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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Fremdsprachen
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012
The fast, informal way to learn to speak French - with integrated audio clips throughout. Listen to pronunciations and conversations. French is a beautiful language but quite difficult to learn. Whether you need to learn the language for a French class, or you travel overseas for business or leisure, this enhanced edition of French For Dummies can help. Written in an easy-to-follow format, with integrated audio clips, it gives you just what you need for basic communication in French. The enhanced edition includes: * Expanded coverage of necessary grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciations * Useful exercises, practice questions, and a mini-dictionary Business, an upcoming class, travel - whatever your reason for wanting to learn a new language but don't have time to take a class, this enhanced edition of French For Dummies can get you well on your way to becoming fluent in no time!
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French For Dummies®, 2nd Edition
Visit www.dummies.com/cheatsheet/french to view this book's cheat sheet.
Table of Contents
French For Dummies®, 2nd Edition
by Dodi-Katrin Schmidt, Michelle M. Williams, Dominique Wenzel, and Zoe Erotopoulos
French For Dummies®, 2nd Edition
Published byJohn Wiley & Sons, Inc.111 River St.Hoboken, NJ 07030-5774
www.wiley.com
Copyright © 2011 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Published simultaneously in Canada
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise, except as permitted under Sections 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without the prior written permission of the Publisher. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, (201) 748-6011, fax (201) 748-6008, or online at http://www.wiley.com/go/permissions.
Trademarks: Wiley, the Wiley Publishing logo, For Dummies, the Dummies Man logo, A Reference for the Rest of Us!, The Dummies Way, Dummies Daily, The Fun and Easy Way, Dummies.com, Making Everything Easier, and related trade dress are trademarks or registered trademarks of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the United States and other countries, and may not be used without written permission. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., is not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book.
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2011932271
ISBN 978-1-118-00464-7 (pbk); ISBN 978-1-118-13864-9 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-118-13865-6 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-118-13866-3 (ebk)
Manufactured in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
About the Authors
Dodi-Katrin Schmidt has been a writer, translator, and editor for over a decade. Aside from translating German, French, and English texts of various kinds, including linguistic handbooks, film reviews, travel guides, and children’s books, she has also been involved in developing language textbooks, language courses, teachers’ handbooks, and grammar companions for video language courses. Dodi has been teaching for more than two decades at high school, adult education, and college levels in Europe as well as the United States. She also writes test items for various national language tests and recorded textbook and test material. Together with her husband, she travels a great deal, and they continually house and entertain foreign students and former students in their home in Princeton, NJ.
Michelle M. Williams is an editor at a major educational publisher. A former French teacher, she has taught students ranging from 2-years old to adults in both the public and private sectors. She is a firm believer in making the language fun and accessible to all who want to learn. Her most rewarding experience, however, is in watching and listening to her son Nathaniel learn to speak and sing in French.
Dominique Wenzel has been a freelance teacher of French and a translator for 15 years. Born and raised in France, she received a Master’s degree from the University of Paris-Sorbonne and studied at the University of Chicago on a postgraduate Fulbright scholarship. Her students include business professionals, children, and adults of all levels and interests. She travels regularly to France. Dominique raised two bicultural, bilingual children who are both active in the international field.
Dr. Zoe Erotopoulos was born in Greece and immigrated to the United States at a young age. Her love of the French language, literature, and culture inspired her to pursue her academic studies in these areas. She holds an MA, MPhil, and PhD in French and Romance Philology from Columbia University in New York, NY. Dr. Erotopoulos has also studied in Aix-en-Provence, at the Sorbonne, and at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris.
Her teaching experience in French ranges from elementary to advanced level courses, including literature and theater. Dr. Erotopoulos’s area of expertise is 17th-century French theater. Throughout her academic career, she has taught at a number of institutions, including Columbia University, Reid Hall in Paris, and Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. She is presently teaching in the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures at Fairfield University in Fairfield, Connecticut. Dr. Erotopoulos is the author of French Verbs For Dummies and French For Dummies, Audio Set. She lives in Connecticut with her husband, Steve, and three children, Despina, Olga, and Stathi.
Berlitz has meant excellence in language services for more than 120 years. At more than 400 locations and in 50 countries worldwide, Berlitz offers a full range of language and language-related services, including instruction, cross-cultural training, document translation, software localization, and interpretation services. Berlitz also offers a wide array of publishing products, such as self-study language courses, phrase books, travel guides, and dictionaries.
The world-famous Berlitz Method® is the core of all Berlitz language instruction. From the time of its introduction in 1878, millions have used this method to learn new languages. For more information about Berlitz classes and products, please consult your local telephone directory for the Language Center nearest you or visit the Berlitz website at www.berlitz.com, where you can enroll in classes or shop directly for products online.
Dedication
Zoe: To my family.
Authors’ Acknowledgments
Zoe: I am very grateful to my family for their unwavering love and support, especially to my children who are my personal cheering squad. I would like to wholeheartedly thank my editor, Tracy Barr, for her professionalism, her insightful comments and suggestions, and her expertise. A special thank you goes to Michael Lewis for entrusting me with this project and to the technical reviewers, Eric Laird and Lydia de Faveri, for their expertise and careful attention to detail. I must also thank Dodi Schmidt, Michelle Williams, and Dominique Wenzel, who put so much time, effort, and knowledge into the first edition of this book. Last, but certainly not least, a heartfelt thank you to my colleagues in the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures at Fairfield University and Cynthia Nadal for their friendship, encouragement, and sound advice.
Publisher’s Acknowledgments
We’re proud of this book; please send us your comments at http://dummies.custhelp.com. For other comments, please contact our Customer Care Department within the U.S. at 877-762-2974, outside the U.S. at 317-572-3993, or fax 317-572-4002.
Some of the people who helped bring this book to market include the following:
Acquisitions, Editorial, and Vertical Websites
Editor: Tracy L. Barr
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Cover Photo: ©iStockphoto.com/Lisa F. Young
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Introduction
As society becomes increasingly more international and as we seek to become global citizens, knowing how to say at least a few words in other languages becomes more and more useful. The European Union is a great example of global citizenry as borders between the member countries become easier to cross. Furthermore, global business environments necessitate overseas travel. Thanks to numerous travel websites, finding a package deal for airfare and hotel stays makes travel abroad easier and more convenient than ever before. Moreover, the Internet allows us to have contact with people all over the world, making learning a foreign language a great asset.
Whether you are traveling overseas on business, exploring a different culture, or even connecting with your heritage, learning a little bit of the language has many advantages. Whatever your reason for wanting to learn some French, French For Dummies, 2nd Edition, can help. It gives you the skills you need for basic communication in French. We’re not promising fluency here, but if you need to greet someone, purchase a ticket, ask for directions, make a hotel reservation, or order off a menu in French, you need look no further than this book.
Remember that everyday French is like everyday English. It makes use of simplified lingual forms which, although perfectly correct, avoid and ignore certain complicated verb tenses and moods such as, say, the future perfect or the subjunctive. In everyday French, you can express yourself adequately by following just a few easy-to-understand grammar rules and by knowing a minimum number of words. So you should find the lessons in this book to be fun and not the least bit overwhelming.
Now is playtime: C’est la récréation (seh lah rey-krey-ah-syohN).
About This Book
French For Dummies, 2nd Edition, isn’t like a class that you have to drag yourself to twice a week for a specified period of time. You can usethis bookhowever you want to, whether your goal is to learn some words and phrases to help you get around when you visit France or a francophone country, or you just want to be able to say “Hello, how are you?” to your French-speaking neighbor. Go through this book at your own pace, reading as much or as little at a time as you like. You don’t have to trudge through the chapters in sequential order, either; just read the sections that interest you.
Conventions Used in This Book
To make this book easy to navigate, we’ve set up some conventions:
French terms are set in boldface to make them stand out.
Pronunciation, set in parentheses, follows the French terms. Hyphens connect syllables in the same word as well as words that are linked by the French liaison (which you can find out all about in Chapter 3).
Translation of the French terms is set in italic and follows the pronunciation.
Because French nouns are typically preceded by an article, we include those articles in the word lists throughout this book, even though the English translation may not use the article. Furthermore, because articles indicate a noun’s gender, they’re helpful bits of information when you’re learning a language. When the article is abbreviated (l’), however, you can’t tell the gender. In those instances, we add a gender designation: (m) for masculine and (f) for feminine.
Verb conjugations (lists that show you the forms of a verb) are given in tables in this order:
• The “I” form
• The “you” (singular, informal) form
• The “he/she/it/one” form
• The “we” form
• The “you” (plural, and singular, formal) form
• The “they” form.
Pronunciations follow in the second column. The example shown uses the verb parler (pahr-ley) (to speak). The conjugation starts with the French equivalent of I speak or I am speaking; you speak, or you are speaking, and so on.
So that you can make fast progress in French, this book includes a few elements to help you along:
Talkin’ the Talk dialogues: The best way to learn a language is to see and hear how it’s used in conversation, so we include dialogues throughout the book. The dialogues come under the heading “Talkin’ the Talk” and show you the French words, the pronunciation, and the English translation.
Words to Know blackboards: Memorizing key words and phrases is also important in language learning, so we collect the important words in a chapter (or section within a chapter) in a chalkboard, with the heading “Words to Know.”
Fun & Games activities: If you don’t have actual French speakers to practice your new language skills on, you can use the Fun & Games activities to reinforce what you learn. These games are fun ways to gauge your progress.
Also note that, because each language has its own way of expressing ideas, the English translations that we provide for the French terms may not be exactly literal. We want you to know the gist of what’s being said, not just the words that are being said. For example, the phrase C’est normal (seh nohr-mahl)can be translated literally as It’s normal, but the phrase really means It’s no big deal. This book gives the second translation.
Foolish Assumptions
To write this book, we had to make some assumptions about who you are and what you want from a book called French For Dummies. Here are the assumptions that we’ve made about you:
You know no or very little French — or if you took French back in school, you don’t remember much of it.
You’re not looking for a book that will make you fluent in French; you just want to know some words, phrases, and sentence constructions so that you can communicate basic information in French.
You don’t want to have to memorize long lists of vocabulary words or a bunch of boring grammar rules.
You want to have fun and learn a little bit of French at the same time.
If these statements apply to you, you’ve found the right book!
How This Book Is Organized
This book is divided by topic into parts and then into chapters. The following sections tell you what types of information you can find in each part.
Part I: Getting Started
This part lets you get your feet wet by giving you some French basics: how to pronounce words, what the accents mean, and so on. We even boost your confidence by reintroducing you to some French words that you probably already know. Finally, we outline the basics of French grammar that you may need to know when you work through later chapters in the book.
Part II: French in Action
In this part, you begin learning and using French. Instead of focusing on grammar points as many language textbooks do, this part focuses on everyday situations, such as asking for directions, shopping, dining, going out on the town, and making small talk.
Part III: French on the Go
This part gives you the tools you need to take your French on the road, whether you’re going to a local French restaurant or to a museum in France. This part covers all aspects of travel in French-speaking parts of the world, and it even has a chapter on how to handle emergencies.
Part IV: The Part of Tens
If you’re looking for small, easily digestible pieces of information about French, this part is for you. Here you can find ten ways to learn French quickly, ten useful French expressions to know, ten things never to say in French, and more.
Part V: Appendixes
This part of the book includes important information that you can use for reference. Appendix A is a mini-dictionary in both French-to-English and English-to-French formats. If you encounter a French word that you don’t understand or you need to say something in French that you can’t find quickly elsewhere in the book, you can look it up here. Appendix B features verb tables, which show you how to conjugate regular verbs and then how to conjugate those verbs that stubbornly don’t fit the pattern. Appendix C gives you the answer keys to all of the Fun & Games activities that appear in the book, and Appendix D lists the tracks that appear on the audio CD that comes with this book so that you can find the dialogues easily and follow along.
Icons Used in This Book
You may be looking for particular information while reading this book. To make certain types of information easier to find, we’ve placed the following icons in the left-hand margins throughout the book:
This icon highlights tips that can make learning French easier.
This icon points out interesting information that you ought not forget.
To help you avoid linguistic, grammatical, and cultural faux pas, we use this icon.
Languages are full of quirks that may trip you up if you’re not prepared for them. This icon points to discussions of these peculiar grammar rules.
If you’re looking for information and advice about culture and travel, look for this icon. It draws your attention to interesting tidbits about the countries in which French is spoken.
The audio CD that comes with this book gives you the opportunity to listen to real French speakers so that you can get a better understanding of what French sounds like. This icon marks the Talkin’ the Talk dialogues that you can find on the CD.
Where to Go from Here
Learning a language is all about jumping in and giving it a try (no matter how bad your pronunciation is at first). So make the leap! Start at the beginning, pick a chapter that interests you, or listen to a few dialogues on the CD. Before long, you’ll be able to respond Oui! (wee!) (Yes!) when people ask Parlez-vous français? (pahr-ley vooh frahN-seh?) (Do you speak French?).
Note: If you’ve never been exposed to French before, you may want to read the chapters in Part I before you tackle the later chapters. Part I gives you some of the basics that you need to know about the language, such as how to pronounce the various sounds, some basic expressions and words, and the fundamentals of French sentence structure.
Part I
Getting Started
In this part . . .
You have to start somewhere, but we bet that you know a lot more French than you think. Don’t think so? Then check out Chapter 1 and see how many French words and idioms you already use. Chapters 2 and 3 provide some basic background on French grammar and pronunciation, while Chapters 4 and 5 get you talking about yourself and your family. So get started and don’t worry — We make it fun!
Chapter 1
The French You Already Know
In This Chapter
French words that are identical or similar to their English counterparts
French words to watch out for
Idioms and popular expressions you may already know
Learning a new language can be challenging. Not only do you need to know a whole new vocabulary, but you also need to twist your head around different grammar rules and your tongue around different pronunciation rules. But here’s a little news that may make the task seem a little less daunting: You already know quite a few French words and expressions. How? Because the English language, being the borrower that it is, contains many French words and expressions, and French has absorbed some English words, too.
In this chapter, you get to explore some French words and phrases without having to know pronunciation or grammar rules (that info comes in Chapters 2 and 3). Here, we include French words that are spelled the same and mean the same as their English counterparts, as well as words that are close in meaning and spelling. But because not every French word that resembles an English word shares its meaning, we also tell you what words to watch out for. In addition, we include some French expressions that you probably already know and understand. By the end of this chapter, you may discover that you actually know more French than you previously thought.
The French You’re Familiar With
With just a narrow stretch of water between them, the English and the French have historically been pretty close, even if they haven’t always been the friendly allies they are today. In fact, French was the language of the English court for a very long time — a fact that many people tend to forget. (The Normans who invaded England in 1066 with William the Conqueror were French, as were some of the most prominent people in English history).
What does this have to do with your learning French? Well today, about 35 percent of English vocabulary is of French origin. That being the case, you already know an impressive amount of French, whether you realize it or not. The only pitfall you have to watch out for is that sometimes the English words have a different meaning from their French counterparts, and they almost certainly have a different pronunciation.
French nouns are preceded by either definite or indefinite articles. The definite articles are le (masculine), la (feminine), l’ (an abbreviation of either le or la), and les (plural); these are the equivalent to the English word the. The indefinite articles are un (masculine),une (feminine), des (plural); these are all equivalent to the English words a,an,
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
