I have been a learner of the French language on-and-off since 7th grade. In the 8th grade, our French II class went on a week-long field trip to Quebec City to learn about French-Canadian culture and history. This was my first exposure to native French speakers, and our teacher encouraged us to utilize our fledgling French skills in our interactions with native speakers in restaurants and shops. Due to my self-consciousness about the novice level of my French skills and my noticeably foreign accent, I was often responded to and often continued conversations in English. Nonetheless, this experience made me all the more interested in continuing learning French, in order to return to a Francophone country at some point in the future and be able to engage in more culturally immersive – and more personally enriching - activities. I continued my French study throughout most of high school, but the higher-level French teacher at my high school, due to his lack of respect for students and overall nasty attitude, dissuaded me from continuing my studies there. Thus I took a break from French instruction from senior year until sophomore year of college, when I tested into French 221 (by the skin of my teeth) to complete the COMM2 requirement.
I thoroughly enjoyed my experience in 221, and while it took some time to dust off my once-dormant French language skills, I was delighted at how quickly the results of my prior French language coursework returned. Reacting well to the immersive aspect of daily instruction and exposure to written and spoken French, I found this course to be the most productive as far as grasping of difficult grammatical and structural concepts. The almost exclusive use of French by Dr. Raymond and my peers in the classroom provided me with many examples for pronunciation and listening comprehension. As I am predominantly an audio-visual learner, I feel that my accent while speaking French is one of my strong suits related to the language. My primary complaint, which is common throughout all the French study I have undertaken, is the relative time spent listening to French spoken by non-native speakers – often at a much slower pace and with individually enunciated words – in comparison to French spoken by native speakers, with its rapid sentence delivery, slurring together of sounds, and use of conventional slang. I have attempted to ameliorate this perceived lack of exposure to native-spoken French by listening to French-language music and watching French films; naturally it will require immersing myself in a Francophone country for some time to feel comfortable conducting conversations exclusively in French.
I have found my study of French to have had a positive effect on my (admittedly novice) comprehension of other romance languages as well. My grandmother emigrated to the United States from Brazil in the 1960s, and throughout my young life I spent large amounts of time around family and friends who are native speakers of Portuguese. Before I began to learn French, the Portuguese language (beyond simple greetings, expressions, and names) was baffling to me. Because my mother spoke the language in a strictly conversational manner and was illiterate in Portuguese, she decided that it’d be best not to learn it from her. However, after learning French for an extended period and reaching a point somewhere between conversational and fluent, I have found myself able to understand a lot more of what is being said by my Portuguese-speaking family. This is likely the result of simply being immersed in it my whole life in addition to studying a romance language; nonetheless, it gives credence to the idea that languages are connected and that once one gains proficiency in a second language, continuing towards the goal of being a polyglot becomes much more realistic
Although Bahasa Indonesia is a language family largely devoid of shared influences to English and French, the fact that the languages all share the same alphabet is an advantage for me, as the hurdle of learning a new alphabet seems like a huge challenge to gaining comfortability in a new language.
Comments
Fascinating post, Zach! Do you have any interest in returning to Portuguese in the future? Dr. Dixon Abreu will be offering Portuguese in the spring. I think he'd be open to your enrolling or auditing in the course. No pressure either way, but I think this could prove an interesting opportunity to help connect tot your mother and grandmother. Dixon speaks Portuguese with a Brazilian accent, too, which could you help connect with your family. There are stark differences between Brazilian-Portuguese and Portuguese of European origins on the Iberian peninsula.