Considering that French is considered by some to be one of the “most difficult languages” (yes, it is serious, Parisians will insist on this; fortunately, you will get much more courage in the rest of France, Belgium, Switzerland and definitely Quebec), I believe that a change in attitude is appropriate so that those of you who want to learn French, or are learning this language, get some encouragement!

The most common response I receive when telling someone that I am learning French - made by speakers of both English and French - is something similar to, “French is so difficult! Even basic French! I can't believe you can talk like that only after three months!”

This exclamation is typically followed by an exasperated nervousness about the difficulty of pronunciation, the supposed endless list of exceptions for each grammar rule, conjugations, and so on.

Now that I have finally reached three months of studying French, I would like to refute, once and for all, the (surprising) popular notion that French is somehow impossibly difficult to learn. Spoiler alert: it is not.

As a language fan, I am a big fan of Benny Lewis, whose "Speak From the First Day" method should be, I think, a gospel of language learning. He has written several articles on why learning Czech, Turkish, German, Mandarin Chinese, Hungarian, and other languages is not as difficult as you think.

His point is that with the appropriate attitude and method, learning a new language - no matter what critics may claim - is never such a difficult task as is often believed.

Any discussion of why French is not difficult for English speakers should begin with the date September 28, 1066, the date when the Norman conquest of England began. During the four hundred years that followed, a dialect of French known as the Anglo-Norman became the language of the crown, the educated elite, and the administration and justice.

Even today, the queen's pact, which must be given to legislation passed by parliament in order to become law, is still given in French. Great!

Historical tangents aside, what does this have to do with learning French today? About one every three words in English are derived from French. This means that, as an English speaker, even before you open a phrase book for the first time, you already have some vocabulary that you can start using from day one.

From a practical point of view, I have found that every time I don't remember the right word in French, saying a word in English with a strong French accent is a surprisingly effective strategy. I remember during my first week of French classes when I was trying to say that a certain French word exists in English, but it has a different meaning.

The circumflex you find in many words usually means that an "s" used to be present, but has stopped being used. So words like hôpital and forêt are translated into "hospital" and "forest (forest)" in English.

There are many more tricks like these, and although they may not always be applied perfectly, these examples should give you a sense of how much linguistic history the two languages have in common.

Pronunciation

Ok, maybe you are thinking that, yes, you realize that English and French have many words in common, but there is no way that one day you will master that perfect accent that French people have.

Along with many of the French words that migrated to English came vestiges of their old pronunciations. Consider words and expressions such as montage, déjà vu, bourgeois, comprise, brochure, filet mignon, chauffeur, lingerie, and encore.

Without knowing it (and if you speak English), you actually regularly use many of the sounds found in French.
Now I will admit that the French "r" and the nasal sounds will probably take some practice for you to get used to, but the best advice I have received - neither more nor less than from my Lonely Planet phrasebook - was simply to do the most stereotyped French accent I could do. I tried - it really works!

Conjugations

One of the most common complaints among French learners is the alleged incomprehensibility of verb conjugation. In fact, the singular third person form On is usually used instead of the first person plural, and you don't even have to think about changing the pronunciation for most verb forms in the present indicative.

The verbs -er are completely regular, the verbs -ir are mostly regular, and the verbs -re are mostly irregular. Still, don't let the third "irregular" group scare you. Not only is it the smallest of the three groups, but it is also considered a "closed-class", which means that all new verbs introduced in the French language are from the first two "regular" classes.
Thus, new words like googliser, textoter, and téléviser use the regular forms. Even among irregular verbs, you will notice patterns that make their conjugations predictable.