Is French hard to learn?

Love Luxembourg   Mon Jan 29, 2007 3:29 pm GMT
I'm thinking of learning french for my high school credits- is it hard to learn? What about German?
Magn   Thu Feb 01, 2007 1:58 pm GMT
Don't Luxembourgians speak a franco-german dialect?
Guest   Thu Feb 01, 2007 2:02 pm GMT
Dont' waste your time with French, learn Spanish instead.
Guest   Thu Feb 01, 2007 8:09 pm GMT
<< Dont' waste your time with French, learn Spanish instead. >>

Spanish?
It's the most bloody and hard language which I know :] lol
Pete   Thu Feb 01, 2007 10:29 pm GMT
Not really, if you think about it the spelling system and pronunciation rules are easier than in French. The French always say that it's easy for them to learn Spanish. But for us it's bloody difficult to learn French

Pete from Peru
Guest   Fri Feb 02, 2007 5:04 pm GMT
<< Not really, if you think about it the spelling system and pronunciation rules are easier than in French. The French always say that it's easy for them to learn Spanish. But for us it's bloody difficult to learn French

Pete from Peru >>

It's just my personal opinion
MOI LE PLUS PADRISIMO   Sat Feb 03, 2007 6:58 am GMT
IT depends. if you want a language with a simple past tense like English than it's Spanish. If you want to be able to pronounce words easier than it's Spanish.
French has quite of more accents than Spanish. (accent aigu)
French vocabulary is very similar as English because of the origin that English had from borowing French words.
Spanish vocabulary is slighty different; you would have to change more letters than in French
EX: restaurant (FRE-ENG)
restaurante (SPA)
If you want a language where you keep the subject than is French
example French- Je parle--------------I talk
Spanish- hablo (or yo hablo)
If you want a language that has a similar gerund system as English and very often use as in English than it's spanish
ex- ENG I am eating SPA yo estoy comiendo
ENG i am playing SPA yo estoy jugando

Fre JE mange (i am eating or i eat)

I f you want a language where double letter don't exist and are there for a reason than it's spanish.

EX- FRE LETTRES ENG letters SPA letras


It looks like i'm Spanish biased but is true Spanish is easier.
Guest   Tue Feb 06, 2007 3:17 am GMT
don't learn french i heard that french takes 15-20 years to learn while spanish takes 3 years
Guest   Tue Feb 06, 2007 9:03 am GMT
>>don't learn french i heard that french takes 15-20 years to learn while spanish takes 3 years <<

It takes 22 years to learn French and 3 months to learn Spanish.
Incredible   Tue Feb 06, 2007 5:16 pm GMT
<< >>don't learn french i heard that french takes 15-20 years to learn while spanish takes 3 years <<

It takes 22 years to learn French and 3 months to learn Spanish. >>

You were to be little logical, lol...
If you are native English speakers, French is easier to understand and thus to learn that Spanish or Italian...
Many transparent words exist between 2 languages, also 30 % of the English voc results from French (I do not count the other 30 % which come more generally from the Latin-greek, and thus also look like the French vocabulary).
So the variety of vowels in French looks like that from English... Where is the difficulty? The conjugation? The spelling? Then 2 things: learn your lessons, French is a very logical language in the functioning of the conjugations and the sentences, but what increases the difficulty, it is the complexity of certain time of verbs and grammatical rules...
But I think that Spanish does not have to boast of its simplicity either...

Then stop "s'il vous plaît" and "por favor" with your Clichés (Yes, I don't make a mistake: this word spells like that in English) of S...!

Thx.

"Il vaut mieux prévenir que guérir. : Prevention is better than cure."
Eric   Tue Feb 06, 2007 6:05 pm GMT
It takes dedication and regular efforts to learn any language properly. That, and a focus on input (listen and read the language as it is actually spoken and written as often as possible).

Anyway, back to your question, I quite agree with Incredible. if you speak English, then French weird spelling shouldn't be an issue. It's pretty regular actually, when you have learned the rules.

What could actually be difficult, if you are not warned about it, is French stress patern. In English, all words of more than one syllable have one syllable that is stressed more than the others. Not so in French. It is the final syllable in each phrase that is stressed. Also, and Spanish is not different on that respect, no vowel sounds are toned down. Stressed or not, they always sound the same.
As far as conjugation is concerned, don't waste too much time on the simple past tense, which still exists but is hardly ever used in everyday speech (unlike in Spanish).

To answer Magn's question, I don't think Love Luxembourg is from Luxembourg. He would already speak the two languages he's considering learning (French and German) and possibly a third one (Luxemburgish). All three of them are part of people's daily life there.