What is a French Immersion week in Normandy?
French immersion weeks are organised stays in France for a group of students from a specific British school to help them improve their French. You travel to France in a coach and are taken to a centre where native animators teach you French and you are taken to various sites where you can use the French you have been taught. There also are organised visits to historical or specific touristic attractions in the area so that you learn about the local culture. Some centres offer various sporting activities in the summer depending on their location . In Normandy for instance activities can be anything from visiting the WW2 landing beaches or a medieval city such as Rouen to a cheese making farm or a large outdoor market, and even a beach resort in the summer. Here is an example: http://www.the-chateau.com/French-langua... You personally don't have anything to do. It is all organised by your school. Basically all you need to do is put your name down and your parents pay a deposit, then the rest in instalments or in a lump sum. Generally you travel with people in your year group and it is good fun. Occasionally there may be students from the year above or below but generally the demand is such that all the students are from the same year group. So if you are keen, don't waste any time putting your name down. Your school will give you further details when all has been arranged and your parents will be invited to a special meeting to tell them all about it, what you must take, etc.....
When travelling to a new region is it better to immerse yourself in 1–2 cities or to see as many cities as you can cram in?
Please take your time and do only one city at per 7 days. Paris alone takes weeks to discover. When you take your time, you really get to experience the city like the French do- and you will meet and talk to locals, too. I’ve been to Paris 3 times, and I still haven’t seen all the sights.Wouldn’t it be nice to just go for a stroll in the Latin Quarter, and have no agenda, but just explore?Wouldn’t it be nice to take two mornings to see the Louvre- and enjoy a beautiful picnic in the park afterwards?Don’t forget Versailles takes a whole day to visit. Get there before 9 am and you’ll beat the crowds and be the only ones in the room. You can pretend you are royalty until about 11am- then it’s too crowded and time to go explore the gardens.The smaller museums are less crowded and you have more time to enjoy the exhibits. La Maison Victor Hugo and other period homes are so interesting and full of history.Enjoy Le Musee D’Orsay and have lunch there too! Don’t rush it.Montmartre is so pretty, you’ll want to spend a whole day there.Explore the parks and bridges (each one has an amazing history)- walk along the Seine, take a Bateau-Mouche at night for a romantic trip.Explore Le Marais and do as many walking tours (with your own map) as possible.I find that when you try to cram too much in, you don’t really have time to enjoy it, learn about a new culture and make memories. Take the time to get to know the people at the hotel, the conscierge, the waiters. Those will be the highlights of your trip.When you rush through a trip, you come back with photos, but few memories.
Is French from Canada different from that of France??
When I was visiting Canada back in July I met a lot of people that were French speakers, and so a question dawned to me. What does French from Canada, or Quebec sound like compared to that of France or Europe?? Are there any differences in the way they talk, pronounce, spell, etc.?? Is it anything like the difference between Brit and American English or Spain and Latin America?? Anyone who is a French speaker, I'd like to hear their opinions.
How hard is learning French and how many years does it take to learn to speak basic French?
How hard is learning French and how many years does it take to learn to speak basic French?There are about 75 basic expressions of minimum French which you need to know in order to get by. (greetings like Bonjour ! = good day!, politeness such as Pardon ! = excuse me!, expressions such as Parlez-vous anglais ? = Do you speak English? and questions such as Quoi ? = what?) Some people are able to learn these in a day, others would need a couple of weeks.The next step would be to learn vocabulary and grammar, so that you can begin to put your own sentences together and hold a basic conversation. (You start by learning voici = here is, and voilà = there is, so that you can learn what things are called eg. voici la porte = here is the door, voilà la fenêtre = there is the window.)If you live in a French-speaking country and speak it every day, you’ll become quite fluent in about two years, otherwise it will take longer.There are many hurdles to jump on your way to becoming fluent. You may be doing really well, then you come across a hurdle which prevents you from making further progress. It could be disheartening but once you overcome the hurdle you continue, but after a while you come to another one, and so on until you reach fluency. (The biggest hurdle is knowing whether a noun is masculine or feminine. This is why they need to be learned together with the article le or la, un or une in front of them. Your final hurdle will be the present subjunctive. This problem arises because many native English speakers don’t use it when they’re speaking English, even though they should. After that, you improve your French by lots of reading and conversation.)
Do the Quebecois have a hard time understanding spoken Parisian French? Or is it vice versa?
I speak Quebec French natively with my mother, but now live in an anglophone city.I was young and in Paris, France, 35 year ago. I was happily getting along speaking French to everyone, without making any effort to speak something more standard. I was naive.Then someone asked me where I was from. I responded by asking where they thought I was from. The consensus was that I was speaking some Normand variety of French. I then said Quebec, which was met with some disbelief. After confirming several times that I was from Quebec, I was met with “what?” and “what are you saying?” They could no longer understand me. What was perfectly understandable five minutes earlier became gibberish to them.What had happened was a preconception (or a prejudice) of what Quebec French was like had eclipsed the experience of what Quebec French actually was like. They believed that they could not understand Quebec French, so they could not.The truth is that the mutual understandability of Quebec and Parisian French can be as much a factor of how similar they are as a factor of expectations of how similar they are.That being said, Quebec French and Parisian French are extremely similar on an objective basis. They are no more different that Canadian English and London English or rather RP.