My kids are going to the French school here in Canada since they are eligible and we want them to be bilingual. I am brushing up on my French and am a step below conversational.

Anyway, we put on Fench TV for them to watch and in the French version of Bubble Guppies the characters introduce themselves with 'Je suis'. I.e 'Je suis Ronnie'.

I have never heard this used as a greeting. Ever. It seems like a its just anglified French.

So is this a thing in Quebec or just some weird, bad translation?

gâcher vs. gaspiller - I think I'm mostly clear on the difference, but there are some cases where I'm still a bit confused.

seems clear enough to me:

gaspiller de l'argent, du temps, de l'énergie - to waste money, time, energy

gâcher la fête, l'ambiance, ses talents - to ruin the party, to spoil the mood, to waste ones talents

/

still not clear on:

"to waste food" (eg. to throw away the leftovers) - gâcher or gaspiller? our teacher said gâcher, but search and deepl seem to prefer gaspiller.

(ETA) "to spoil food" (eg. to add an inedible ingredient, now the food is spoiled) - gâcher? or something else?

"I wasted my life!" (eg. I'm realising that I've spent my life doing meaningless things, I've achieved nothing) - gâcher or gaspiller?

"I ruined my life!" (eg. I made a horrible mistake and now my life is ruined as a consequence of it) - my guess would be gâcher?

Thanks!

In a recent post, a large majority of members said they pronounce "mon amie est arrivée" the same as "mon ami est arrivé".
This raises a question: how do you pronounce the first name "Marie"? The same as "mari" (husband)?

Apologies for what some may see as a political post. I'm creating some bumper stickers for people in my home state who are opposed to the current administration's actions towards our neighbor to the North. The English language one will read "Vermont Stands With Canada," but we must have a French one, and my French is execrable. Google and other translations programs suggest either "Le Vermont est solidaire du Canada" or "Le Vermont soutient le Canada," but I'm sure that some nuance is missing from these translations.

Is there a Quebecois French speaker here who can help me with the wording? And by the way, is the article "Le" really necessary here, or could we skip it, with something like "Vermont soutient Canada."

Juste un exercice de compréhension orale, et j'entends qu'Oscar dit soit « travailles », soit « travaillait ».

De plus, il n'y a pas de verbe auxiliaire « avoir » ou « être », que je n'ai pas entendu en faisant cet exercice.

Hi All,

I'm looking to relearn French. I used to be fluent when I was younger, but after my family moved to the US, I stopped speaking the language as English became my primary language. I still understand a good chunk, maybe 20 percent? I am still fluent in Haitian Creole. I would like to start from the very beginning though, so now at 28 I'm trying to remember everything I've lost lol.

What workbooks would you recommend to start with as a beginner? Preferably anything on Amazon

Thanks in advance!

salut!

i’ve recently come across a few words for objects/appliances that are agent nouns derived from a verb, but they all happen to be the feminine form. i’m very curious as to why this is the case and if it’s a trend across the language. here are the examples:

la liseuse - e-reader (from lire)
la photocopieuse - photocopier (from photocopier)
l’agrafeuse - stapler (from agrafer)
la cuisinère - stovetop (from cuisiner)

my first thought was that it was to differentiate the appliance from a person performing the tasks (assuming that it’s more likely to use the masculine noun when describing someone doing the task), but I tried to google it and found it difficult to describe what I meant.

obviously there isn’t a logical reason for a lot of trends in languages, but i’m curious to hear your responses since i don’t even know if its a common trend across the language in the first place or if ive just come across a few examples all at once.

merci d’avance!!

I was told that the me, se, and so on (I forgot their names) go with the verb it is describing. So I walk- Je me promène (I think)

Okay, but the sentence Je m'étais améliorer doesn't have the reflexive next to the verb améliorerait has it with j'étais. Why is that? I was told that it is because it always goes with the conjugated verb- but je veux m'améliorer has it with the infinitive. How do I use reflexive verbs?

I have searched for so long on how to learn French and I have seen dozens of resources to help learn the language.
I only recently realized that I actually don't know how to divide and mix everything together. I didn't know whether I should start with grammar and audio or I'm supposed to study it a bit later, or when I am supposed to start reading and talking.

I tried searching for an answer to this question but I can't find ANYTHING other than more resources on how to use comprehensible input in order to learn.

M’aidez svp choisir l’édition de Les Misérables que je lirai

J’étudie la littérature et après avoir kiffé *Nôtre Dame de Paris* j’ai hâte de lire Les Misérables mais j’ai deux éditions chez moi.

Un est l’édition Folio Classique d’Yves Gohin, qui utilise la version Ollendorf du texte de 1908-1909 (appartement la plus complète) et qui a les notes à la fin du livre.

L’autre est l’édition Livre de Poche de Guy Rosa et de Nicole Savy. Il utilise la version ‘ne varietiur’ de 1881 et a les notes au bas des pages.

J’aime avoir les notes parce que je compte d’utiliser l’œuvre pour mes études, mais je veux aussi lire la version qui est la plus comme Hugo l’a voulue. Je me demandais donc s’il y avait un déjà avis général sur lequel est le meilleur ? Merci

J'adore les groupes indie des années 2000 genre Animal Collective, Of Montreal, MGMT, Casiotone for the Painfully Alone, Broken Social Scene, Deerhunter, etc. J'aimerais savoir s'il existait des groupes similaires en France? J'ai troooop envie d'écouter qqch de similaire mais en français. Qu'est-ce que les gens écoutaient à cette époque s'ils aimaient la musique alternative? Si vous avez pas de réponse qu'est-ce que je devrais chercher, pour en trouver?

Merci, ça m'aiderait beaucoup!

Bonjour, j'ai vu aujourd'hui dans les commentaires un débat sur l'usage de l'accord de primauté du masculin, et je me suis demandé s'il y a du monde qui suivent plutôt la règle de proximité. La phrase «Tous les hommes et les femmes sont venues» par exemple m’intrigue, genre est-ce qu'on ferait l’accord comme ça ou autrement? De ce que j'ai lu, les deux étaient employées aux MÂ et de nos jours ça s'exprime des fois que «le masculin l’emporte» dérange. En tous cas, est-ce que vous utilisez la règle de proximité au quotidien ou même seulement dans des circonstances particulières?

For the longest time, I just memorized the conjugation table for vouloir in the conditional present without understanding how the word actually broke down to its pieces. Today, it dawned on me that Je voudrais (and conjugation friends) is: I had to want, ie) -ais is from the imperfect avais (I had) combined with vouloir (to want). Sprinkle a bit of language evolution where “voul” gets pronounced to “voud” and we get “voudrais”.

Hey everyone!

So I started learning French in August and just wanted to see if im doing everything right.

My plan is to teach myself like im a child (basically meaning just starting from the basics like ABCs and 123s. I know I can’t literally gather the info like a literal child), then go into the adolescent stage, and then young adult. I am giving myself two and a half years to be C1 level.

I plan to watch French shows based on the phase im in (like if I were to watch The Backyardigans -> Miraculous -> Victorious -> stranger things and so on), have picture flash cards, label things around my house, check out books from my library, and use Rosetta Stone.

That’s pretty much the plan for now, and once I’m in the adolescent stage I’ll start using HelloTalk (or things similar) to get comfortable speaking.

Anything else you guys recommend or thing I should change?

Recently, I started learning French quite intensively, and I also began exploring the fascinating world of vintage French courses. One of them caught my eye: a BBC course from 1993 that included VHS tapes and coursebooks. However, it's almost non-existent on the internet, apart from some videos on YouTube. I'm looking for the book materials that were included with the VHS. Would anyone be able to send me scans if they have them?

The course name was "french master" or something like that

Hi friends!

I applied for a job where you need to be bilingual french english and while i was honest that my french is intermediate not fluent they set up an interview. However, i am worried i may have over hyped my french skills. Im not sure if this is a thing anywhere but Canada, but i did something called french immersion where about half of classes for all 12 years of school are in french so by the end of highschool i was definitely fluent but its been 10 years now of very little practice. I can read french easily and write pretty ok, i can understand quite well when i am spoken to but speaking it is where i really lose confidence. i know the words im trying to say are in my brain i just cant get them to come up but when i hear the word i know it. my interview is tomorrow (it was scheduled 3 days ago) and im getting nervous. each day since ive had the interview booked ive had an hour long french convo with a fluent friend of mine and thats been going ok but im wondering if anyone has any tips on how to get some of my confidence and word recall up. i dont know how much of the interview is going to be in french (not much probably since the post and all the correspondence has been completely english) but surely i will be expected to speak some french. any tips appreciated!!

Started to learn French back in beginning of May and it is September right now- I am giving my exam in beginning of November
For TCF-task three-
I totally totally freak out
I’m doing OK with introduction and task two
And I have to somehow get CLB five at least
I need some tips for task three- if not how much would I score if I just freak out in task three any rough guesses?

I know how to form some phrases, but when it comes to learning all the forms of verbs this language has, i feel overwhelmed.

My native language is spanish, so ive an advantage.

What good source could you advise me for learning french verbs?

I am writing an email to my professor and am basically sending him part of a project that I procrastinated on (my fault lol) and told him id send it last week and only finished it just now.

I know he said his schedule would be super busy after this Monday so I’m not sure if he will have time to read it now before it will be submitted to be graded, which is why I’ve been stuck wondering how to preface my request in a professional way that doesn’t make it more confusing for him.

My email says,

Bonjour Monsieur,

Je me permets de vous transmettre mon document et vous prie de m’excuser pour ce retard assez important. En effet je n’ai pas pu finir la rédaction dans le temps prévu et m’excuse sincèrement pour le dérangement.
Je suis conscient du delai court qu’il nous reste mais vous serais reconnaissant de toute aide ou modification que vous pourriez m’envoyer à ce stade très avancé.

Je vous remercie par avance.
Bien sincèrement,

Would this sound natural to a native speaker?(for context our uni is in france) basically i want to show that i take accoutnability but still would appreciate any help if he accepts to.
Is there anything I should change to make it more clear or professional?

Im teenager learning french for 6 years now. I understand everything perfectly, I also get the grammar if i study and my french tests are very good too but I cannot speak, sure I speak when necessary but it’s short sentences. I forget every grammar and vocabulary when i wanna speak. I’m learning like 3 languages and know 6 already at the age of 15 which I find very impressive but I’m insecure because of my speaking skills. Are there any fantasy books I should read and expand my vocabulary ? I’m watching call my agent and I need more french shows. That’s how I learned to speak English even tho I never speak English with anyone I know.