to whatever,
one of my classmates replied. hehe, i wrote a short email and she replied with a 800-word essay :) so let me just quote parts of the letter which concern you and direct to your questions.
Is French easy to pronounce
french is a lovely language! (hehe, the french claims it's the most beautiful language, though probably chinese is more so to a chinese ;) ---shaka)
actually for a chinese, it could possibly be much easier to pronounce the language as compared to some europeans (esp. the germans) who cannot pronounce certain consonants.
if you are going to pick up french yourself, it could be quite difficult because the pronunciation would be a challenge to learn from books themselves. (i believe if you are going to learn french, you should have a french teacher, right? so this shouldn't be a problem. the teacher will teach you the pronunciation--shaka)
When you study French and English at the same time, is that easy to mess each other?
i'm not sure about learning it concurrently with english though... however, if you do have a good proficiency in english already, then in my opinion, learning french actually helps to improve your english, (probably vocab) because many english words are actually derived from french roots. for example, i never knew the meaning of 'ameliorate' in english until i learnt in french that 'ameliorater' means 'to improve'. In this manner, i believe it did help to strengthen my vocab! (that's very true. though increasingly french is borrowing english words, esp technology-related words. both ways make learning easier. however, my friend is a superb english-speaker but you are still learning,so her situation may not apply to you. you've got to see for yourself ---shaka)
Is French grammar similar to English grammar
however, there are some differences between french and english grammar rules and it does take a bit of adjustment. the most obvious example would probably be that each subject has a gender (masculine or feminine, animate or inanimate. for example, a car is feminine, and a book is masculine. overall though, once one gets over the initial rawness, the language grows on you rather easily and learning each new rule is but an extension of previous knowledge. certainly, a good grasp of english grammar probably helped, because french grammar too, has distinct present, future, past etc tenses.
How can I study French better, if I have nobody to talk with?
You could visit some sites which are very useful with video clips and sound clips, in addition to well-explained grammar guides. i used to vist them but i deleted the links already... just surf around, should be quite easy to find. You can borrow french books from the national library too to read... or find a french pen pal who can correct your stuff... (that's a great idea...looking for french pen pal.---shaka)
---------
that's all. she wrote so long that it takes a while to digest :)
perhaps you should also ask around for opinions on spanish-learning, then you should have a more balanced view on both languages. unfortunately i don't have any spanish-speaking friends and can't be much of help on that.
personally i prefer french because if you know french, you can gain access to a huge library of french literature, which i believe, is richer and more influential than spanish. But Spanish has its practical use, as pointed out by others here, since most Latin America countries speak Spanish.
but you shouldn't place values on language. just choose one you like to learn. that's all. and your main focus should still be english :)
hope you can make an independent decision. people here are just trying to give you some info, not to influence your choice. good luck!
