looking for French speakers (esp. French Canadian) to help me with my conversational French (Reading: high school)

[wambli]

Hi, I'm new to City-Data, and I hope someone can help me.

I am starting a relationship with a Quebecois man who speaks little English. I learned conversational French in grammar school and studied French in high school but that was a long time ago. I am really wanting to be bilingual anyway, and this relationship is just advancing the issue, which is good.

I have been using Pimsler tapes, and my reading comprehension is pretty good. Listening comprehension fair/ok. Speaking, I'm mostly not confident I can do it ok. I can think in French, that's not the problem. Mostly the problem is vocabulary at this point and just no one to practice with on a daily or at least frequent basis.

I can't afford to take French lessons just now, so that isn't an option, unless someone knows of a dirt cheap way to do it.

My Quebecois man is 30, and a mature guy, but still I'd like to be able to speak comfortably culturally with someone that age. Yes, I am a bit older.

If anyone knows any social clubs where I could find someone to help, if there's no one on City-Data, thanks for letting me know.

[lrfox]

^This may be tough. Reading/learning French is usually FRANCE French while Quebecois French is pretty different. you'll be able to read it perfectly, but understanding it spoken and conversing can quite difficult (as you already know) because of the vastly different accents. My mother speaks french fluently and spend 2 years living in France (can converse easily), but she has the hardest of times understanding/conversing in Quebec.

Good luck to you. Unfortunately, I don't know what do say for help. Maybe check the Canada forum. I have/am considering moving to Quebec City in the future and there were some members that were VERY helpful there.

[eevee]

my sister speaks French fluently, but that's mainly because French (at least some version of it, perhaps not really European or Canadian French) is a commonly spoken language in Haiti, right after Haitian Creole (which itself is some bastardized version of French). I'm currently trying to relearn it since I was also quite fluent in it before I learned English in grade school. my first step is to go to the library and get some "Madeline" books in French!

I would say to maybe check out adult education classes to see if they offer cheap courses, or even community colleges. no need to go to some language institute or similar place. I've heard there was a decent sized Canadian population somewhere out in Western MA (not sure if this is true anymore; I was actually doing a report on MA author Robert Cormier and that fact came across somewhere), so not sure if you could check that out. in the end, the best ways to learn a new language may be complete immersion (move up to Quebec) or intensive classes w/ a native speaker

[holden125]

On meetup.com there are a couple of boston-area French speaking groups that welcome people at all levels and hold events pretty regularly. At the least someone at one of those events could point you in the right direction.

[turzan01]

I aggree with irfox (first reply): when I first came to Canada (from a french speaking environment), I had to take a taxi in montreal, and could not understand a word being said to me, even though the taxi driver understood my french perfectly. In quebec, you will find that the higher a person's educational level, the closer his 'french' will reflect the language of Moliere. quebecois french changes drastically as one moves from the cantons de l'est to ontario.

To improve your french, you might consider watching some french tv stations from quebec (if they are available to you via cable or satellite

[holden125]

On TV 5 Monde they sometimes show Québécois sitcoms with subtitles. It's hilarious. When I was more regularly speaking French and sounded passable a while back, everyone in Québec understood me and complimented me on sounding so elegant, but I had some serious trouble understanding many of them. I have friends from there who have graduate degrees and it's true that they don't sound that far off from France French. Just some twangy nasal vowels at times.

[wambli]

I'm not quite fluent in posting here, so excuse if you see two similar posts in response to all your helpful suggestions. I already see that the speed with which they speak in Quebec is a problem. I do hear some of the pronunciation differences between continental french and Quebecois already too. I'll look into the ideas you have shared with me, and again I say MERCI! for your support.