Any French speakers here (I have a question)?

[Hero Doug]

Hey, I'm starting to learn French but have one small question I'm hoping someone can answer.

How important is learning the masculine and feminine forms of the nouns? Are there two different spellings for each noun? Or one noun that is either feminine or masculine?

I'm just trying to figure out much focus I should put into being able to identify adjectives, conjunctions, and the like.

I figure I'll be able to spot adjectives by their usage, but will I be able to do the same for masculine and feminine? Are there set rules to it that would make it easier to spot?

Thanks in advanced to whoever replies.

[gato]

Do you have a book that you are learning with? If you stick with it, you'll find that French is quite similar to English (and much easier than Chinese).

This about.com page is helpful.

http://french.about.com/library/begin/bl_nouns.htm

French Nouns - Les Noms

In French, all nouns have a gender - they are either masculine or feminine. It is very important to learn a noun's gender along with the noun itself because articles, adjectives, and some verbs have to agree with nouns; that is, they change depending on the gender of the noun they precede or follow. The gender of some nouns makes sense (homme [man] is masculine, femme [woman] is feminine) but others don't (personne [person] is always feminine, even if the person is a man!)

[Hero Doug]

Nice link, it look's like gender shouldn't be as confusing as it appears. It seem's to have some easy to follow rules.

I'm really glad you posted the link because I was going to just study the individual word, which apparently is a bad idea.

I have a book which is quite good (instant French). It teaches you a dialogue which I like because it feels like I'm actually accomplishing something (I'm not a fan of learning phrases), but the explinations are brief and to the point, and there are no exercises to test my ability or reinforce what I've learnt.

Anyways, thanks for the heads up.

P.S. Do you know of any good online dictionaries where it'll give me the full usage of a noun (not sure what to call it).

so if I type in "banque" it'll spit out "la banque" so I will know the gender.

[gato]

I used a paper dictionary in my days, but these two online dictionaries look pretty good.

http://www.french-linguistics.co.uk/dictionary/

French-English Dictionary

http://www.wordreference.com/fren/banque

WordReference French-English Dictionary

http://laits.utexas.edu/tex/gr/index.html

University of Texas French Grammar page

I would also start practicing listening to French as early as possible. Radio France Internationale has some good learning material.

http://www.rfi.fr/lffr/statiques/accueil_apprendre.asp

Radio France Internationale Learn French page

[Hero Doug]

Both those dictionaries look decent. I like how wordreference lists other ways to use the word in quesiton.

Seem's to be fairly straight forward.

banque is feminine so just call it "une banque" or "la banque".

And thanks for the link to the French Radio site. I have a feeling that it's going to be hard to come by decent French materials here in China (at least one's that aren't written in difficult to understand Chiense ;)

[gato]

What foreign language did you learn in high school? If you have any background in another Romance language (like Spanish), you should be able to pick up French very quickly. Maybe you don't, since you are asking about gender of nouns. I learned French in high school, and later when learning Spanish, was able to start reading Spanish newspaper after just two, three months of a first-year college class. The Romance languages have very similar grammar. If you already know another Romance language, the bottleneck will be learning the vocabulary. But since the French used to rule England (William the Conqueror), there are many French words in English. Thus, someone with a college-level English vocabulary already knows many French words. Just beware of those words that look the same but have different meanings. They are called "faux amis" - false friends.

[Hero Doug]

Your assumption that I don't know any other romance languages is correct. I did take French in school for around 6 years, but it was taught really half fast. I don't even remember what the lessons were like it was so long ago.

I don't think I'll have an overtly difficult time with French because I still have all the basic's somewhere deep inside, I just want to make sure I approach the language correctly (so I don't pull another time wasting mistake like I did with Mandarin).

It should be interesting when my girlfriend begins to seriously study French. She's native Chinese and her second language is English, so French may be a little out there for her.

If it's true that the second language you learn affects the accent on your third language, at least she'll have a nicer accent then I will. I've already noticed when I see an à I remember it as a fourth tone (I'm going to break that habbit).

[Long Pan]

I'm French and I confirm that gender is very important. As for the rules there may be some but I do not know them which means that native speakers just learn it naturally. Rather than learning list of vocabulary with "le" or "la", I would suggest you to learn it through sentences as gender has impact on other words. For instance "Cette table est vraiment lourde" (this table is really heavy) and "Ce lit est vraiment lourd" (this bed is really heavy). But maybe the best advise is not to learn it as an abstract thing but rather get it progressivelly through listening. Go and have a look on Steve Kaufmann blog (Canadian who speaks 9 language - there was a thread on him about Chinese in this forum); he has very good advise about learning foreign languages through the context. He explains here how he learned French by himself after failing to learn it at school. Bon courage pour la suite,

[Hero Doug]

Long Pan, thanks for the confirmation.

I have put some thought into what you said about learning gender as I come across it. Like taking a look at the phrase "j'ai" I think it's best to remember that j'ai means I have rather then getting down to the nitty gritty and learning how the word is assembled according to what rules.

Also thanks for the links, they look decent. I'll check them out in depth later.

[bredmond812陈秉劲]

i learned french for 8-10 years. I didnt apply myself too much, but I did get ok with it. there are rules for the gender, or so was told by my french teacher. Also, i feel despite all the fancy-shmancy learning methods that "work naturally with the natural human method of learning naturally" or whatever some people advertise, i would just stick with the repetitive memorizing, including the gender of nouns, the house of etre, the various pronouns and all that boring stuff. This focuses your practice to ensure you get the repetition where it needs it. And also, trying to read whatever you can find, and listening to media, speaking with people really helps too. You have to feel the language in practice.

fwiw, i have tried to speak french lately, but what really comes out is this:

Je 讲法语讲的 tres bien!!

it wont work on the streets of paris.

[Hero Doug]

I think I'm personally going to try combining the two methods.

For instance, I went through the article, picked out some useful sentences, and made them into flashcards. I just substitute a few words here and there so I remember the pattern.

I don't need to know how the grammar patterns work, I just need to know them.

I've also thought about mixing two languages when speaking, I think I can rise above the challenge.

Anyways, thanks for the input.