It’s been about 6 days since I started learning French. Actually, today would be the 8th day, but I haven’t been able to cope up with my tight mental and emotional states. Not that I haven’t tried my best. There’s a home to manage, a business to run, and some things in between. But then, today I found a few minutes to revise my notes and build from there.  So, I was on YouTube as usual, and I found something interesting. I stumbled upon Jeff Brown, and my mind is completely taken over by his ideas. First, here’s the video…

Les Pronoms Sujets – ले प्रोनोम् सुजे Pronouns are important part of any language. For example, if I write a paragraph, and keep repeating my name in the paragraph, it wouldn’t be as natural. You can’t say, Jaky is learning French, but Jaky doesn’t understand it as much, because Jaky has never spoken French before. Now, instead, if I say, Jaky is learning French, but he doesn’t understand it as much, because he has never spoken it before. Pronouns are fillers so that you don’t have to repeat the actual noun again and again. If you are used to programming,…

I’m excited. After three days of grunt work, rotting alphabets, and numbers, I’m finally onto something exciting. I should start with simple sentences, use them in my day-to-day life, talk to Merelin in French (hoping she won’t respond in her own version of French, which I will never ever understand). I don’t have anyone to talk to in French, which I eventually will need to find, so that I can converse with them. It’s essential to the core of the language. The sole reason to learn a new language is to be able to talk, share ideas, ask question, and…

One of the problems I’ve faced until now is that of muscle and memory. The way I speak my current languages, my muscles are not accustomed to speaking or learning French. Also, I can continue revising the subject daily, but it will still be a rot-repetition. I will be taking in the language, without any constructive understanding of the subject. I have to solve this problem. While search across the internet, I bumped upon a video on youtube that understands this problem clearly. The title of the video is, “How to Learn Any Language in 6 Months“, which does look…

Before starting, I had to finish revising yesterday’s notes. It took me about 10 minutes to go through each alphabet. Just a quick note before I move on to today’s lessons – there’s a great website Merelin suggested – busuu.com. It offers a free 14 day trial and then about $14 per month, even cheaper if you subscribe for a year. She also suggests The French Experiment and Fantastique. Every platform has a unique way of introducing you to French. Some start with grammar, some will directly take you to introductory sentences. But to each their own, I’m going to…

Today is my first day of learning French. Let’s keep it easy. Just like English, French consists of 26 alphabets, including 5 vowels and 21 consonants. The first thing to do is learn the pronunciation of each alphabet. When trying to learn a new language, there are two essential requirements: understanding how each letter is spelled and how it sounds. Surprisingly, your native language, or the one you are most fluent in, comes in handy. For example, my native language is Gujarati, which is similar to many other languages derived from Sanskrit. So, I’m in luck. Sanskrit and its derived…

One of the biggest challenges we face as we grow older is learning something new, especially languages. Our mother tongue, English, or Hindi, for example, has been in front of us since we were born. We have caught up enough with these languages to hold conversations. Although we don’t always have a great vocabulary, we know enough to communicate freely without language being the primary barrier. But when it comes to learning a new language, we lack those subconscious neural patterns, unlike our core languages, which have been operational in our brains forever. It feels hard, it seems impossible if…