Has anyone here learned to speak French?

[okaberintarou]

Originally Posted by Marshal Davout

Strangely; if I see the written French I can sometimes Parse out the meaning of the entries. However I cannot speak or write French !

This is the difference between active and passive vocabulary, this is perfectly normal even in your native language, you can probably read fancy literature and poetry, and yet, you wouldn't be able to write it or at least not to the same degree of sophistication.
Reading is always easier, at least for languages using the Latin alphabet, because you can take the time you need to decipher sentences, when you listen however, you have to keep up with the speed at which sentences are said.
Letters are objectives, you can't mistake a "t" for a "d" while reading, but when listening, things gore messier (like "this", "that", "the", "but"... "t" in English is tricky)
That's particularly true for French, which is known for being pronounced quite differently from the way it's written.