This trip has been a little bittersweet. I’m enjoying France; it’s beautiful, and the people are very kind so far.

I’ve been practicing my French for 4+ years, but not seriously. It comes in waves, where my comprehension is OK, but between my general anxiety about speaking and my gaps in knowledge, it’s real work to express myself and get my point across naturally. I can do it, but it’s work, so clearly I’m far from fluent.

My goal was really just to be able to use my French in small cases as needed, more as a sign of respect that, “Hey, I’m a visitor, and I’m in your home. I’m trying.”

I try not to personalize the instances where the conversation kicks out to English, but it really makes me second-guess myself. I reflect on it, and I’m like, “These people aren’t your French tutors; they’re just trying to work.” I’m not trying to pretend I’m French, and I’m not trying to say I think your English is worse than my French, I was just raised that Americans have gained a reputation for asking the world to bend to them and, whenever I travel I’m trying to show that I recognize I’m in your home.

All in all it’s been a good trip and I’ll keep working on my French though it’s just kind of like at this point I’m just doing it for my own edification.

J’espère que tu ne seras pas trop dérangé la semaine prochaine.

Être derangé means be disturbed. But this can be a state of mind also? Like I hope that you Will not be hurt/pissed off.

Hello everybody, I'm a student from Germany and would like to learn French. As a student, language learning isnt a priority for me, but I would like just one good textbook I can use to self learn French. I spend around 30/40 minutes learning daily.

(if you could add some kind of pdf link, or tell me where to find it, Id greatly appreciate it!)

It wasn't manually graded, but automated for sure ;)

Backstory: I built a little French Verb app for some coworkers learning French, it picked up 1,000+ downloads along the way, and every answer gets graded. I'm a data geek so I went through 50,000 of them to see where people actually break.

1. Stem-changing -er verbs (the é/e to è flip). They look regular but that's the trap. They're not.

• lever and espérer get missed around 30% of the time
• ils lèvent was the most-missed form in the whole dataset, wrong about half the time
• j'espère, je préfère too

My 2c Tip: if you hear the "eh" sound, it takes the accent. It shows up in every form except nous and vous (je lève, tu lèves, ils lèvent, but nous levons).

2. The plural forms of the big irregular verbs. Everyone knows je fais and il est. The plural is where it falls apart.

• ils font missed ~32%, vous faites ~27%
• vous êtes ~24%, ils ont ~21%, ils vont ~20%
• the singular of those same verbs sits under 10%

My 2c Tip: no clever rule here, these are just irregular and super high-frequency. Drill the plural column (nous/vous/ils) straight down instead of waiting for it to click, and get lots of listening in so vous faites and ils font start sounding wrong any other way.

3. The -cevoir verbs and their cédille. recevoir, apercevoir, and friends.

• both missed around 31%, roughly 3x the average
• it's the ç in je reçois, il reçoit, ils reçoivent

My 2c Tip: the cédille only appears before o (reçois, reçoit, reçu) to keep the soft "s" sound. nous and vous drop it: recevons, recevez. My trick when I was younger is that AOU is the sound you make when you hurt yourself, so you need to soften it.

BONUS (The one that surprised me): The exact same conjugation gets missed about 36% more often inside a full sentence drill than as a standalone pronoun + verb drill. You can nail it on a flashcard and blank the second it's in context. Best case I've seen for practicing in sentences, not tables.

Happy to answer questions about the data.

Engineered in the context of an engineered floor. Hired someone on Fiverr to do an english to french translation and I've found a few hints they may have just fed the whole document to AI. They translated "engineered" to "conception" which stuck out to me as odd, that word seems to mean "design". Is this right?

Hello!

Would I say…

Je vais voir mon groupe préféré à Nîmes.
Or
Je vais voir mon groupe préféré en Nîmes.

I think it’s à, but want to be sure!

Merci!

Like in a magic or mentalist performance, especially one which might also have old timey/vaudeville feel?

Hi!

I would like to explore french music a bit more and I was hoping you could recommend some bands? I like Maneskin, Yunglbud, and GIMS. Thanks!

Bonjour!

Je voudrais explorer musique francais, et je souhaite vous peuvez partage les recommendations? J'aime Maneskin et Yungblud et je voudrais les artistes francaises comme ils? Aussi, j'aime GIMS. Merci!

(My keybard accents aren't working rn)

Hello, I wonder wondering if any of yall could recommend me media (especially YouTube channels) that lean leftist (anti capitalist) or socialist? Merci ❤️

Question about French expression. J’ai eu Sandrine hier.

This can be about sex?

which one is more effective

Question about French expression. J’ai eu Sandrine hier.

This can be about sex?

I've been looking for more French YouTube content, specifically videos related to mountain sports since that's one of my big motivations for learning. For an example of the type of stuff I'm looking for, I'm a big fan of the American Mediocre Amateurs (light and fast, mountain running/ski mountaineering) and the Spanish Pablo RAL (skimo racing primarily). Given how big France is in all of this stuff, I imagine there's plenty out there.

My colleagues would not miss this for anything in the world.

->

Mes collègues ne rateraient ça pour rien au monde.

My guess is because there's a "rien" in the sentence, but the rien isn't paired with the ne! It's a separate prepositional phrase!

If we take out the pour rien au monde, the rest of the sentence can stand alone (Mes collègues ne rateraient pas!)

Bonjour à tous! Je suis en train de lire des classiques françaises afin de découvrir des styles de la littérature et des auteurs différentes. Je viens de lire ‘Au Bonheur des Dames’ que j’ai adoré et j’ai déjà lu aussi Les Lais, Le Rouge et le Noir, Le Père Goriot, Horace, Phèdre, les discours de Rousseau, L’étranger et Autoportrait en Vert.

J’ai du mal maintenant à décider entre Les lettres Persanes, Les œuvres Romanesques et le Nôtre Dame de Paris. J’avoue que j’adore Zola et j’ai beaucoup de ses livres, mais j’aimerais découvrir des autres auteurs d’abord. Alors je cherche des recommendations ! Je ne suis pas opposée à quelque chose que je n’ai pas mentionné .

Merci !

https://voca.ro/15drVhjJ8Uy0

Peu / Peur
Eux / Heure
Ceux / Sœur

Peur / Père
Meurt / Mer
Heure / Air

Leurs
Couleurs
Intérieur
Extérieur

The explanation says place ne and pas around both the reflexive pronoun and the verb to make it negative makes sense to me for the first example because it does exactly that.

But the second example, not so much. I understand that sommes is also a verb but I would think the verb that the instruction/ explanation was talking about would be levés? Is it because it’s passé compose? If so would the simple present be (following the first example): “Nous ne nous levons pas tôt” ?

I should say I really like to write in French.

Idk just the way it spells... at the first look it might seem ridiculous like wtf you mean "haut" is pronounced like single "oh" sound?

but there's a logic. if you know rules of spelling in French (it's easy to remember all of them) you can read almost every word.

HOWEVER I understand that if you try write down a unknown word which you've heard for the first time, you will probably fail.

but spelling and pronunciation is funny actually. you can't cut a word into letters, you should pay attention to a whole word (and next words also!) to pronounce it correctly.

it's like looking at the whole picture and its context: if you look only at some separated details you will be struggling with understanding.

because French words and speech are like notes and melody. that's beautiful.

Bonjour!

This is likely sounding recognisable for almost all learners, specifically those using textbooks and/or online courses.

You plough through the course which consist of grammar, vocab, and example sentences. Think of:

- We just finished eating dinner
- I am going to New Zealand next year
- She doesn't like vegetables anymore

Cool.

But how to go from these, to a full fledged story? The problem obviously is that for example, the New Zealand one was about the future tense ('am going to'), not specifically about the country. So how do you continue speaking/writing about the trip you're planning to the country?

One way is to google every word that you like to have in the story, but I feel that that would be counter-productive since you will be investing time and thinking for just that story, in favor of the flow of the course.

So how do you do it? How do you practice longer sentences using what you've learned so far, and tell a coherent story?

Or is writing textbook sentences as much as possible with variations actually the key?

E.g:

- we are driving to the next city
- she is driving to the next city
- she is swimming to the next city
- they are swimming to the next lake
- etc

based on all known words and not introducing new words; basically pattern drills.

I have the opportunity to converse with french natives. But instead of sharing them my vacation story like this:

I went to Oslo last year. What an amazing city with beautiful mountains, really enjoyed hiking there. Also loved all the food, especially the fresh fish.

... I get stuck with these:

- I went to Oslo last year.
- It is an amazing-looking city, it has beautiful mountains.
- I really enjoy hiking on the mountain.
- I also really like the food, really like the fresh fish.

:-D

What are your tips and tricks to solve this?

Hi all! I'm looking to help my 10 year old learn French - my older 2 are fluent (Ottawa french) and I'm at about an A2... I found Les Loustics, which looks promising but I just want to review some others before purchasing the book!

(I've seen threads for those who want to teach kids and can't speak it themselves but I have 2 teens who can assist!)

Thank you 🙏🏼