Hey all, well I didn't know where else more appropriate to ask, so I'll ask here. Does anyone have any experience with language software, for learning french?

The career path I am aiming for is to work for the european space agency, as a mechanical engineer. This is a goal which won't be reachable, until after many years of work experience, but I think I should prepare for it now none the less. Anyway, languages are very important to getting a job at ESA. The working languages are French and English, and the job location is in the Netherlands. So, I think it would be best to learn french, as that appears to be the most beneficial.

So, I guess I should get started soon. Does anyone know of any decent software? Or other leaning methods, but interactive learning is usually a heck of a lot easier (take for instance Lernu). Any recommendations?

Unue, aĉetu franca-al-angla angla-al-franca vortaro. Ne vortareton, en kiu nur troveblas malmultaj vortoj kaj kiu ne tradukas multajn sencojn de vortoj plursencaj, sed prefere dika kaj granda vortaro, kiu ankaŭ mencias elparoladon rajtan (ĉar ĝuste kiel la angla lingvo, la franca elparolado ne ĉiam estas regula kaj strikte en fazo kun la literumado de vortoj). -- Due, trovu simplajn tekstojn amuzajn kaj legu ilin, uzante la vortaro por ĉiu vorto, kiun vi ne komprenas. -- Trie, trovu franca(j)n societo(j)n en via urbo, kaj vizitu ilin, menciante ke vin, malgraŭ evidentaj limigoj, tre interesas bone lerni la francan.

Firstly, buy a good French-English, English-French dictionnary. Not one in which you would only find a few words and only a few senses of words that have several senses, but prefer instead a thick and large dictionnary that would also include proper pronunciations (because French, just like English, is not always consistent in linking pronunciation and spelling). -- Secondly, find some simple and interesting texts and read them, using this new dictionnary of yours for every word you don't understand. -- Thirdly, try to find french societies or circles in your town and go visit them often, introducing yourself as someone who, despite obvious lack of knowledge about it, would really like to learn French.

Premièrement, trouve-toi un bon dictionnaire anglais-français français-anglais. Pas un petit dictionnaire dans lequel seulement peu de mots et peu de sens de mots à plusieurs sens sont mentionnés, mais plutôt un grand et volumineux dictionnaire qui mentionnera aussi la prononciation des mots (car le français, ainsi que l'anglais, n'est pas tout à fait régulier en ce qui a trait à la prononciation et à l'orthographe des mots). -- Deuxièmement, trouve-toi des textes, courts et intéressants, et cherche chacun des mots que tu ne comprends pas dans ton dictionnaire récemment acquis. -- Troisièmement, trouve des sociétés ou cercles francophones dans ta ville et visite-les régulièrement. Présente-toi comme quelqu'un qui, malgré d'évidentes lacunes, souhaite beaucoup apprendre le français.

http://www.supermemo.com

Frightening difficult to use and learn, but very effective for vocab and grammar drills. Very effective - I used it for years to learn Finnish.

The first would be the two volume Assimil Series (Volume 1: French with Ease/ Volume 2: Using French). The Assimil approach is simple and elegant (and relatively painless). Rather than focusing on teaching you grammar and doing a bunch of drills and word lists (for vocabulary memorization), the assimil program is designed to help you assimilate the language naturally. It's very effective.

The lessons are built around short dialogues (which are recorded on the CD's). Transcripts of the dialogues and their translations appear in the book.

The french dialogue and exercises will be on the left hand page, and the english translation on the right hand page (along with explanations, notes on grammar, etc....).

The program is broken into two
You begin by reading the french dialogue and the english translation together. After you read through both sets of dialogues several times, you'll be able to read through the French dialogue without needing to look at the english page. You make it your goal to be able to read the French Dialogue and to understand it in French (rather than translating it into English in your head). The dialogues are short, and this is much easier than it sounds. Once you can Read the dialogue in French, you listen to it on the CD as you read along. Focus on understanding the French as it is spoken to you. Then finally, you read the dialogues aloud with the CD's, simultaneously. Focus on mimicking the speaker (pronunciation, rhythm, etc..) as closely as possible. By the time you're done, you'll have gone through the dialogues 10-20 times (they're only a couple of minutes long). That's it. That's all you do in the first wave of the program. You focus on being able to understand, and to pronounce the words. The dialogues slowly get more complex, and add new vocabulary and new sentence patterns while at the same time reinforcing the old ones that you've already covered.

When you complete the first 50 lessons, then you go back and do the "active wave." In this phase, you go back to lesson 1 and you cover up the french page, and look at the english page. You write down the translation of the English dialogue into French. At this point, you're working with much more complex dialogues, so this translation is relatively easy. After this, you also do the exercises. In the first Phase you're focusing on absorbing the language, and in the second phase you're focusing on producing the language. You continue the passive wave as you progress with the active wave. Lesson 50 (passive) Lesson 1 (active) - Lesson 51 and lesson 2 - lesson 52 & Lesson 3. And so on.

Continuing my previous message which Lernu cut off...
(what's with the 3000 character limit btw?)

Anyway, after completing both volumes of the Assimil Program, you'll have a very good basic vocabulary (few thousand of the most essential words) and you'll have absorbed a lot of french grammar. You'll also have begun to develop good listening comprehension, speaking, and writing skills. From Assimil, you'll be ready to start using Native French materials (reading French books/newspapers, watching French movies/TV, etc...). It's a superlative program, and I can't commend it enough.

There are also other possibilities for you to consider. The French in Action video/textbook/audio program is very expensive (the videos are available online for free though and would be excellent to watch after going through assimil). You can often find the audio and textbook portions of the program more cheaply on Ebay. Search on google for French in Action and you'll find out more about it.

Finally, if you're looking for something completely Free, you could also do a lot worse than the FSI French program available at

FSI

This course was developed by the U.S. Government, and is available for free. It's a drill based approach, and thus much more tedious. However, many people have been able to use it and reach a high proficiency in the language. It was designed for diplomats, and the language tends to be a bit formal (and focuses on topics useful for diplomats), but it is very well regarded as an effective program if you can stick with it.

Anyway, those are the best resources I know of for learning French. Good Luck

awake:
(what's with the 3000 character limit btw?)

There was a user who was posting messages that were so long that they crashed people's browsers. The user was warned not to post such long messages, but continued to do it anyway, so lernu's programmers added the character limit (of 5000 characters)

re: French, I personally prefer grammar-based courses rather than courses where you simply compare dialogues. That's just me. I learned my most basic French from the Pimsleur CDs (checked out from my local library). That helped a lot on pronunciation but even though I went through all 3 levels of Pimsleur French, I still didn't really feel that I spoke French at the end, though I had a feel for the language. I learned the rest of my (meager) knowledge of French through the 10 or so episodes of French in Action that I watched, plus online verb tables and grammar guides, which are my best friends in language study.

It helps a lot that I studied Italian previously. Beginning to read news articles and children's books as soon as you have a high enough level to understand a little is also very helpful. Re: books, I suggest the series "Le petit Nicolas". Charming short stories about a mischievous little boy and his classmates , written in easy language, intended for French children (so it's written in normal, though simple, language, not just something dumbed down for beginners).

erinja:lernu's programmers added the character limit (of 5000 characters)

A small correction: The limit is 5000 for team members, translators, helpers. It's 3000 for everyone else.

Filu:Firstly, buy a good French-English, English-French dictionnary...

Ahh, thats interesting, I haven't heard of that method before. I guess it might be logical for a language which is not tight on grammar (aka not Esperanto). Anyone else's thoughts about this method?

And Awake, those books look great. I see that one is able to use it as software, which I'm not sure would be as high quality as the books. Which did you use?

Thanks everyone for your time =]