Unlocking French with Paul Noble: Your key to language success with the bestselling language coach. Paul Noble
Finished working through that checklist and made fewer than three mistakes? Yes? Wonderful!
As that’s the case, what I now want you to do is repeat exactly the same process with the checklist below, except that this time you’ll be reading through the English and trying to recall the French. You’ll be doing it the other way round. Just relax and work your way up and down the list until you can give the correct French translation for each of the English words / expressions again without making more than three mistakes in total. It’s not a competition – and I’m not asking you to memorise them. Just look at the English words (on the left-hand side) while you cover up the blue French words on the right-hand side and see if you can remember how to say them in French. You’ll be surprised by how many you get right, even on the first try.
Okay, off you go!
| the weekend | le week-end (luh weekend) |
| romantic | romantique (roe-mon-teek) |
| fantastic | fantastique (fon-tass-teek) |
| typical | typique (tip-eek) |
| political | politique (po-lee-teek) |
| I have | J’ai (zhay) |
| visited | visité (visit-ay) |
| I have visited / I visited / I did visit | J’ai visité (zhay visit-ay) |
| Paris | Paris (pa-ree) |
| Notre-Dame | Notre-Dame (not-re darm) |
| I have visited Notre-Dame / I visited Notre-Dame / I did visit Notre-Dame. | J’ai visité Notre-Dame. (zhay visit-ay not-re darm) |
| spent | passé (pass-ay) |
| I have spent / I spent / I did spend | J’ai passé (zhay pass-ay) |
| You have | Vous avez (voo za-vay) |
| You have spent / You spent / You did spend | Vous avez passé (voo za-vay pass-ay) |
| We have | Nous avons (noo za-von) |
| We have spent / We spent / We did spend | Nous avons passé (noo za-von pass-ay) |
| September | septembre (sep-tom-bruh) |
| Christmas | Noël (no-ell) |
| in Paris | à Paris (a pa-ree) |
| in France | en France (on fronce) |
| in Switzerland | en Suisse (on swees) |
| We spent Christmas in Switzerland. | Nous avons passé Noël en Suisse. (noo za-von pass-ay no-ell on swees) |
| You spent September in France. | Vous avez passé septembre en France. (voo za-vay pass-ay sep-tom-bruh on fronce) |
| and | et (ay) |
| it was | c’était (set-ay) |
| It was fantastic. | C’était fantastique. (set-ay fon-tass-teek) |
| lovely / very agreeable | très agréable (trez ag-ray-arb-luh) |
| It was lovely. / It was very agreeable. | C’était très agréable. (set-ay trez ag-ray-arb-luh) |
| I spent the weekend in Paris… and it was lovely. | J’ai passé le week-end à Paris… et c’était très agréable. (zhay pass-ay luh weekend a pa-ree ay set-ay trez ag-ray-arb-luh) |
Well, that’s it, you’re done with Chapter 1! Don’t forget, you mustn’t try to hold onto or remember anything you’ve learnt here. Anything you learn in earlier chapters will be brought up again and reinforced in later chapters. You don’t need to do extra work or make any effort to memorise anything. The book has been organised to do that for you. Off you go now and have a rest. You’ve earned it!
Between Chapters Tip!
Between chapters, I’m going to be giving you various tips on language learning. These will range from useful tips about the French language itself to advice on how to fit learning a language into your daily routine. Ready for the first one? Here it is!
Tip Number One – study (at least a little) every day.
Learning a language is like building a fire – if you don’t tend to it, it will go out. So, once you have decided to learn a foreign language, you really should study it every day.
It doesn’t have to be for a long time though. Just five or ten minutes each day will be enough, so long as you keep it up. Doing these five or ten minutes will stop you forgetting what you’ve already learnt and, over time, will let you put more meat on the bones of what you’re learning.
As for what counts towards those five or ten minutes – well, that’s up to you. Whilst you’re working with this book, I would recommend that your five or ten minutes should be spent here learning with me. Once you’re done here, however, your daily study could be spent reading a French newspaper, watching a French film, or chatting with a French-speaking acquaintance. You could even attend a class if you want to learn in a more formal setting. The important thing is to make sure that you do a little every day.
CHAPTER 2
I booked a table, ordered dinner and then paid