As a Canadian, I must warn you, the french you will learn, and the French you will encounter here, are two completely different animals.lee1287 said:Hi all, first, apologies for any bad spelling or grammar you encounter in here. On to the topic!
Now, I've been wanting to learn a new language since coming home from a two month trip to Europe, and something a German girl i met said, 'There is no downside to learning a new language'
That made me think, there really is no downside to it, and it could open up so many new possibilities, job wise, social life wise, travel wise. Anyway, i decided to learn french, mainly because it's just a euro star trip away,(I'm English) and I've always wanted to go to Canada, and i know not all Canadians speak french, but it couldn't hurt to know it when i go, right?
Anyway enough rambling, my questions are, what are some great learning tools you guys and girls can recommend? Has anyone learnt a new language other than their native tongue, and has it ever come in handy? (New job, love interest, anything!)
Thanks
The Canadian French is a separately evolved language splitting off of an older french dialect, and has quite a few differences, mostly in pronunciation. It's kind of like how there are many different Cantonese dialects, and even though there are many similarities, I wouldn't expect to have fluent conversation using one dialect to speak to someone of a different one.
Also, most of the French speakers in Canada are in like, 2 provinces, so it's kind of a minority thing, and most of those people also speak English fluently, or speak a smattering, like a bunch of the people here in Moncton New Brunswick who speak what is known as shiac, which my friend, is like the result of throwing poorly pronounced French into a blender with really basic English, even the little bit of French I KNOW, when spoken by said people, is nearly impossible for me to understand.
But it would be useful to learn it if you were going specifically to France itself, or were intending to stick to Quebec when visiting Canada, as a building block on which to learn Canadian French so that you could actually understand them, not saying you shouldn't learn it, the more languages you know the better, but I would choose something a little more useful, like Mandarin, seriously, if you visit the west coast, Vancouver especially, you might need it. Seriously though, if you wanna see some interesting differences in Canadian cities, go visit Victoria BC, then hit Vancouver, then take a bus to Calgary, and so forth until you hit Quebec, then go south to New Brunswick, and look at the differences in local culture. One interesting thing you will notice is that the road signs in BC only have English on them, stop signs for instance, just say STOP, then you hit the east coast and depending on where you are they have it in french, or both.