Easy French Phrase Book: Over 1500 Common Phrases For Everyday Use And Travel

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Vowels in French can have accent marks, which generally have no noticeable impact on pronunciation, but they often distinguish between homophones in writing ( ou, meaning or, and où, meaning where, are pronounced the same). Even if it takes you a while to figure out the language, you’ll have soon learned more than you ever realized. It is an important administrative, educational, and cultural language in the former French Southeast Asian possessions of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia.

Although Canada is a bilingual nation, French is spoken by a minority of citizens in all the other provinces and territories. It is also found in parts of the United States, primarily in the state of Louisiana and the northern part of the states of Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont. Every word is accompanied by a written pronunciation guide to keep your communications smooth and simple as you travel.In a manner similar to many other Romance languages, French verbs all end in either -er, -ir, or -re in their infinitive forms, for example écouter (to listen), finir (to finish), and vendre (to sell). In this book: - An introduction with a detailed guide on how to pronounce vowels and consonants (as well as their combinations) in the French tongue.

This means that in practice, as a traveller and novice French speaker, most of the time you will be using vous. The vocabulary tables in this phrasebook are packed full of thousands of new words to cover any type of travel scenario. True to form, the “Eyewitness Travel Guides French Phrase Book” is organized and color-coded according to subject, making navigating the pages a real breeze! Note on time: the French use the 24 hour clock, with midnight being 0h00 (note that, except on digital clocks, in France an 'h' is used as a separator between hours and minutes as opposed to a colon in many other countries).

i, î like "ee" in "see" but shorter and tenser o, ô, au, eau generally like "oa" in "boat" in American English or "aw" in "law" in British English, can be considered equivalent u, ù like a very tight, frontal "oo" sound (purse your lips as if to pronounce "oo" as in "soon" but try to pronounce "ee") - uu in transcriptions ou like "oo" in "food", but a pure vowel y like "ee" in "see" ; also sometimes used as a consonant, pronounced the same as in English (in 'yes' for example). Like that of English, unlike almost all the other Romance languages, French spelling is not very phonetic. One thing to note is that final consonants of a word are usually dropped: allez (go) is pronounced ahl-AY, not ahl-AYZ; tard (late) is pronounce tar, not tard. Frédéric Bibard has compiled a list of phrases that anyone who travels to France as a tourist might require as they visit the cities, the mountains and valleys, or the rivers and coastlines of France. Here's the perfect companion for tourists and business travelers in France and other French-speaking locales.

A final e is also usually silent if the word has more than one syllable, except in parts of southern France and when singing or reciting poetry, when it can appear as a schwa or é sound (see below). This chapter even features a web link for a sound file that will provide the reader with audible sound bites for the sounds of the French language. Getting your tongue around new sounds is a very tricky thing, but by taking a little time to focus on the phonetics of new words, you’ll stand yourself in good stead down the line. I can learn the correct pronunciation and some basic phrases, but I don’t want to learn the entire language. On the other hand, if a noun ends in -ace, -ance / -ence, -ée, -elle / -erre / -esse / -ette, -ie, -ice, -ine, -ise, -que, or -tion / sion, it's probably feminine.Would definitely recommend if you’re looking to get a grasp of the basics and the most used phrases. As the book is so compact, it can be easily transported wherever you go, meaning that you’ll always have a helping hand. This pocket-sized volume is packed with practical words and phrases designed to help you enjoy a better trip.