Introduction - Salut! (FR)

If I were to classify French by it's difficulty, it would be 3/5 (while English would be 1/5... 'Ah, just 1! That's why you still make so many mistakes in English, right Mila?' -.-). So it's not that bad.

'Mila's French issues list':

1. It has got quite a complicated pronunciation, but it's not something that you wouldn't be able to deal with. The rules of French pronunciation are at least strict, unlike those in English. The problem might be - for example - this famous 'r', but even if your pronunciation is poor, there is still a slight chance that you would be understood. ;)

2. Comparing to English, French grammar is much more extended. For example: while in English you have 'to know: I know, you know, he/she/it knows, we know, you know, they know' - so the terminal changes just once - in French the same verb would be like this:

Savoir (notice that it's the same word as in 'Savoir-vivre'):

je sais

tu sais

il/elle/on sait

nous savons

vous savez

ils/elles savent

Good news is that 'savoir' is an exception. Bad news is that many basic verbs in French are... xD But these exceptions often form some rule.

Conclusion: try Polish grammar with all of it's exceptions - you will love French!

3. I don't quite understand how does English spelling work, but the most typical example of a mistake seems to be 'heroe' instead of 'hero'. Google translator tells me that there is another word for spelling in English, which is 'ortography'. And this word sounds much more seriously. And French 'ortographe' is a much more serious case than English spelling. There are all these è, é, à, ç stuff and it might be kind of hard to memorise how to write some words. But then again - worse things may happen in life. Like devanagari - hindi writing system...

4. The articles - le, la, les, un, une etc. This should actually be number 1 on my list of French issues. It's something that one can never fully understand, unless he's a native speaker. Well, but you can at least know the rules ;)

So these were the bad news. Now the good ones:

English and Chinese wikipedias say that French is the 18th most commonly used language when it comes to native speakers. By the way, the list is kind of surprising, take a look: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_number_of_native_speakers

French wikipedia says it is 16th xD

Finnish wikipedia says it is 7th when it comes to French speakers in general. Polish wikipedia says it is 6th.

These scores are quite good, aren't they?

Some say that French people don't speak English at all - and even if they do, they act as if they didn't. Well, it's up to where you go and to whom you speak. At the stores in Paris they will probably understand quite well, so if you only wish to buy some Prada, then you won't need French xD But otherwise you should at least know some basics.

Here's a short story: once I wanted to buy something with curry in McDonald's. It wrote "chicken with curry" on the board, they didn't translate it - they never do that in McDonald's. I used French of course, but I pronounced 'curry' the English way. And the guy didn't understand. He asked some of his friends for help - but they also din't get what I'm talking about. I had to point it with my finger and then they were like "aaaah, /küree/!"

But that wasn't in Paris, so you can check yourself if they would understand that in the capital...

I could also say something about the beautiful sound of la langue française, but you have to decide yourself...