Is French hard ?

So what’s involved if you want to learn French… and is it hard?!

• French is descended from Latin, and is related to Spanish, Portuguese and Italian. (Once you’ve mastered French, the other Latin-based languages are really not that hard to grasp.)
• A lot of the vocabulary is quite familiar to speakers of English, as we also have many words of Latin origin. (What do you think these French words mean: “information”, “train”, “possible”, “calme”?)
• The pronunciation is a bit tricky, and you have to move your mouth in unfamiliar ways! Like most English speakers, you will probably have a definite English accent – but you will still be understood perfectly well, so don’t be put off! (Most French people have quite a strong accent when they speak English as well…)
• Learning everyday French is not that hard. Some of the grammar is a little tricky, but you can still express yourself quite well in basic situations without having tackled the difficult points.
• French is put together in much the way that English is – one word follows the other in fairly familiar ways.
• Verbs and tenses are quite complicated in French, as they are in other Latin-based languages. Or rather, they work in different ways. Once you get used to the patterns, things start to fall into place.
• Standard French is widely used and understood across the French-speaking world. Although there are dialects, you really don’t need to worry about them too much. You are more likely to have trouble understanding, say, the slang spoken by young people in the cities – but then so do many of their compatriots!