I'm a public school French and Spanish teacher (for 20 years) and I am considering offering lessons online. Is this something homeschoolers would be interested in? It would be offered through Yahoo Messenger so it would use voice and be live. The cost would be very minimal if I could get a decent sized group (I'm not in it for the money, but to help homeschoolers and others learn languages).
FYI: 15,000 French words are directly in the English language. Learning French expands your vocabulary tremendously, and a study of French has been found to cause significant increases in the verbal portion of the SAT test.
About learning on tapes, MSNBC had a story a couple of years ago that said that babies who were given real native speakers to interact with and babies who were shown videos of the exact same interactions showed quite different reactions. The ones who had the live interactions learned the language they were hearing. The ones who watched the videos did not.
Spanish. French is not a useful language (or nationality).
French is a pretty language and is the foundation thousands of English as the OP points out. Latin is also the foundation of thousands of words and will increase SAT scores and vocabulary too. Why not do a home school study of it also?
I don't like the French, I speak both languages (Learned from Pimsleur and since I am an adult and NOT a baby, I learned well with excellent retention) and I have found in my travels the French are haughty, pompous, cowardly and without merit (except they cook damned well).
The Spanish speaking countries and people I have found to be warm, gracious,courageous and kind; the opposite of the French I have encountered. French Canadians are far less pompous than the French from France or the French Territories. Admittedly, I have only been to French Polynesia & St Pierre.
Jackie, Because I have a strong opinion does not make me ignorant, it makes me opinionated. If your opinion does not coincide with me there is not need to name call.
The OP asked an opinion, I have one.