If you want to learn French, you should learn it from a native speaker. However, there was a time where it was acceptable to learn a foreign language with teachers who had barely spent a total of 2 years in the country of the language they were teaching.
I remember a Spanish teacher of mine who seemed to have learned the language she was teaching purely from books without ever having heard the language spoken by natives. Her knowledge of the language might have been good enough to teach Spanish, but her knowledge of how Spanish is really spoken was just non-existent.
A language is first and foremost learned to be spoken. People may argue that as long as you can speak the language, it doesn’t really matter how you speak it. Well, this might be true to a certain point, but if your accent is too strong, or your intonation way off, you might not be understood at all.
This is the reason why you should be learning a foreign language such as French from a native speaker. This is the only way you will really hear the sounds of the words as they supposed to sound, and not any other way.
The French language, which is often called the romantic language, is a beautiful language, but it is definitely a language which needs to be learned from native speakers. Don’t try to go up and down in intonation. French is a rather flat language which has all the words emphasis at the end. Most foreign speakers will make these very tone fluctuations that are none existent in the French language.
French can be a difficult language to learn, but with the right speaker and tools it can be done.
Having the privilege to speak more than one language is to be treasured. A language is not only different words or phrases, it’s an all different way to be able to express oneself and it’s a whole culture one its own. As a languages student I have observed that the culture of the groups of people who speak any given language is found in the language itself. A language is an art expressed by the people who speak it. A language is an art alive.
Today you don’t have to learn French or any other language with a non-native teacher. You can learn the French language from native speakers very fast and be on your way to master a second language. To read more on learning French From A Native Speaker go to Learning French With A Native Speaker.
