Introduction to French and other language. Opinions please

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and French

French is, to my ears, a lovely language, with its pleasant nasal sounds. In a way, part of what makes it pleasant is the fact that not only living things, but all objects, have to be either masculine or feminine. This is called gender. There is no rhyme or reason for the gender, except that the Romans did it. There are rules to help you remember which things are masculine (words that end in consonants for example) and which are feminine ( words that end in “ion” for example), but there are exceptions, as with most rules. You can find these rules on the Internet but it will be hard to remember them. It will just take time to get used to all of this and you will continue to make mistakes. Don’t worry about it. I still make mistakes with gender and I do not worry about it.

Gender seems to influence a lot of things in French, but the good thing is that getting the gender wrong will have little affect on meaning. In any case you will need to focus on listening and reading and understanding at first. You will notice that words will have a masculine form and a feminine form. You will gradually get used to it by doing a lot listening and reading, and especially by saving phrases when you create LingQs.

French verbs, with all their endings, can seem a challenge at first, but I can assure you get used to them. You need to realize that the form of the verb, that is to say the endings, change with each person. “Je parle, tu parles, il parle, nous parlons, vous parlez, ils parlent”. Since one of the delights of French is that letters are often silent, you may not hear the fact that the endings are different. This is great since you can fake it a little when you speak.

But there are other problems. There are many irregular verbs. So when we talk about going somewhere, we get “je vais, tu vas, il va, nous allons, vous allez, ils vont”. Nowadays it is easy to Google “French verbs” and find tables with all of the forms of any verb you want. So I will not give any more examples here.

There are two very important verbs in French that are used to form the past tense. The verb which means “to have” , “avoir”, and the verb that means “to be”, “etre”. The French do not say “I ate”. They say “I have eaten” “j’ai mange”… They do not say “I went”. They say “I am gone” “je suis alle”. Just be aware of it and watch as the forms of some of the verbs change. If you are confused you can ask on the LingQ forum.

I recommend that you save every form of the verb that you come across at LingQ. Each form is a different tense or person, and the phrases that come with it are different each time. Do not be stingy with your LingQing. The more you LingQ the better you will learn.

A few more comments and you are on your way. To ask a question in French you can either reverse the word order, much like in English, or use the pattern of “is it that you are going?” “est-ce que vous allez?”.

As for saying “no” in French, the French are not happy just saying “I am not”. They like to add another negative word. So they say “Je ne suis pas”. Watch for the double negatives.

There are lots of French grammar resources on the web, or you may want to buy a small grammar book. Refer to these resources from time to time, but don’t spend too much time trying to memorize rules. With enough listening, reading and LingQing things will start to seem clearer and clearer. Eventually, even the grammar rules will make sense.

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The idea is that there will be 4 introductory lessons.

  1. Introduction to LingQ
  2. Listening and reading
  3. LingQing
  4. Introduction to Chinese etc.

Each lesson will consist of 4 or 5 short sentences.

The lessons will also include an audio version, in the language of the learner, of the introductory texts. I have posted three initial drafts of 4) for 3 languages.

Here is the draft for 1) 2) and 3)

All comments welcome.

Introduction

Welcome. You are about to embark on an enjoyable journey of language learning and discovery. LingQ is different from most language learning systems. At LingQ you will not do grammar drills and exercizes. Instead, most of your time will be spent on things that are easy to do and effective, such as listening, reading and gradually increasing your vocabulary.

As someone who has learned a lot of languages, I cannot stress enough that language improvement is gradual and unpredictable. You cannot be a perfectionist, at least not at first. The kind of people who are successful language learners are people content to wander in a fog, bumping into the odd tree, or tripping on the odd stump

This willingness to explore and embrace the unknown, not talent, is what separates the happy linguist from the frustrated learner. Don’t worry about how to pronounce each word. Don’t try to master each lesson, and all the new words. Just plan to enjoy the journey. It will all come together before you know it, if you just put in the time.

The more time you spend the better you will understand the language. Soon a number of things that were difficult at first, including the pronunciation of the language, will seem easier.

Language learning is a gradual, and natural process. You will steadily acquire new habits, the habits of another culture and language. Enjoy yourself!

Listen and read

Spend most of your time listening. Once you have chosen an item to study from our Library, download it. Listen often on your iPod or MP3 player. Listen wherever and whenever you can, while doing other chores.

At first try to listen many, many times to the same content. As you progress you will not need to listen as often to each item. And don’t wait until you fully understand one lesson before moving on to the next lesson.

Reading is another powerful learning activity. When you read at LingQ, save as many phrases and words as possible. This is called LingQing. You need to a lot of it, take my word for it.

Listening will help you in your reading, and the combination of both listening and reading will help you remember words and phrases faster than any other activity.

Remember, don’t try to be a perfectionist. There are a lot of words and phrases that you will not get no matter how often you listen. It does not matter. You are getting used to the language. Things will eventually become clearer.

Keep listening and keep learning!

LingQing

Language learning is a journey of discovery, and the milestones on that journey are marked off in words. LingQ will help you learn words, and will keep track of your progress as you reach each milestone

A few words of advice.

Make a practice of saving a lot of words and phrases. LingQ words and phrases. LingQ the different forms of the same word. LingQ words that you think you know but are not sure about.

Try to review your new words in Flash Cards when you first receive them in your dailiy email. If you fall behind, or can’t remember them, don’t worry, though. You should be saving so many LingQs that you cannot possibly nail them all down. You will meet them again and again if you keep listening and reading.

The more LingQs you save, the more words are going to be highlighted in yellow in future texts. You will find that this is like a visual trigger that helps you learn these new words. Remember you need to meet words often to really get to know them.

When you want to speak and write, sign up for discussions with tutors, or submit writing for correction by our tutors. Get to know the people in our community.

Happy LingQing.

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I think it is very nicely done.

One theme that runs through the lessons is “don’t be a perfectionist”. I think that, paradoxically, the type of person that would be attracted to a completely on-line language learning experience would have a higher tendency to be a perfectionist.

I think that a separate lesson devoted to that topic would be good. In order to get through to the perfectionists, that lesson would have to provide lots of concrete examples. Concrete Do’s and Don’ts for avoiding the perfectionism trap.

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This needs to be elaborated. It’s not immediately apparent to beginners (and even some people who have used LingQ for a while) what “LingQ phrases” means. It should be pointed out that one is not limited to LingQing a single word but can LingQ two or more words by dragging the cursor.

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A link to the blog post would be useful. Some people do not understand this metaphor.

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I’m giving your Chinese intro a test drive here…So, yes, I’m feeling better after having read it. I like the assurance on that tones are do-able and grammar is easy.

Then I get to this:<> This is exactly what I want to do, but I’m not sure how to do it. I’m hoping you’ll see fit to add just a bit of a technical explanation or a pointer to info on how this might be done. I know I’m acting sort of helpless here, but I’m thinking that people who are new to Lingq will be as helpless.

BTW, I’m not expecting an answer here to my question because this isn’t the thread for it…Anyway…I can see myself getting the text changed to pinyin and then importing it, but I don’t know how to get the audio to go with it, unless I open Lingq in 2 different tabs and read in one and listen in the other…Oh, I guess I can print out the pinyin.

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Jingle,

Just copy the Chinese text ( you need to click on the Print icon in order to be able to copy). Then paste it into a pinyin convereter like purpleculture.net http://bit.ly/Qqvz7. This will give you the pinyin. Now you can paste it where you want or print it. Some people leave the pinyin version as a Comment to the item they are studying. That would help others. You will find that some of our Chinese texts have pinyin in the Comments section.

In the future we intend to provide pinyin in the text and yet make sure that the words do not count. You cannot LingQ pinyin and dictionaries do not work for pinyin.

You may want to start a separate thread on learning Chinese at LingQ and I think you will get a lot of advice.

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Thanks, Steve.

I knew this wasn’t the place to look for answers, but since I was just starting Chinese, I thought my comments might be helpful.

So thanks for graciously answering here anyway. Any other problems I’ll post somewhere else.

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We will need an intro for English. I have started one here. i would really like some English learners to add their experiences to this. Thanks in advance.

It is hard for me to judge how English sounds since I am a native speaker. I do not like it or dislike it. I always do best if I am emotional attached to the language I am learning, so I advise you to find things you like about English and the culture that surrounds it. You are lucky in that the number of resources available for learning English far exceed that for any other language.

I believe that English is both easy and difficult. Things are not masculine or feminine as in some other languages. A door is a door, a tree is a tree. Period. Most of the time we just add an “s” if there is more than one of something. The form of a word does not change just because we are doing something to it, or with it, or by it, or at it. On the other hand we do have to learn all those pesky little words. It is not always clear if we should say at the office or in the office, or on the train or in the train.

There are rules, but they are hard to remember. So the best is just to get used to the patterns of the language by doing a lot listening. I especially recommend saving phrases at LingQ. Drag your cursor across a few words and save a phrase. You can even use a Tag to save different kinds of phrases.

These pesky little words, like with, up, on, at, by also show up when we are doing things, and change the meaning of some verbs. These are the infamous phrasal verbs of English. Here again, the solution is to save phrases at LingQ and maybe Tag them.

Many languages have simpler tenses than English. It is difficult to get used to patterns in a new language that are very different form our own. Try to notice what is happening. Try to save phrases.

The greatest complaint about English is that the spelling is not consistent. This is true, and there is no real solution here other than to use a spell checker and to notice the words we have trouble with while reading.

In English we create questions by reversing the word order, sort of. Often we have to add a few words to make it work. It may be worthwhile to save some question phrases and Tag them as questions just to get used to this.

Negatives are straight forward, with “no” and “not” being the most commonly used negative words. But when we cannot do something we often reduce the two sounds to one. Don’t let that bother you. Save these forms of the words and you shouldn’t have too much trouble.

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thank you so much