounced unless:
- the first letter of the next work is a vowel, or
- the consonant is a C, F, L, or R. These four consonants are pronounced even if they are at the end of a word. The way to remember this is to remember the word “careful”, which has the same four consonants.
The French phrase for “How is that spelled?” is “Comment ça s’écrit?”.
For words with more than one syllable, the stress is always on the last syllable.
Good luck ! Bon courage!
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