One of my goals for 2014 was to learn French. I went into it feeling fairly confident. After all, I learned to speak fluent Spanish and they\u2019re both Romantic languages. Besides, it\u2019s the age of apps and there are way more resources now than there were back in the late 90\u2019s when I learned Spanish. The big difference is that with Spanish I was living in Mexico for almost 2 years then later got a refresher while living in Uruguay and Argentina for another year. This time around, with French, I don\u2019t have the benefit of being able to pack up and move to a French-speaking country. The other possible disadvantage, as people are all too eager to point out, is that I\u2019m a significantly large number of years older than I was when I started learning Spanish.<\/p>\n
In more than one way, the experience has been humbling. Progress has been spotty and slow. I\u2019m nowhere near where I imagined I\u2019d be at the beginning of the year given the time I\u2019ve put in. On the other hand though, it has been exhilarating starting over with learning something new. There have been many moments where I remember just how much real effort I had to put into Spanish. It\u2019s easy to look back on it and think \u201cah yes. I was young and living in Mexico, the language practically taught itself to me.\u201d But really that wasn\u2019t the case. As I spend time learning French, I\u2019m brought back to the many, many hours spent with my head buried in Spanish grammar books, making and studying\u00a0flashcards and pocket-sized lists of words, and probably most importantly, fumbling through conversations with unsympathetic interlocutors over and over, just trying to make myself understood.<\/p>\n
It makes me wonder, have the 15 years that have passed since\u00a0then really significantly dulled my language acquisition skills? Had I approached Spanish as casually as I have for many of my efforts to learn French, would my learning have been just as slow? Probably close to it. I don\u2019t feel more forgetful or more hardheaded, I simply feel that I haven\u2019t created the opportunities to cement what I\u2019m learning in my mind by going out and actually speaking French. It seems that the consensus among linguistics experts is that my ability to learn a language has actually, physically, deteriorated. I\u2019m still not willing to believe that though.<\/p>\n
Apart from the language itself, a rewarding part of learning French is the chance I\u2019ve had to dive into French culture. I\u2019ve tried some French recipes, which for a practical non-cooker, has been a stretch, but surprisingly fun. I\u2019ve watched tons of French movies and YouTube videos. I\u2019ve tried listening to French podcasts and radio stations with varying degrees of cognition. I\u2019ve read books and poetry by French authors (mostly translated to English). I still have not, as I mentioned before, reached out and talked with real, live\u00a0French people. Which brings me to the conclusion of these musings.<\/p>\n
My goal at the beginning of the year was to learn French in 2014, then Russian in 2015. Instead, I\u2019m going to spend 2015 working more on French. I\u2019m going to try to take some of the lessons I\u2019ve learned, and will write about here soon, to heart and be more deliberate with my practice. Most importantly though, I\u2019m going to get out and speak some French.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
One of my goals for 2014 was to learn French. I went into it feeling fairly confident. After all, I learned to speak fluent Spanish and they\u2019re both Romantic languages. Besides, it\u2019s the age of apps and there are way more resources now than there were back in the late 90\u2019s when I learned Spanish. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":473,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-474","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-technology"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/marcusvorwaller.com\/blog\/images\/1420051221_featured.jpeg?fit=1600%2C1200&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/ppj2P-7E","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcusvorwaller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/474","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcusvorwaller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcusvorwaller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcusvorwaller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcusvorwaller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=474"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/marcusvorwaller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/474\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":478,"href":"https:\/\/marcusvorwaller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/474\/revisions\/478"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcusvorwaller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcusvorwaller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=474"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcusvorwaller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=474"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcusvorwaller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=474"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}