These kinds of things do tend to evolve rapidly. It's been a while since I had to use it for more than a sentence or two, so I might not be completely up to date with its capabilities.
On a side note, there were a few funny occasions back at the university when people would use Google Translate instead of doing their translations all by themselves, and they would end up making hilarious errors in class without even blinking an eye... Good times!
I was stuck with stodgy tomes in the pre-internet era. I really struggled. We had one hour a week with a French 'assistant' (pronounced the French way), but that wasn't enough. I quit school when I was 17, because I was sick of being picked on all the time (I was a scholarship pupil at a private school) and took Politics, Law and Film Studies at A level instead (then quit journalism training at 19-20, so I wasn't very popular at home for that!)
The advantage of the internet is huge,
if you use it 'honestly' now, as opposed to a 'cheat sheet!' I love FrenchPod 101 on YouTube, for example. Another thing that made a difference was music. When I was eight and struggling with piano lessons, I often had no idea what tunes should sound like. I bought a keyboard while I lived in London as an adultand I could look up each track in the music book online, so I could hear it first. If I had been able to do that when I was a child, the slow, miserable dirge version of Campdown Races I was trying to play would never have happened, saving my parents and my piano teacher much misery!
As for French itself, it's a fascinating and wonderful language. I have a master's degree in French language and literature (specializing in translation), but I still have real difficulties speaking it and don't feel comfortable with it at all. I understand its grammar much better than that of any other language (including my own), but I feel much more comfortable speaking English than French.
Yeah, it's a fabulous language that I never felt I was well taught here in the UK. I honestly learned more and better French from my eight hour Michel Thomas French CD course than in six years at school in the 80s-90s. As a film and music buff, I'm also a huge fan of the French singer Mylène Farmer, who has made some astonishing music videos and created some of the biggest live concerts in Europe. She basically doesn't 'do' English songs and her lyrical talent is playing with the French language, including a lot of double entendres, to make it sound beautiful.
I adore the French language. Latin was actually my best subject, for which I was predicted an A (top grade) and, to this day, I have never known how I failed the exam. My school never bothered to contest or investigate it. What really messed up my French was that I started learning it at 11, only to start learning German, as well, at 13. I wish I'd taken the option for Ancient Greek, because Ancient Greek ties into Latin, which ties into modern French, while German is completely different. I don't remember any Latin now, 30 years on, but I still read books from that era in translation.
Every so often I give myself a fresh listen to the Michel Thomas courses and my French improves rapidly to the extent that I can understand more of Mylène's lyrics, which is a good test!
www.cahiersducinema.com
