French recources
Hi all,
Can please name some good dictionaries (also online dictionaries), websites and other useful resources I could get a hold of to help me with my French?
I have been studying for a little while now with graded readers and the help of The Collins-Robert Dictionary and Google Translate. The main thing I'm concerned about is pronunciation. The dictionary does not provide pronunciations of all the words and that's the rub for me. I listen to the recordings of the stories I go through as much as possible but I feel it is not enough. I would like to check pronunciation in the dictionary - partly because I would like to learn the phonetic alphabet as well.
Could you help me? Or maybe do you have some advice on learning pronunciation?
Dictionary on-line: Word Reference.
Pronunciation: Pronounce it Perfectly in French (Barron's) CDs or cassettes and Exercises in French Phonics (book) by Francis W. Nachtmann. Look at the reviews on Amazon. The Nachtmann book has been around for a long time, but people still want it because it's an "oldie, but goodie" type of book.
Learn IPA for French.
These are the best resources I know. Nachtmann's book completely demystified French for me.
Hi Tim! It's very nice to see you here! :)
So you are going to attempt another foreign language you will never be able to speak nor write nor read fluently. You started English some time ago, but you still write like a subintermediate "student".
Are you one of those language lovers who "learn" five languages but actually suck at them all in the end?
I wish you all the best, bye for now!
K.T.,
Thank you! I will check them out.
To demotivator,
Thanks! It's people like you that keep me motivated and on track with my goal. I love to prove them wrong. And guess what, I succeed all the time.
BTW, thanks for being here. I imagine that some people might actually get demotivated by your comments but that is just as well - saves them time to realize certain facts.
And no, I am not going to suck at any languages that I am learning. But it is not even about the skill, it is about deriving pleasure from what you are doing. But I guess you do not seem to understand that, obviously.
Still wish you wrote something about my question, though. I hate going off-topic, and people who do that.
<<Thanks! It's people like you that keep me motivated and on track with my goal. I love to prove them wrong. And guess what, I succeed all the time.>>
I've seen you write in Spanish and German and I wasn't particularly impressed. Please tell me those are not the languages that you succeed in all the time?
<<But it is not even about the skill, it is about deriving pleasure from what you are doing. But I guess you do not seem to understand that, obviously. >>
Uh huh, in theory it is, but how many people actually do derive pleasure from it? Not all by a long shot. Most people get obsessed with getting fluent and lose motivation and fail.
PS: It's "a demotivator" rather than "the demotivator" for a reason.
Demotivator,
You know, you have me confused with someone else. I have actually seen another person named Tim on the English Forum a couple of times. Well, I am not him.
I am actually glad to talk to you, as much as I despise that off-topic talk.
When I mentioned succeeding in proving wrong people like you all the time, I was talking in general - not only in learning languages. I do not feel like explaining this to you and I do not care anyway.
As for deriving pleasure... Let's face it, even a dumb fuck will learn to be really good at something if they put their mind and a great deal of effort to it. All as long as they enjoy it and keep at it. Period.
It is true that most people fail because they never learn to like what they want to succeed with. It is not the point. It is their problem. I am not one of them.
I agree with you on that but I am talking about motivated people who see their goal clearly and are determined to follow through.
Surely, you can not deny that such people will succeed.