Is it easy to learn to speak French?

Do you think the French language has a unique beauty and charm? In fact, the French language is enchanting because it sounds melodic, with ups and downs and words that connect smoothly. But have you ever wondered how easy it is to learn to speak French?

Unfortunately, many people give up learning the language before they even try, arguing that it’s too difficult, too fast and too hard to keep up with. Other people, however, claim that the spelling of the words doesn’t match the pronunciation.

Have you ever thought that too? What if we told you it was relatively easy to learn to speak French?

So it’s time to put an end to that doubt! In this article, you’ll learn why some languages are easier to learn than others and we’ll give you tips and guidelines to help you study French! Let’s go! Or rather, allons-y !

• Alphabet: all three languages are spelled with the same set of symbols, called the Latin alphabet;
• Syntax: studying sentence structure is usually one of the first steps in learning a language. Portuguese, Spanish and French have the same skeleton: subject, verb and complement.
• Another grammatical similarity: in all three languages, adjectives (possessive, qualifier, demonstrative) agree in gender (masculine and feminine) and number (singular and plural).
• Lexicon: there are many similar words between the three languages. For example:

Learning a new language isn’t easy, but some are more challenging than others. In general, the difficulty in learning a new language is related to pronunciation, grammar and even the alphabet. But have you ever heard of sister tongues?

That’s right! Languages relate to each other according to their origin. Thus, those belonging to the same language family are more similar to each other than to their distant relatives.

However, the good news is that the French language is a very close relative of Portuguese and Spanish, as all three originated from Latin. Latin Americans therefore find it easier to absorb the phonetic and grammatical content of the French language. Very interesting, isn’t it?

We’ll show you some of the characteristics that bring the languages together:

“To learn a new language you need…”

1. … study (Portuguese);
2. … estudiar (Spanish);
3. … étudier (French).

Check out other tips and guidelines on how easy it can be to learn to speak French:

French is one of the five most widely spoken languages in the world ! So it’s not difficult to find references in this language, such as books, films and music. So take advantage, dive in and create your own immersion! For example:

• Switch from your cell phone, computer and social networks to French;
• Stop watching Netflix series and start watching TV5 Monde Plus ;
• When watching movies and series, put the subtitles and audio in French and focus on the language. One tip is to choose something you already know, so you don’t have to worry about the story.

So use every opportunity to speak in French in class and don’t be afraid to make mistakes – after all, you only learn a new language by practicing a lot and it’s natural to make a few mistakes. The closer you get to the French-speaking world, the easier and more fluent your pronunciation will become.

How about researching words that are similar between your mother tongue and French? This will speed up your vocabulary gain. These similarities make life easier for you as a learner and pave the way for you to overcome other learning challenges, which you will also overcome more easily.

But watch out for false cognates(faux amis): those words that look very similar in pronunciation and/or writing, but have very different meanings!

To boost absorption of the content, try to adopt an active stance during your studies. Have a notebook to practise verb conjugations (like we used to do in elementary school, remember?). In it, you’ll write down the verbs you’ve studied several times and you can revise whenever you feel the need.

Every practice and exercise you do is a step towards mastering the language. Don’t forget to do the tasks proposed in the teaching material(consolider the Objectif Québec books) and do extra exercises (hint: on our website you’ll find several in the “Exercises” tab!).

Also, make sure you check the templates and correct the exercises and, if you have any questions, take them to your teacher for help or to eQ’s free help desk.

It’s worth emphasizing that it’s best to do these activities at home, taking any questions to the teacher. During the lesson, it’s important to focus on understanding the new content, correcting activities, answering questions and interacting with classmates and teachers.

When you’re watching classes, videos, films or listening to podcasts, pay attention to how people pronounce and intonate their sentences. Try to repeat them by imitating their intonation. After all, we are used to learning by imitating others, as we did as children, but we don’t always remember this.

Ah, how about trying to talk to yourself in French? It sounds strange, but we do it in our mother tongue and it works really well as training! However, if the opportunity arises, make contact with natives or people who speak French outside of class too!

With the right guidance, qualified teachers and a different methodology in a school that matches your objectives, you’ll certainly find that learning French is much easier than you thought. And we can help you with that!

How about booking a trial lesson to break the myth that speaking French is difficult? École Québec has more than fifteen years’ experience teaching Québécois French, its own methodology and qualified teachers who have lived in Québec (some of them native speakers). You can also count on our free lessons!