How to learn to speak and write in the French language?

French, a Romance language of the Indo-European family finds its roots in the Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire. It evolved from Gallo-Romance, the Latin spoken in Gaul, and more specifically in Northern Gaul. French is an official language in 29 countries across multiple continents, most of which are members of the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie (OIF), the community of 84 countries that share the official use or teaching of French. French is also one of six official languages used in the United Nations. Its closest relatives are the other langues d’oïl—languages historically spoken in northern France and in southern Belgium, which French (Francien) largely supplanted. French was also influenced by native Celtic languages of Northern Roman Gaul like Gallia Belgica and by the (Germanic) Frankish language of the post-Roman Frankish invaders. Today, owing to France’s past overseas expansion, there are numerous French-based creole languages, most notably Haitian Creole. A French-speaking person or nation may be referred to as Francophone in both English and French. It is spoken as a first language (in descending order of the number of speakers) in France; Canada (provinces of Quebec, Ontario and New Brunswick as well as other Francophone regions); Belgium (Wallonia and the Brussels-Capital Region); western Switzerland (Romandy—all or part of the cantons of Bern, Fribourg, Geneva, Jura, Neuchâtel, Vaud, Valais); Monaco; parts of Luxembourg; parts of the United States (the states of Louisiana, Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont); northwestern Italy (autonomous region of Aosta Valley); and various communities elsewhere.

1. Listen to Audios 

Listen to as many relevant audio resources you find online so as to be able to improve your listening skills. Watch French movies with English subtitles in English movies with French subtitles try the shadowing technique wherein Europe with dialogues of the French speakers so that you get the French accent pitch tone all in order at the same time.  This would also help you train in the French language which you will be able to identify from when many languages are being spoken together. Learn through as many audiobooks as you can get hold of. Listen to the audio clips multiple times to be able to make sense of what you are understanding intuitively following it with a reading of the transcript and then listening to the audio again to be able to assess your listening Remember we cannot speak what we cannot listen properly only when your listing is strong would you be able to speak out the language. Use a lot of online resources and tools such as Memrise, Anki, French podcast online, news in slow French and many more that will help you catapult yourself from being slow to a fast learner.

2. Practice Grammar 

In order to master writing in French, all you would need to do is to get to know a lot of grammar. French grammar will help you understand a lot of technical aspects of the language that can help you write great French remember a benefit with French is that when should write-in in the same alphabets like English except for a few actions which are used indicate stress on certain syllables.

3. Watch Out for French Spelling

One of the biggest obstacles that throw French learners off is spelling. Unfortunately, those silent letters that you don’t pronounce are very much there in writing. Be careful how you spell certain complicated words. You need to master all parts of French grammar to write French correctly.

4. Genders Influence Grammar in French

You may already know that nouns have genders in French. They can either be masculine or feminine. And depending on the gender, different parts of a French sentence need to be conjugated. 

• Articles: French articles need to be conjugated to reflect the gender and the number of the noun. These can be ‘le’, ‘la’, ‘l”, and ‘les’ for definite articles, and ‘un’ and ‘une’ for indefinite articles.
• Pronouns: Pronouns in French are the words that replace the name of the subject in a sentence. ‘He’, ‘she’, and ‘them’ are some examples of pronouns in English. In French, you need to use different forms of pronouns depending on the gender of the subject.
• Adjectives: When you’re describing a noun, you use an adjective. And since the noun is the only reason the adjective’s there in the sentence, you need to make the adjective fit the noun in French. There are various ways to conjugate French adjectives depending on the gender and the number of the noun, so make sure you brush up on that knowledge before you write in French.
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5. Careful with French Accent Marks

French accent marks also don’t do us any favours. While they’re extremely useful when it comes to French pronunciation, their writing isn’t as straightforward. Try to associate the sound with the written French word. There are only 5 accent marks in French. One is the cedilla (ç), which only works with the letter “c”, and another is the acute accent (é), which only sits on top of the letter “e”. So, in practice, there are only 3 different kinds of accents you should look out for in French.

6. Follow the French Sentence Structures

English and French sentence structures are similar in many ways. Both follow the SVO (subject-verb-object) structure, which makes writing in French much easier. And just like in English, the French sentence structure is also flexible. You can switch the words around to emphasize a part of a sentence but still have the same meaning.

• Tomorrow, I’m going to work.  Demain je vais travailler.
• I’m going to work tomorrow.  Je vais travailler demain.

The most important part of the first sentence is the time the speaker goes to work. The second sentence focuses on the subject, the speaker instead. Still, both sentences convey the same meaning of going to work.

If you want to ask a question in French, you can do so by putting a question word at the beginning of the sentence. Common question words are:

• How- Comment
• What- Que / Qu’est-ce que queue
• What kind- Quel genre
• When – Quand
• Where – Où
• Who – Qui
• Why – Pourquoi

You can also ask a question by switching the order of the verb and the pronoun around, and connecting them with a hyphen:

• Do you speak English?  Parlez-vous anglais ?

It’s important to remember these basic rules of French sentence structure before you start writing in French.

I would suggest you to find your unique learning style that gives you an edge Over the Other learners. It could be that somebody Learns more with the visual technique vis-a-vis another who Learns better through a writing technique. Also keep in mind self-learning is not for everybody therefore I would recommend you to take up formal study online or offline to improve your speaking and writing. 

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