Customer Reviews

Brainy Baby - French

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

First of all, the above is true. I made the poor mistake of buying both --mostly because the other one was so terrible and I thought this one would be better. It was terrible for all of the reasons the reviewer below describes and I'll add a few more: 1. I really hate the fact that the words are not introduced with their articles, as they are supposed to be in French. You never just say "ball" in French as we do in English, you would say either "un ballon" or "le ballon" ("the ball", "a ball"). Moreover, without the articles, you don't learn the gender of the nouns, something we don't have in English and one of the most difficult things for us to learn in foreign languages. I am STILL struggling with genders after 20 years of speaking french (because I am not a native speaker but have lived in France for many years). More aggregiously, instead of including one of the many charming French childrens songs, in their only musical selection, they include a translation of "Mary had a Little Lamb (it doesn't even rhyme). This is all quite disappointing bc the whole point of teaching your child a foreign language at this age is that they don't need to learn it in translation (or in an English language context) they can learn it within the French language and cultural context. PLEASE, don't waste your money. I can only imagine that the Spanish language version contains all of these same problems. ........

I am a French native and bought this dvd for my daughter. I speak French to her all the time and thought that hearing French from the tv would just help reinforce her learning.

I was extremely disappointed by this dvd. The French American accent is so strong I can barely understand what it says!?! Also, there are LOTS AND LOTS of mistakes and spelling errors whenever some text shows up on the screen.

Furthermore, I do not find the dvd appealing for young kids. My daughter is bored to death after 5 minutes and wants me to switch to the Baby Einstein dvds, so much better, but unfortunately not in French! I wish I could have previewed that dvd before buying it, because I certainly would have never purchased it! If you do speak French as a native or learned it in school, you will be disappointed.

I too am very disappointed in wasting money on this video. You just can't use the simple noun without the article when speaking French. And there are mistakes in the video as well. If you are teaching your child how to speak a language, you want them to learn it correctly.

My son is 14 months, and is learning english, french and chinese at the same time. He already sits through the entire video as he is engrossed by it. It really helps that the images are REAL and not animation or puppets that babies don't relate to! For a beginner french for babies, it is fine, although, yes, there are a few mistakes, (i am from Quebec), but not enough to make any real difference for babies to learn french. I like that the ENTIRE video is to TEACH french, and Baby Einstein is mainly images and music, NOT enough spoken french at ALL. I am finding trouble finding ANTOHER dvd like Brainy Baby. I would like more of these.

This item is definitely more useful than it is not. After only 3 viewings, my almost 3-year could count to 20 in French and his 20-month-old brother started labelling objects in French. I was amazed as French will be their third language.

My only reservation now is that I do hear the non-French accent coming out when they speak. My French is very good, but of course they think the DVD's perfect and don't think Mom knows what she's talking about! So, I'm looking for a slightly more advanced product geared towards young pre-schoolers...

I bought this video to introduce my son to French. I am very pleased with all that it covers. It reviews the numbers 1-10, colors, common nouns, some parts of the body, Mommy, Daddy, common verbs, hello, goodbye, yes, no, and how to say please and I love you. It does some reviews with questions and answers for things like, "How many books are there? There is one book.", or "What color is the snowman? The snowman is white." (obviously in French). The words for all of these are displayed in French on the screen in large print and in English in small print. There is a lot of repetion to reinforce the lessons. They missed some obvious things, like how to say thanks you and some parts of the body (like arms), but I guess you can't get everything in. They also sing Mary had a Little Lamb in French(no words are shown onscreen while doing this, which would have been nice, but they are available in the music video segment). But, overall, a very good dvd and worth purchasing.

The Brainy Baby Spanish DVD uses the same content, but in Spanish. I also recommend it.

I almost didn't buy this DVD for my daughter based on the few negative reviews of it. Well, I'm glad I didn't listen to them, because I think this DVD is quite good for young children learning French. It's true that the DVD should include the articles with nouns (it should say "une balle" and not "balle"), but I watch it along with my 2 year old and say UNE balle or UN livre where appropriate. As for the voice on the DVD, my French husband and mother-in-law could not say for sure if it was a native French speaker, but they agreed that her accent is perfectly good and will not lead your child to pronounce French improperly.
We just got this for Christmas and my daughter has requested it several times. Although her father and I often talk to her in French, she only speaks in English. I'm hoping this DVD will help her feel confident in her French. Already she is having fun repeating the words along with the DVD, and it brings us great joy to hear her speaking French, even if it is just repetition!

the tape is simple with limited vocabulary. It is organized well with lots of smiling children and songs interspersed between the vocabulary. My one year old granddaughter can count for five on her fingers in French, thanks to this group. I wish I could find subsequent tapes in the series.
Tre Bien!

My 2-year old does not really like this video. He gets bored and does other things when he is watching it. The fact that he already speaks some French may contribute to this, I am not sure. I was not impressed either.

I'm pretty pleased with this title as my little one has managed to grasp a couple of french words. He is only 20 months (1yr 8mths), but he understands and can utter a few french words and can now count from 1-10 in french.

We are from Malaysia, therefore English and Malay are our first two languages, (which my son already understands and converses in pretty well for his age). I wanted to expose him to other languages, so that is why I bought the French and Spanish Brainy Baby titles. I have yet to start him on the Spanish title though.

It's a good introductory DVD, but I guess the only way you will get your children to be fluent in any language is to converse with them on a daily basis in the languages that you want them to be fluent in. So basically I would recommend this DVD to parents who would like to expose their little ones to French. I won't recommend it to parents who expect their little ones to be able to converse fluently in french by watching this dvd. For that they should hire a french tutor!