Best way to learn foreign words (French)

[Nicka]

Hello, I would like to know what is the fastest and the most effective way to learn foreign words, in my case it’s French.
I don’t wanna learn them to pass the test, I wanna learn them for myself.

[bjoern.gumboldt]

Maybe you can add some more context, such as:

• how much French you already know
• other languages you already speak
• …

Ideally, you want to learn words using a monolingual dictionary, so that you learn them in the context of the language you are learning. That way you avoid L1 interference. For example, in French you are not 20 years old; rather, you have 20 years. Or distinctions that are not made in English, like avoir besoin de versus devoir, which are two different kinds of “need to” in English.

Of course if you’re just starting out, that may not be possible yet. In that case learn the word in the context of a sample sentence rather than simply “apple = pomme.” You can just type the word you are learning into Google Translate and highlight it to get a couple of sample sentences as well as synonyms and the aforementioned monolingual definition.

That is generally the how; as for the what… cognates and a frequency dictionary. About a third of the words in English come from French, so you might as well take advantage of that. Just google a list of rules for cognates between the two languages. You’ll find things like words ending in -al and -ance, such as animal or distance are usually the same. Words that end in -ary usually end in -aire as in anniversary and anniversaire. That said, there are also false friends, so check for that list too.

Maybe you already speak another language, so you can check for cognates there too. The lexical similarity between French and Italian, for example, is around 85-90%. That means that almost 9/10 of the words in these two languages are similar; however, not necessarily mutually intelligible due to differences in pronunciation. Other Romance languages, such as Spanish or Portuguese, are also pretty similar.

Secondly, you want to use a frequency dictionary so that you quickly get to the 20 percent that lets you understand 80 percent of the language, Pareto principle and all that jazz. The two most frequently used verbs in French are avoir and être, because the are auxiliary verbs used to build different tenses. Like you would for example say “I have been,” “I had been,” “I was,” etc. in English. So don’t forget that you’ll also need to learn some grammar.

French verb conjugation

Consider the above the strategy and this post the implementation… I figured it’d make sense to split them like this. So, I’ll start you off with the first group and avoir to give you an idea… the rest is up to you then. penser (présent) je pense tu penses il, elle pense nous pensons vous pensez ils, elles pensent Take the infinitive penser and drop the -er to get the stem pens and add the endings -e, -es, -e, -ons, -ez, -ent accordingly. This is how you build the présent for ALL verbs end…

I think that’s about as much as I can say without knowing more details as far as your current level of French or other languages you speak. Maybe you find this post here interesting:

@bjoern.gumboldt

This approach will basically put you at an A1 level after the first week, A2 at the end of the month, and B1 by the end of the second month. Spend the third month reviewing you leftover vocabulary from the review in week 8 and turn off the subtitles when you watch your sitcom(s). That should put you at B2 by the end of month 3.

ps: …and then there are your usual suspects: spaced repetition, mnemonics, etc. but for that you can just use the search function on the forum

@bjoern.gumboldt

Using a French example for Wednesday = Mercredi:
https://translate.google.com/#view=home&op=translate&sl=en&tl=fr&text=sea credit Wednesday

Click on the sound button to let the French voice speak the words for you. There is only a slight difference in the pronunciation, so you can now use “sea” and “credit” to reason that you need to get a credit from the bank if you want to buy a house by the sea. (Plus you learnt two new words.)

So much for the French translation itself; and Wednesday understood as “wetness day” then nicely links “mer crédit” back to “wetness” because the “sea” (mer) is “wet”; so it can’t be any other day (the two are now logically connected).