Getaway Guides - French for Beginners: The Best Handbook for Learning to Speak French!

French for Beginners

BY GETAWAY GUIDES

The Best Handbook for Learning to Speak French!

nd Edition

Copyright 2014 by Getaway Guides - All rights reserved.

In no way is it legal to reproduce, duplicate, or transmit any part of this document in either electronic means or in printed format. Recording of this publication is strictly prohibited and any storage of this document is not allowed unless with written permission from the publisher. All rights reserved.

Table of Contents

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Introduction

I want to thank you and congratulate you for downloading the book , French for Beginners: The Best Handbook for Learning to Speak French!

This book contains proven steps and strategies on how to start learning the French language. I hope that through this book, you will gain the confidence to start learning a new language, no matter how old you are. Do not worry if you have not yet learned any foreign language before. In this book, you will find the basic principles of the language which can make it easier for you to build phrases and sentences in French. You will learn not just basic phrases, but also French alphabet, sentence construction, as well as pronunciation.

Thanks again for downloading this book. I hope you enjoy it!

Chapter 1: The French Language

People from all over the world love the French language and would love to learn it. In fact, there is a high likelihood that you are already familiar with some French phrases and words. Because of the French invasion in England during the eleventh century, the French language has given significant contributions to the English vocabulary. This means that even if you are not actively learning French but is adept in English, you are already using a lot of French words without you knowing.

Because of hundreds of years of interaction with the British and because of common ancient forefathers, French has offered English-speakers a fairly easy path to conversing using a different language. French and English share several similarities in sentence construction. You may even realize that a lot of French and English words have similar sounds. The limited French sounds may still be familiar to you because of movies and TV shows.

Some of these unique French sounds include the silent h and the gruff r sound; but this does not completely mean that everything you watch and hear on TV is totally accurate. Still, being able to adopt the French accent you have acquired from watching movies can help you a lot while learning the language.

Even if French is remotely related to the English language, it is more generally compared to other Romance languages such us Spanish and Italian. All these three languages were created from the Latin language used by the Romans during their invasions in 1 B.C.; but despite their common origin, the evolution of the French language is different from the evolution of Italian and Spanish (which still share a lot of similarities even up to today).

Currently, there are around thirty countries who name French as one of their official languages. In Canada, French is commonly used in the Quebec region only. While in Belgium, French is prevalently used in the Southern area only. The spread of the French language can be partly explained by the colonization of several nations in the Pacific, Africa and the Caribbean by France. On top of that, the French language was actually used as the official language for international diplomacy until the initial years of the twentieth century when the English language took over.

Until now, French is still used as the official language in several global organizations such as the United Nations, the Red Cross and the International Olympic Committee. It is also used by the International Postal System which is why you can see par avion in most letters sent abroad.

There are also hundreds of English words that have exactly the same spelling in French. It has to be noted, though, that the pronunciation of these words vary and depends on whether the speaker is French or English. Also, the meaning of the words may be the same depending on the context in which it is used. In most instances, the gender of the noun for which these words are used is the same in both the English and French usage.

Some examples of these words include:

Abattoir - this word is spelled in exactly the same way both in French and English. It also has the same meaning even when it is used in various contexts. This is also one of the many words that originated in France and still retained its original French pronunciation.

Absinthe - this word has the same meaning when used in most contexts. However, the spelling could vary a little bit with the addition of either the letter 'L' or 'D' at the beginning of the word when used in certain contexts in French.

Bourgeois this is one of the many words that migrated to the English world when the Normans conquered England in the mid-11 th century. It is still pronounced in exactly the same way both in English and French and it has also retained its original meaning.

These similar words are one of the reasons that it is often very easy for native English-speakers to learn French in a matter of months. After all, these have given their tongues enough practice on how to roll about inside the mouth when pronouncing French words.

The similarity between these 2 words and a hundred or so other words can be attributed to the fact that the French and English alphabets both have the same basic letters. However, there are some variations on how each letter is pronounced, which is especially true with the consonants (this will be discussed further in succeeding chapters). Some letters are pronounced in a uniquely French fashion, while others such as the letter z' are pronounced in the same way that other major English-speaking countries pronounce them.

The French Alphabet

The French alphabet is listed as follows along with its corresponding pronunciation:

Aa [ ]

Bb [be]

Cc [se]

Dd [de]

Ee [ ]

Ff [f]

Gg [ e]

Hh [[ a ]

Ii [i]

Jj [ i]

Kk [ka]

Ll [l]

Mm [m]

Nn [n]

Oo [o]

Pp [pe]

Qq [ky]

Rr [r]

Ss [s]

Tt [te]

Uu [y]

Vv [ve]

Ww [dub l ve]

Xx [iks]

Yy [i g k]

Zz [zd]

Note that the letter z is pronounced as zed in the same way that it is pronounced in Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, and other countries that use English as its primary language.

Chapter 2: The Role of Syllables in the French Language

In any language, syllables are always a necessary part of proper pronunciation. This is because syllables indicate the proper grouping, as well as the natural divisions, of the letters in every word. Syllables specifically affect the following aspects of pronunciation:

Rythm

Poetic meter

Stress pattern

Rhythm and Word Stress

Generally, all of the syllables in French words are stressed equally. It is common to hear English speakers put a stress on the 1 st syllable which is certainly uncommon in French words. You can offset this minor error by trying to add a light stress at the last syllable of the word.

The rhythm of French sentences is established by cutting the sentence into relevant sections, and then putting a stress on the last syllable of every section. The stress on the last syllables is typified by a minor increase in intonation. Because of these stresses on the last syllables, the beat of French sentences is fairly regular.[transferred from Chapter 2 of the original book]

When dividing French words into syllables, the vowels that fall in each syllable should not be reduced into grunting uh' and i' sounds. This reduction may be common when speaking in English, but would be detrimental to the proper pronunciation of French syllables.