Is French a hard language to learn?

Question

Okay. My mom says it was the hardest thing ever, and she dropped out. But my grandma says it was easy as can be. I WANT to learn french, but I dont want to have to drop out of it or get a bad grade if its too hard for me.. suggestions...?

Answer 1

French is a beautiful language! However to learn it, i think you have to be...open. You have to like what you're gonna learn. French is my first language, and i can tell you that...it is a very strict one. But i guarantee you by the time you will be able to communicate, to write beautifully in this language, you will fall in love with it, and you will recognize that your efforts are not worthless. I don't want to say it is hard...and you are not your mother. Everybody is different. The only thing i will suggest is, you have to want to speak it and unlimited yourself. If you want it go and get it! i don't know you, but i am sure that you will make it if you're really focus!
Bonne chance! et ne te laisse pas intimider!
because there is nothing to fear than fear itself.

Answer 2

French and Spanish are very similar languages in that they both have a masculine and feminine pronunciations depending on who, what, where or how you are talking. If you had problems with Spanish you would probably have problems with French. If I were you Would go back to Spanish as it is more widely used thus more valuable; also with Spanish as a base language you will be able to pick up on other ones such as Italian, Portuguese as well as some French.

Answer 3

I think it depends on the method used for learning it. Unlike Spanish where the written word is closely matched to pronunciation, French spelling adds a lot of letters that are not pronounced in specific situations (which leads to some of the curiousities of the English language.)
If learning French from a book, then there are lots of rules to learn about when final letters in words are pronounced and when, because of the next word's first letter, it is not.
I would say that if French is learned orally from tapes or computer files, it will be much easier (if you have a good ear) than if you are supposed to learn the pronunciation, spelling, and usage all in one swoop. Your mother may have been confronted with a book and you grandmother learned from a native speaker or good recorded program.

Answer 4

It's easy if you WANT to learn it, English is 60% French with different pronunciations. The Michel Thomas method is very good - I can recommend his CD's. Don't worry about school grades, it's all BS anyway when you get out into the adult world and it's the learning that counts, not how they grade you.

Unfortunately I'm just too damn lazy to learn French and I just don't care about it that much. I think I would enjoy learning Japanese though.

edit*
btw, the French ARE rude - you have been warned.

Answer 5

If English is your first language and you don't know a Latin languages then it will be harder for you to learn it. The actual words are not hard at all, they might even be quite similar to English, but the grammer is very very hard. They have extra tenses that do not exist in English. There are more than 3 tenses. Not sure how many more but I think there are 5. And also they have male and female for every object, which again does not exist in English. Good Luck with your decision!

Answer 6

It's not hard for the French. :)

However, the degree to which it is a difficult language to learn is directly proportional to the propensity that a person has for learning other languages. In that respect, it's probably about average. I find Russian MUCH harder to learn that French, as an English-speaker. But that's me. Many English-speakers find Russian easy to learn. It all depends on the person.

Answer 7

I don't think so. I think it is easier than say German. Give it a go and see if you take after your mom or your grandma!

I found it easy to learn and took it at advanced level when I was in school in England. I even took French literature as it was easy to get a good grade in.

Good luck with your choice!

Answer 8

I found French easy because I took Latin and could usually find a way that connected one word to another. That's for the vocab though. The grammar takes a lot of learning, all those irregular verbs.

Answer 9

Not if you put the work and effort into it... The hard part about some of it is learning the different forms of verbs and the genders of words. If you usually put a lot off effort into your classes (B or A) student then you shouldn't think its very hard. But if you are the kind of student who doesn't do very well then I doubt you would do very well learning French.

Answer 10

Most Americans think French is difficult because we're not accustomed to inflected language. Having to match words by gender is also tricky, and French irregular verbs (of which there are a lot) are nototiously confusing.

That said, difficult does not mean impossible; almost anyone who wants to *can* learn French, but it's going to be a lot of work.