Oy.

How do you say that in French?

I enjoy listening to the news twice a day at france2.fr The Alliance here in Chicago has wonderful programs for francophiles, including a French book club comprised of native and non-native speakers who meet monthly to discuss a book selected by a member. Interestingly, we have been lately reading books from francophone countries, aside from France.

I also subscribe to the cultural e-mails from the French Consulate which notifies me of any events/films/concerts coming to the area.

Netflix has some good French films and a funny series called "Call My Agent" (10% en francais).

Yes, orthographe inclusive is the latest fad in French language, but thank goodness, I guess, that it doesn't have to translate into spoken language or we'd all sound like Martians. And I do wonder if French desktop publishers who charge by the character aren't making a fortune off this. On the other hand I do think it's a good step forward that the entire business and educational system in France doesn't have to address a room full of female students or employees with one male attendant as "he" in the masculine.

I'm one of those who thinks there is no good substitute for knowing your grammar because French is so precise and, for example, when you need to use the subjunctive, well, you need to use it. Or, as I am trying to teach my DH, how to say, e.g., " I should have," because he is always in some situation where he needs to explain to someone that he "should have" or he could have filed something or other. You can't fake that without grammar and the proper tenses - " j'aurais du...." You can say Il m'a fallu" or "il faut que je..." but then you need to know the subjunctive to follow it with the verb, which in the first case case would normally be the infinitive, but not always, and then you need to explain why even though " il t'a fallu..." you didn't. For me, philosophy and poetry and plays are great, but it doesn't teach me the French I need to converse and communicate adequately. It's an academic feather in the cap, not something that's everyday useful in Frnance.

"You can "get by" with a lot of vocabulary (well, until you own a house, maybe; then you need a WHOLE lot of new words like gaine and crochet and baguettes and planches and canalisation and ramonage and isolation and tuyaux and charnière and toile and visse and beton, and a million other things) but if you can't put those words into comprehensible sentences, don't buy a house here.

I applaud the efforts of anyone who is trying to learn French, but I don't buy the "avoid grammar lessons" theory if you are serious. The entire language is all about structure. You can't just skirt around it. If you don't have the grammar down pat, the French will gladly engage with you and converse with you, but they know you're not seriously serious. Not that you will lose any points with them for that - they are always extremely grateful that anyone bothers to learn anything about their language.

Learn your grammar.

When I moved to Paris, 10 years ago, I read every newspaper - you borrow them from the cafe when you have your coffee - and went over them with a little dictionary, or an online dictionary.

Magazines are not worth the time, mostly just ads.

You do learn a lot about the "faits divers" in Le Parisien, though.
You also learn a lot of slang, which is very valuable when it comes to speaking to shopkeepers.

I have trouble with telephones, too. I ask people to repeat as often as necessary - telling them I am "malentendant".

What a fantastic thread this is! I just listened to a couple lectures on the College de France site and fortunately they are not all on applied mathematics and physics. I found one on religion in ancient Rome and another on the source texts for the bible. Great stuff! There are also 5 to 8 minute interviews with some of the lecturers, in French with English subtitles, which are nice bite-sized lessons in themselves. Also just watched part of an episode of Les Carnets de Julie on YouTube, which was very interesting.

Having taken two years of French 8 years ago, I've been trying to ramp up my French skills this year, so I just completed my first class in 3rd year French at UC Riverside. It was a literature class, so mostly reading, writing and discussing, with very little focus on grammar, which I miss. So many grammatical concepts were introduced in the first 2 years of French, but we moved on so quickly that many of them haven't stuck, so I really wish we would review them. I have found some help on YouTube from French teachers explaining just about any subject in French grammar, which helps.

For conversation, I have enlisted the help of the owner of a local French cafe in Palm Springs who I meet with twice a week for 90 minutes each time. We have become great friends and started socializing with him and his wife, so that has been a very positive experience. He also installed an ap on my TV called IPTV which gives us access to over 8000 TV channels from around the world for only $60 per year. (I wish I could tell you how he did it, but I only know that he went to a website to sign me up, and then to my SmartTV to download the ap). There are 100's of programs in French, it's overwhelming. My favorites so far are a program on the Discovery Channel called "Comment c'est fait" (you can find this and others on YouTube as well), which shows how ordinary objects are manufactured. I also like "Vu d'en Haut", which is a sort of travel and education series, with video taken from above with drones. Also, just about anything on Animal Planet is interesting. What these all have in common is that the narration and dialogue matches up nicely with the images, which helps for language learning. Even if I only understand 50% of the words, I can still follow the concepts through the images, unlike the news which is often just a bunch of talking heads.

Anyway, thanks for the great ideas everyone!

Russ, your approach to learning French is impressively thorough--conversation, classes, exposure to French TV for the language and the culture, as well as French meals at your friend's cafe.

These friends are not only giving you listening and speaking experience, but when you travel to France they probably give you good advice.

I regret that we don't have any French cafes near us.

For me, trolling real estate websites is just a hobby, but I believe you've actually taken the plunge, russ. I hope you'll tell us more as things go along.

xcountry, I had missed your comment about gearing. Just saw it now and it gave me a chuckle.