Haha, this is a bit late, but I'm shocked too! haha! That's so awesome that you're half French Canadian though!

I love French and wish I could still speak it fluently.

It was my first language and by the time I was 5, my family was always astounded at how much better I could speak and write in French compared to people 30 years my senior.

I went to a french school until I was 8 (and I mean, ALL french. It was people with the real french accents teaching us) so needless to say, it was essentially like I was in Quebec.

When I was 8, we moved from Toronto to Bowmanville and I had to transfer to a French Immersion school. It was english people trying to speak french trying to teach us. I lost my french in 2 years.

Between the horrible teachers and the kids making fun of my accent (I went home crying almost every day), I got really discouraged as a kid and was determined to "try and fit in."

I can barely speak French anymore. Well, I can... but when my own family can't understand me, it gets discouraging. I hate speaking French because I'm so bad at it, but I'm so bad at it because I don't try and speak it anymore. Vicious cycle.

I regret moving and going to a French Immersion school.

Anyways. This turned into like, my life story. I wish I could still speak it like when I was 5 years old. I LOVE the way french sounds. Like Quebec French, not Paris French. Something about the accents, it's just so... authentic. I dunno, like there's nothing like a christmas dinner with 20 people all listening to the one funny person telling a story in French. It's just so much more... vivid. Gah, I love it. It's hard to explain. XD

I find that reading books in French outloud, no matter how insane you look, can help retain the language longer. After finishing french elementary school, I went to an english highschool with an extended french program. But I still went from all my courses in french (except for english) to only 2 courses in french out of 8. But my teacher gave us so many exercises and books to read that I still retained it after 4 years of that. I haven't taken french in first year university, but I still try and read french as much as I can. I guess it also helps since I speak creole to my grandparents daily. (Creole being closely related to French).

Originally Posted by jhan523

I speak creole to my grandparents daily. (Creole being closely related to French).

What does Mauritian French Creole sound like anyway? Is it just like normal French but with a semi-Indian/Chinese sort of accent? lol

Originally Posted by Ownaginatios

What does Mauritian French Creole sound like anyway? Is it just like normal French but with a semi-Indian/Chinese sort of accent? lol

It's a spoken language, so there's no exact way to type it...

Uhhh, a lot of words are derived from French. There are differences, but my cousin's husband (who is actually French) can understand Mauritian Creole if we talk slow enough. (When we first met him) But not he can understand it pretty well (I think it's been 1-2 years). So yeah, it's pretty easy to learn/understand if you already know French.

I think it's similar to Quebec French, as in it's just spoken fast with a semi-different accent. French is essentially the same everywhere though.

Originally Posted by ~*Sara*~

I think it's similar to Quebec French, as in it's just spoken fast with a semi-different accent. French is essentially the same everywhere though.

It depends on the creole, some are really different from actual French.

For instance, we don't use the verb savoir but instead always use connaitre. But the verb itself never changes, it's always connais (pronounced cone-eh but quickly ).

So present: Mo connais
Past: Mo ti connai
future: Mo pou connais

ooooohh that's so awesome! My french teacher did mention a few of these examples, but that's so cool ^^. I learned something new today Yay!

French <3

Hate it or love it, you've got to admit...

A lot of people hate it.

Originally Posted by TylerA

Hate it or love it, you've got to admit...

A lot of people hate it.

I really don't know why people hate the language so much...

I've always liked French, but it's just a problem when teachers have no passion for it and they sort of kill it for you. I returned to it and I love it all over again. I don't think you can 'hate' a language that much, and being in Linguistics now, I appreciate all languages a whole lot more now hehe.

Originally Posted by TylerA

Hate it or love it, you've got to admit...

A lot of people hate it.

To be honest, most of the people that hate it, do because of the way it was taugh tin grade 9 and/or the teacher, in reality a lot of people would actually like to learn it over again-that's based on people at my junior/high school anyway.

I also tried German, and although I love both, French just has a special place in my heart XD, next to try is Spanish!

Originally Posted by ~*Sara*~

...next to try is Spanish!

I think Spanish might actually be the easiest language out of all of them, lol. The way words are spelled matches almost all the time to how they're pronounced, and there aren't any weird grammatical things like "the dative case".

Spain Spanish sounds so screwed though... it sounds almost like a Slavic language 0.o (same with Portugal Portuguese).

I hope to get around to learning it some day (I should since I'm half Dominican :p), but first I want to look through this random book I found in my house on Russian grammar. I figure if I start at one of the hardest languages ever, the rest will be smooth sailing from there, lol.

Haha! I've heard that too, except I don't know too much about it myself. But a lot of people I know who took it in high school thought it was really easy.

Maybe starting with something easier than Russian would be a better idea.. I'm just saying :p

Speaking of sounding how things are written (this might be slightly off topic but it's still languages), I find it odd how English doesn't have any accents. I think it really should. There was a person, I forgot his name, has an alphabet named after him that's just phonemes of the english language. He wanted to make that alphabet so everyone would stop mispronouncing words (although we do have the international phoneme alphabet but maybe it wasn't invented at the time). He couldn't do it while he was alive, but when he died they finally did make that alphabet. The symbols are really weird though.

Just a little fyi.