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Help from native french speakers?

Please can you help me become fluent in speaking French. I want to be friends with someone who is French by nationality, speaking regularly on MSN or facebook!

Please send me a pm if interested.

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Reply 1

Carl

C'est pas que les Français qui en parlent

Reply 2

Blob2491

Carl

C'est pas que les Français qui en parlent

it is not the french who are speaking?...huh

Reply 3

Carl

"It's not only the French that speak it [the French language]"

Seriously chatting to someone online in French is no good if you have to reach for the dictionary every two minutes.

Reply 4

Blob2491

Carl

"It's not only the French that speak it [the French language]"

Seriously chatting to someone online in French is no good if you have to reach for the dictionary every two minutes.

I have basic knowledge of the language and would like to improve, proven by me badly translating the sentence

Reply 5

Tortious

Blob2491

I have basic knowledge of the language and would like to improve, proven by me badly translating the sentence

If not on TSR, you might be able to find someone here. It's probably worth setting up a new Hotmail account so you can give your email address out without worrying about spam. :smile:

Reply 6

natashasha~

use google translate...that's what i do with my french amies.

Reply 7

xmarilynx

Carl

C'est pas que les Français qui en parlent

Shouldn't it be 'qui le parlent'? Perhaps it's a colloquialism I'm unaware of, or my French is just plain wrong (wouldn't be the first time! :wink:

) but I don't get why en would be used here :confused:

Blob2491

it is not the french who are speaking?...huh

ne...que goes around the verb to mean only, in the same way that ne...pas means not.

eg, tu n'as pas 5 ans! = you're not 5 years old!
tu n'as que 5 ans! - you're only 5 years old!

The 'ne' is often missed out when speaking informally, too :smile:

natashasha~

use google translate...that's what i do with my french amies.

That thing is awful! :yikes:

Reply 8

Xurvi

Carl

"It's not only the French that speak it [the French language]"

Seriously chatting to someone online in French is no good if you have to reach for the dictionary every two minutes.

I have to disagree, that's how I learned English.

Anyway, Marylin's correct on all her comments.

xmarilyx

Reply 9

Ivanka

As far as I'm aware...

''Ce n'est pas que les francais qui en parlent.'' This doesn't make sense to me... It's not that French who speak about it?

I thought that for ''It's only French...'' you have to say something alonmg the lines of ''Ce n'est personne que francais...''

de + object = en --> Tu as parlé de Simone? Oui, j'en ai parlé.

Reply 10

Anatheme

Ivanka

It'd be "j'ai parlé d'elle", as "en" tends to refer to objects.

Reply 11

xmarilynx

Xurvi

I have to disagree, that's how I learned English.

Anyway, Marylin's correct on all her comments.

And it certainly worked well for you! Although you managed to spell my name wrong both times :p:

Reply 12

Anatheme

xmarilynx

And it certainly worked well for you! Although you managed to spell my name wrong both times :p:

(I think he has a problem with girls :sexface:

)

Reply 13

aeterno

I reckon there are better ways to learn French than talking to someone online :p:

You can still do that but do it in conjunction with, say, evening classes (you should be able to get them for free if you're a full time student), reading a French newspaper/magazine/book, listening to French news etc.

Plus it might get a little frustrating for someone to have to constantly correct your grammar/spelling etc. even if they are more than willing to help to begin with. Also, you wouldn't be able to learn how to speak properly (you have to think about pronunciation, accent, intonation) if you're just talking to someone online.

Becoming fluent in a language is, I'm afraid, not that easy unless you are a very (and I mean very) quick learner and have a flair for languages.

Reply 14

Xurvi

xmarilynx

And it certainly worked well for you! Although you managed to spell my name wrong both times :p:

Typoes! These are just typoes! :P
(or are they typos?)

To clarify, yeah "Ce n'est pas que les français qui le parle" isn't grammatically correct, but it makes sense to a native speaker and would be accepted if it was spoken in an informal context.
"Les français ne sont pas les seuls à le parler" would be a correct way to say that.

Anatheme

(I think he has a problem with girls :sexface:

)

You're just hard to understand :p:

Reply 15

xmarilynx

Anatheme

(I think he has a problem with girls :sexface:

)

But you're a guy aren't you? :p:

Reply 16

Xurvi

xmarilynx

But you're a guy aren't you? :p:

Now now, that's just being mean to me! I know I was wrong :p:

Reply 17

Anatheme

xmarilynx

But you're a guy aren't you? :p:

Oh yeah, sorry, forgot about that :flutter:

Xurvi

You're just hard to understand :p:

Toujours des excuses :hand:

Reply 18

xmarilynx

Xurvi

Now now, that's just being mean to me! I know I was wrong :p:

Haha, sorry :p:

To be fair I think the only person who spells my name correctly is me most of the time , so you're not alone :smile:

Reply 19

natashasha~

xmarilynx

That thing is awful! :yikes:

I know a bit of french so I kind of use it to translate verbs and other random words I don't know and stuff. But yeah you can't expect it to correctly translate a sentence longer than 3 words.