Well-Heeled talked about this recently with paying a tutor to help her brush up on her Mandarin.

For me, I am taking a different tack, and the tack has a name: FREE.

• No paid tutor (BF is free and willing to help me learn one-on-one).
• Free French/English book here and there using Swagbucks.
• Listening to French radio and watching movies in French.
• BF only has French friends who speak a passable, painful English, so they are more than happy AND RELIEVED to speak in their native tongue.

Total French Immersion.

In case you’re wondering, Jaka on Twitter asked if I was Parisian French or Quebecois French, and the answer is Parisian for everything.

The internet has literally become my only English refuge.

(That, and calling my mom every week.)

Getting a Free French/English Visual Dictionary

I decided to redeem my free Swagbucks points for Amazon.ca gift certificates to buy a French/English Visual Dictionary.

(45 Swagbucks needed for each $5 gift certificates at Amazon.ca)

They were finally posted to my account a whole 17 business days later, but someone tweeted to me that they actually pay out the cards on the 1st and the 17th of each month.

So if you happened to JUST miss the 1st, you wait until the 17th.

Ahhh.. *light bulb* That makes more sense.

If you don’t know anything about Swagbucks , read this — you can get free cash and gift certificates just by searching with Swagbucks .

The Firefly French/English Visual Dictionary – $22

I pawed through it at the local Chapters, and I like how everything is laid out and clear.

Some said that the book didn’t have masculin or feminin indications for each word, but if you lean your face up very close to the book and squint, each word has a little ‘m‘ or ‘f‘ to indicate what gender each word is.

By the way, I also learned the single most important, eye-opening trick about speaking the French Language I thought I’d pass on, because beginning English-speaking French-learners out there may not know.

Memorizing all of the verb conjugations is not (really) required at the start!!

Unless you are writing a formal book, there is no immediate need to memorize all the conjugations.

Apparently, for everyday, quick, workable French for beginners, you just need to know:

1. Présent (Present)
2. Passé Composé (Past)
3. The verb Aller (To Go) for all future tenses

Example: The conjugations of I have, I had, I will have:

Présent (Present) = I have = J’ai

Passé Composé (Past) = I had = J’ai eu

The verb Aller (To Go) for all future tenses = I will have = Je vais avoir

And all of this damn time, here I was memorizing Imparfait (Imperfect), Futur (Future) and other exceptional situations for verbs, and it was not necessary for just speaking colloquial French in the beginning!!!

This was taxing on my brain because there are SO many verbs, and with each verb having its own set of 22 conjugations that change for each person makes you want to tear your hair out.

Sorry. I just couldn't resist.

Apparently, not even the French use every single one of those verb conjugations perfectly on a day-to-day basis.

They DO use them occasionally, but if you are a beginner in French, stick to the major 3 until you’re comfortable and then work out from there.

Sure, they learned it in school, but if they were to try and speak and write perfectly using all the conjugations, they’d have to look up a couple of verbs here and there.

And apparently they even find it odd if you try to use perfect French conjugations for every situation, teasing you with “What, you’re trying to be a Professor of French now?”

(True story.)

Things I hate & love about learning French

I hate Masculin/Feminin genders for each word:

Very confusing.

Why is my belly masculine when I am a female? And how can a chair be feminine?

Very odd.

I love that having to learn another language forces you to learn the structure of your own language first.

This is really an eye-opener for me.

I love this. Now I can learn more about my own language as well as the new one.

I love that if I don’t know the word in French, some of the time, it’s English with an Frenchified accent

A lot of French verbs that are used regularly, are actually old English verbs that have fallen out of colloquial use.

None come to mind right now, but it makes it easier for me to learn when I kind of know what the word means in English.

Sometimes, I’ve pulled words out of the English vocabulary, added a Frenchified accent to it, and have been pleasantly surprised that it was the correct word! Score.

I hate having specific conjugations for each person:

I, You, Her, Him, Us, You (Formal), They (Male), They (Female) each have their own conjugation within each verb times 15 conjugations depending on the time frame and position of the verb in the sentence.

I am always losing time conjugating the verb after seeing who I am addressing. It’s getting easier, but sometimes I get flustered.

On average, you have to memorize 8 x 22 = 176 conjugations PER VERB.

A single verb has 176 ways to conjugate that verb.

Thank GOODNESS they only use Présent (Present), Passé Composé (Past) and the verb Aller (To Go) for all future tenses.

In English, it’s just one conjugation for Present, Past and Future.

I am going. I have gone. I will go.

It doesn’t matter if it’s We are going, or You are going, or He is going.

It’s always conjugated for the Present tense with the word going.

English also has a lot more words to describe everything, in any situation & for every emotion

… and if we don’t have the word, we steal it from other languages.

Like schadenfreude from the German language to mean “taking pleasure in another’s pain”.

A French friend once asked me: “What is the difference between weeping, crying, sobbing, tearing up and all the other words you have to describe the action of crying?”

FB: From what I understand from reading books, weeping is like a sorrowful sob. Like if a widow just lost her husband. She quietly weeps for him without screaming or making a lot of noise.

Or “the flowers in the rain weep and mourn for those who have passed”.

Crying is like a baby crying. You can say the widow is crying but it doesn’t denote the emotion of the situation of WHY she’s crying. Crying is more general.

Sobbing is like chest-wracking tears, it’s loud, it’s wet and you half scream. It’s a cry of anguish and pain.

Tearing up is just little tears dripping down your face, but no sounds. Usually when someone pinches you, you tear up. Or if you watch a really sad movie. It’s a little bit of emotion.

Frenchie: …. Merde.

FB: *pat pat* Don’t worry.

I don’t understand how a name of country can be masculine or feminine either, or why you have so many conjugations for a single verb.

So that’s where I am currently.

Fairly comfortable and fluent with the language, but naturally as in everything we do, it all comes down to the details of speaking it properly. Not just speaking it haphazardly.

A long trek up but a good one.

Apparently the code hasn’t been working.

Melissa @ Swagbucks wrote to me, giving me the BROKEINTHECITY code and TOLD ME that it should work with every new user who signed up.

I am publicly acknowledging that it was my fault (although.. I couldn’t have known how to check, she has a Swagbucks.com email address and I am not a new user).

I’m sorry Natalie, that you are now a pissed off, upset, ex-reader, but I forwarded you the emails where they told me that the code would work until July 23rd “BROKEINTHECITY” to give you $5 in Swagbucks.

I cannot think of what else to do.

I understand if you never accept my apologies again, but I truly didn’t know why it wasn’t working other than going on the word of the Swagbucks employee who said it would.

Secondly, your anger at my tone being too “tutorial, know-it-all and condescending” is your perception on what I write.

I don’t write to be condescending, I write when I’m actually passionate, and it may come off as being condescending, but that’s how the chips fall, and I’m sorry you don’t see it my way.

I’m sorry my style has changed from when you first started being a loyal (and now ex) reader, but people change, period.

Lastly, as for your other concern about my posts becoming more sponsored… I honestly thought that people would benefit from earning a couple of Swagbucks here and there (without a need for a blog) and to get free gift certificates or cash.

But to be clear, I haven’t done PayPerPost sponsored posts or written content that has been sponsored for a while now and I don’t normally do them until I see the post amount being $10 or more.

The only sponsored post I’ve done lately that I can recall is that KY gift basket giveaway I’m doing for Canadian readers.

And I understand that you don’t like sponsored posts as well as whatever else you’re unhappy with, but maybe you should also understand that I do end up donating most of the money to charity on a regular basis (aside from taking away $5 each month to pay for hosting & domain fees).

I don’t blog about it, because it’s not something I want to publicly broadcast all the time. It’s something I do on the side, without anyone knowing because I feel like it, and I don’t like it when people spout on blogs “I donated 10% of my very tiny income to charity this month. AND HOW ABOUT YOU? HUH? What have YOU done for your society today?“

I hate that.

So in short, sorry for the SNAFU on the code usage, and I’m sorry to lose you as a reader.

Thanks for emailing me, Natalie. And good luck.

I’m always looking for new ways to get free things online or even to make a little cash on the side (Google Adsense for example).

The problem is that all of the things I’m using, like PayPerPost or Google Adsense (er.. the only two things I’m using), poses a problem for people without a blog!!!

Therefore, let me introduce you to something called: Swagbucks

You may have heard about this a lot from other blogs, but it’s actually not that difficult and quite easy to use. PLUS, it’s open for not only the U.S. Canada AND the United Kingdom!!!

(Finally. How great is that?!??!?!)

HOW IT WORKS

Swagbucks is kind of like a portal to Google and Ask.com.

In a way, they’re asking you to search on their site, and their results are Google or Ask.com results, which means… it’s just like using Google or Ask.com.

There is no discernible difference, except for the fact that you’re using Swagbucks to search Google instead of going directly to Google.

HOW DO THEY MAKE MONEY OFF THAT?

This is a question I (and you) should always ask when faced with a free new service that seems too good to be true.

In actuality, they’re making their money, not off YOU (they’re paying you in Swagbucks that you can redeem at stores later), but off their advertisers.

See, every time you search on Swagbucks, they show you advertisements from THEIR advertisers, and have a whole network of online shops that kick them back a percentage if you buy from them while using Swagbucks to search.

Kind of like passive money, the same way Paypal or eBay would make cash — they take a percentage or charge a fixed amount to their advertisers.

THIS IS WHAT THE PAGE LOOKS LIKE

It’s very clean and simple, like Google.

Actually, it’s exactly like Google, just indirect.

You’re still going to get the power of Google using Swagbucks, but you’ll be earning cash, or gift certificates from Amazon instead!

WHAT CAN I GET OUT OF IT?

You can redeem your Swagbucks for prizes, or you can decide to use it to get a gift certificate, which is what I’m doing.

Here are all the options I find interesting, particularly the “CASH” option where you can get the Swagbucks converted to money, and sent to your Paypal account (score!)

Other interesting options would be if you have a Target you can visit, or if you like to buy iTunes music or even buy books from Amazon.

DO THEY NEED A LOT OF INFO WHEN I REGISTER?

Registration is easy, they only ask for your country and state/province, as well as a birth YEAR, not a birth date.

They do ask for your address later, however.

HOW EASY IS IT TO DO IT & EARN MONEY?

Very.

There are other options like getting your friends to sign up (referrals) and I think you each get a bit of Swagbucks to start.

New members get $3 in Swagbucks, and the referrals get an amount as well (an amount I don’t know about because.. I don’t have any referrals yet).

Here is MY referral link, if you are interested in signing up for this opportunity, and I’d greatly appreciate it if you used me as a referral!

FB’s REFERRAL LINK:
swagbucks.com/refer/FabulouslyBroke

To make it easier to remember to use Swagbucks (always a problem for me), I just set my homepage default to Swagbucks and I use that to search from now on!

Just within the first couple of seconds, I earned $2 for searching via Swagbucks, getting the same GOOGLE.COM results.

Here’s a quick tutorial on how to set that Swagbucks search page to your home page, so every time you click on the cute little “Home” house button, it takes you straight there to search!

In Firefox it is under Options > Tools > Main. In Internet Explorer, I think it’s either under Options or Preferences.

Anyway, here’s the gist of how to set (any) website to be your home page when you first log in.

Open a browser, click on TOOLS then OPTIONS:

And right under Firefox’s Main tab, click on CURRENT PAGE to set the Search.Swagbucks.com site to use as your current page.

Now every time you click on the home button, it brings you straight there!

SIGN ME UP!
Awesome.

If you would be so kind, you can use my referral link here to sign up for your very own account.

And yes, you can change your name after you set it, as well as your email address, address and password.