French is also, of course, an extremely useful language to learn. Below are some practical reasons for studying French. While ‘only’ about 80 million people speak French as a first language, it is one of the world’s most widely spoken second languages with perhaps 200 million L2 speakers.

In addition to oral vowels, French also has four nasal vowels. Nasal vowels are produced when air passes through the nose as well as the mouth. English has nasal-like vowels in words such as sing and impossible, but the nasal consonants /n/ and /m/ are still pronounced.

Pirahã language

Many may find French hard to learn because of the complex grammar and other linguistic nuances that don’t exist in English, and especially for those who have never learned another European language (or more precisely, Roman language) such as Spanish or Portuguese.

French is beautiful, popular, and very useful. While you certainly won’t master it in three months, especially if you can only put a few hours a week into it, if you want to have your initial plan of action here’s how I’d suggest you learn French.

Although makes recognizing words in a sentence even trickier, Liaisons soothes the perks of the , which helps with the coherency of speaking. That’s part of the reason why French sounds so beautiful. That French categorize tenses in a more reasonable way than many of the other languages.

French Accents List: The 5 French Accent Marks

• ç – the cedilla (la cédille)
• é – the acute accent (l’accent aigu)
• â/ê/î/ô/û – the circumflex (l’accent circonflexe)
• à/è/ì/ò/ù – the grave accent (l’accent grave)
• ë/ï/ü – the trema (l’accent tréma)

The letter ‘T’ in French is fairly straightforward as it is pronounced more or less like the English ‘T. ‘ The difference is that in French, it is pronounced with the tongue against the upper teeth, rather than behind them, as in the English T.

In modern French, monsieur (plural messieurs) is used as a courtesy title of respect, an equivalent of English “mister” or “sir”. It can be abbreviated in M. (plural MM.), Mssr.

It is exactly the same vowel that you will find in ‘hot, pot, shot’ in English English, if you are a good mimic. Like many French vowels, it is pronounced with kissy lips. The last syllable of the phrase is stressed. Hey Hagan, when I was in Paris I kept my mouth shut and instead, pointed!

mister crunch

or croque mon·sieur (krōk′mə-syœ′) A buttery sandwich of ham, cheese, and sometimes béchamel sauce, that is often dipped in egg before it is grilled. [French : croquer, to crunch, bite (from Old French *to strike, break, of imitative origin) + monsieur, mister; see Monsieur.]