I have been learning Spanish for a good year or so on LingQ and I am getting fairly bored of it, and am kind of wanting to start a new language (probably French). My question is: with a 90 day challenge in French working 2-3 hours a day with my knowledge of Spanish (B2), what level could I possibly get to? I am a complete beginner in French and know next to nothing in the language except what carries over from English and Spanish.
My prediction is that I could make fairly substantial progress doing that much LingQing a day and I think I could make it to high B1 in those 3 months and hopefully have some meaningful conversations with my friends that speak French.
If you study 2-3 hours a day, 7 days a week for 90 days, that’s 180-270 hours in total.
Alliance Française states students can expect to reach CEFR levels after the following cumulative hours of instruction: A1 60–100, A2 160–200, B1 360–400, B2 560–650, C1 810–950, C2 1060–1200.
This is a rough guide to give you an idea of what it requires. Usually to get to a B1 level in French, you’d need 300+ hours.
You already know some Spanish which is very helpful! What level would you say you are at after a year’s study? Can you estimate roughly how many hours you spent studying this language?
Well, if you speak everyday via voice/writing with your friends in French, I believe you could. I know that when I started to learn French (my first foreign language), it took me 6 months before I was able to “type” a meaningful conversation. It took me another year or so before I could even try to do that speaking.
Listening in French is very difficult, so I would suggest you make that your main focus.
Reading will be slightly more easy for you, since a lot of the roots of words are similar.
Anyway, I believe you could achieve a B1 working a few hours a day.
If you know spanish and English French will be a breeze. I don’t think any language’s long road to complete fluency can be achieved in a matter of months, but if yo really put some muscle into there is no way you don’t reach a good level in 3 months.
My first language is French and after a 3 month long volunteering project in Mexico I came back proficient in Spanish. I don’t know what level I have reached in terms of letters, but I listen to the spanish political podcast and TV shows and get 100% of what’s being said.
Latin languages are ridiculously similar in terms of vocabulary.
So yes I am convinced that if you stick with it you will reach an interesting level in French.
It seems that 1/2 of the words in french are words I already know in english or very similar to them. It makes learning words a breeze compared to Russian or Japanese.
The main challenge with french is the pronunciation and the sort of slurring of words together. I found french very easy and was able to get used to it, other people have real trouble with it. The basic concepts of verb forms are similar, but you do have to learn the conjugations of the most important verbs (to be, going, to have, so on) and they are not identical. You will absolutely notice lots and lots of similar words.