Learning a new language

Trying (being the key word here) to learn a new language is something that I'm finding to be a really strange concept. It's got me thinking a lot about how I learnt english in the first place. It's reminded me that learning a new language is not (sadly) something that I can take a few classes in and become fluent overnight. I hadn't thought about it before, but all the pointing at animals and things while naming them, and sticking names of things on objects that your parents do when you grow up is how you learn to speak, by copying them. Not rocket science I know but i've never given it any thought before. And all the times people correct you when you say something incorrectly is how you learn too, when your growing up everyone is your teacher.
It's also got me thinking about when I was learning German and school and how about about 6 years I was still clueless. Now I look back what an unproductive 6 years that was, but at least its given me the basics to build on - the lack of basics is what is stumping the french language process.

It's strange listening to how people speak and how a language sounds rather than what people actually say. It's the kind of thing you only truly notice when you don't know what people say, you just sort of tune out and listen to the sound it makes. The sound of French being spoken isn't nearly as graceful and gentle as I expected it to be. The way French is spoken is with a very flat tone, with the only tone change being at the end of the spoken phrase. For me it makes it harder to pick things up because it all sounds very similar when it's spoken in their fast native accents.

I hate to be the unromantic pessimist but I actually don't know, and can't work out why French is dubbed the 'language of love' is it more to do with the setting than the language itself?

This is just what I think....

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