I had always wanted to learn a foreign language and so I decided on French after some deliberation. I had always liked France and the French people and so it seemed like a good choice. I had known French to be a difficult language, but I didn't reckon with the pronunciation and grammar. Being used to English all this time, I was all at sea. To begin with, this language has masculine and feminine attributes to everything including inanimate objects, (even countries - it is La France (feminine) but Le Bresil (masculine) ) which I found to be strange, having been used to the ubiquitous " it " of English for inanimate objects and things. Then there are the strange rules of pronunciation: "le" and "de" are pronounced as "lu" and "du" and "les" and "des" are "lay" and "dhey" respectively. It was just the beginning. "lis" is "li" and "lisent" is "leez". In addition, the letter "r" is pronounced as "h". By this time, my head was in a whirl and to my horror, one day I found myself reading the English "brow" as "bhow". I realised then that I needed to take a break to save my language skills in English and I did.
I have started again and hopefully, I will carry on without any more scary breaks. And French is indeed a beautiful language, and many French expressions are used in English as well. The progress is satisfying and I feel good whenever I cross a milestone in the French language course. One of these days, I hope to converse in French. Would you like to learn French too ? (Don't worry about the "language scare", it will pass.) Or may be Japanese or Russian? Here are some of the sites I found on the Net where you can learn languages online. Some of them connect you to native speakers of those languages who happen to be online at that time, which is really useful as you can get your doubts clarified in real time. And the best part is that they are all free! Check these out:
http://www.101languages.net/
Happy learning and au revoir !
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