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customerserviceguy

(25,406 posts)
Tue Sep 23, 2025, 01:05 PM Sep 23

Need help learning French [View all]

Just got back yesterday from a ten day auto trip to visit newfound family in Quebec. I call them newfound, because I used DNA testing to find my biological mother, and she is still alive at the age of 90! Like many women of her generation in French Canada, she did not learn a lot of English growing up. Her brothers, my biological uncles, had to learn some English in the course of doing their jobs. But while Maman tries to speak at least a bit of English with me, my French is still lousy.

Is there anything else besides Babble and Duolingo that works out there? I don't remember what my problem with Babble was, but I did pay for a year's membership on Duolingo, and worked it for hours every day. Finally, I hit a roadblock and any "artificial intelligence" that was in Duolingo just wasn't working for me. I was having trouble conjugating verbs, and a human teacher would have suggested resources to get me through that block, but Duolingo just kept feeding me the same questions or phrases, and it was nothing more than a guessing game, not a true learning experience.

Thanks! (Merci!)

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