Berlitz French Travel Pack 1 Audio Cd and Phrase Books - Learn to Speak French
Brand New 1 Audio CD 224 page Phrase Book
This travel pack offers a fast and effective way for travellers to learn basic words and phrases. Based on the Berlitz listen-and-repeat approach, the CD features more than 300 essential expressions while the book contains more than 1200 words and phrases.
* 1,200 words and phrases
* sections color-coded by topic
* easy-to-understand pronunciation
* dictionary
* menu reader
* emergency expressions
* CD includes more than 300 useful words and expressions
* listen and learn anytime, anywhere
CD
Track 1 - Introductions
Track 2 - Basic Expressions
Track 3 - Accommodations
Track 4 - Eating Out
Track 5 - Travel
Track 6 - Sightseeing
Track 7 - Leisure
Track 8 - Making Friends
Track 9- Stores & Services
Track 10 - Health
Track 11 - Numbers
Track 12 - Days
Track 13 - Greetings
Track 14 - Time
About the French Language
French is a Romance language originally spoken in France, Belgium, Luxembourg and Switzerland, and today by about 350 million people around the world as either a native or a second language, with significant populations in 54 countries. French is a descendant of the Latin of the Roman Empire, as are languages such as Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, Catalan and Romanian. Its development was also influenced by the native Celtic languages of Roman Gaul and by the Germanic language of the post-Roman Frankish invaders. Europe is home to 44% of the world’s French-speaking population. Aside from France, French is spoken in Belgium (45% of the population), in Switzerland (20% of the population) and in Luxembourg. In the European Union, to which we add Switzerland, French is the second largest native language with 71 million speakers, placing it just behind German (90 million German speakers) but ahead of English
French is an official language in 31 countries, most of which form what is called in French La Francophonie, the community of French-speaking nations. French is an official language of all United Nations agencies and a large number of international organizations. French is written using the 26 letters of the Latin alphabet, plus five diacritics (the circumflex accent, acute accent, grave accent, diaeresis, and cedilla) and the two ligatures (œ) and (æ). French spelling, like English spelling, tends to preserve obsolete pronunciation rules. This is mainly due to extreme phonetic changes since the Old French period, without a corresponding change in spelling. Moreover, some conscious changes were made to restore Latin orthography:
* Old French doit > French doigt "finger" (Latin digitum)
* Old French pie > French pied "foot" (Latin pedem)
French As a result, it is difficult to predict the spelling on the basis of the sound alone. French final consonants are generally silent, except when the following word begins with a vowel. For example, all of these words end in a vowel sound: pied, aller, les, finit, beaux. The same words followed by a vowel, however, may sound the consonants, as they do in these examples: beaux-arts, les amis, pied-à-terre. On the other hand, a given spelling will almost always lead to a predictable sound, and the Académie française works hard to enforce and update this correspondence. In particular, a given vowel combination or diacritic predictably leads to one phoneme.The diacritics have phonetic, semantic, and etymological significance.
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