Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy French for a five year old?

You're right Dude (something to do with the Big Lebowsky, there ?)
In fact, I meant essentially that they're is other countries than France where people speak French (Quebec, Belgium, many African Countries, ...) with a lot of different accents too. And I guess some people in the States speak a good French. I have a few friends there who speak a rather good French with an accent, but not that strong.

lol I've been meaning/sometimes trying to at least get better with reading and writing in French (my H.S. French didn't help much) to do a project based in Quebec. Reading is the easiest if you have the time. Speaking is so hard, plus the few people I have dealt with always speak English and translate for me anyway so my laziness just perpetuates.

raoul: You may be less sensitive to French accents since it's your native language. I've seen this play out in the opposite direction as well... English is my wife's second language (Spanish first), but she speaks it without a noticeable accent. When I introduced her to Monty Python, she couldn't follow their language at all. That continued to be a pattern for anything with British accents. She finally learned how to understand those accents by watching movies with the English subtitles turned on. As a native English speaker, various accents on it hardly bother me at all.

I'm probably not a good judge, though, because I remember having an instructor of Chinese descent, and I was the only member of the class who could figure out what he was saying. Mr. Lee... or, as he would say, "Missah Ree." Each morning we'd take a quiz on the previous day's material, and as everyone failed but me, he'd send everyone over to my desk, where I'd deliver a quickie version of the previous day's lecture. The most frequent comments during these lectures were "He said THAT?" and "How the hell do you understand him?"

The most hilariously awful English accent I've ever heard was when I met two women originally from Vietnam who were living in rural Virginia. The pronunciations of Vietnam and the Deep South were mixed together to produce something unrecognizable to either group.

Well, right dude. I quite understand The Monty Python not bad (She's a witch !...)but I understand better English people than people from the states (remember a meeting with people from the South of the States ... I thought I was on Mars). May be that's due to the fact that I am European.. Nevertheless, as many French, I have a lot of difficulty with very strong accents (Scottish accent, for example)

On the other side, I remember not understanding some of my uncles living in rural part of France . I also remember wishing a French-speaking guy from immigration Canada (I used to live in Montreal) to switch back from French to English because I understood better his English than his French.

Well, we are quite far from this post original purpose... Sorry.

oh... there is an app- French for dummies.. its like $2.60 or something off iTunes and is quite good !

Michelle6, I saw these DVDs in the library yesterday and they looked cute. Maybe you could look up some parent reviews. I'm tempted to get them for myself and DD but will wait until the summer.

http://www.littlepim.com/