I want to learn to speak French-just in case I happen to win the Lotto and live there for part of the year one day. But I want this learning to be the kind that Neo and Mr Data do-press a button and Whamo! you can speak perfect French. As it is I have tried a number of less successful methods to learn this rather pretty sounding language.
I have used Rosetta Stone, and found it to be pretty good, except that I didn’t actually learn much French. Though it certainly is fun to watch the little slide shows and try to mimic the speakers. I even tried using my microphone a few times, but failed even when I sounded exactly as I should have sounded. Some kind of hardware problem I think. The program was interesting and for a very brief period of maybe an hour or so, I thought about learning all the languages offered through the Rosetta Stone program and getting a job at the U.N. or something. Sadly this was not to be-learning French was still hard, well, impossible for me.
I have listened to a few different CDs and language courses over the years. I even had a French Course for my very first computer, an Atari 400 which used a tape drive and had almost as much memory as a tube of lip balm. I did not learn to speak French, but at least the program was sort of fun to watch.
I have never taken a class, though I have been tempted. Maybe when I win the lottery that will be on my list of things to do. I’ve also seen these ads that want people to move to like, Korean or someplace, and teach English. They pay you to go to another country and teach people to speak English. What a nifty idea. The fact that I can’t seem to learn even the bare minimum of a foreign language myself has never stopped me from thinking, yeah, I could do that. Of course, I don’t, but I could.
At some point when telling my tales of trouble learning to speak French, someone will ask, why do you want to learn to speak French. I don’t really have any plans of visiting Paris. I am not all that likely to move to the South of France. The odds of my meeting a group of French speaking people in my travels seems pretty slim, since I have not run across any yet. I don’t even watch that many French movies, though I do think it would be cool to be able to watch one without reading the crappy sub-titles. But really, it’s just something I have always wanted to do. It’s on my List of Pointless Skills and Useless Knowledge. This is a pretty serious list for me. But I can’t seem to get past the second CD in the French Language Courses.
Maybe if someone wanted to take me to France, or if some Hotel wanted to put me up for a week or two. Yeah, same odds as the lotto that.
But if I really was serious about learning French I might start a blog to chart my progress and help me along the path. Just such a blog happens to exist already, written by a woman who moved to France and really needed to learn French. Her blog French-Word-A-Day.com is the kind of thing I would like to think I would write. Though I might be more than a bit intimidated by that whole A-Day bit. So I am reading Words in French Life and have plans to make regular stops by her blog to see what she is up to.
Will a word a day help me to Learn French? I doubt it, but it will be fun to keep trying.
