I took French for about seven years, through high school and university. (I would’ve minored in it, but because America doesn’t believe in funding foreign language programs, they literally did not offer enough courses for me to take to get my minor. A friend of mine only got hers because she managed to score a study abroad program over one summer.) I’ve been to France three times now, as well as Switzerland and Belgium, where they also speak French.
And Canada twice, though the first was was before my French-speaking education began, and my younger brother still insists we’re gaslighting him into believing we took that family vacation.
Point is, I’ve had education and exposure and cultural expansion as far as French goes.
And, tragically, I’ve forgotten the bulk of all of my French knowledge.
I still remember quite a lot, don’t get me wrong. (Hilariously and embarrassingly, whenever confronted with Spanish unexpectedly, I try to reply in French. This did not help me when I was lost in the Dominican Republic.) English shares quite a few cognates with French, plus tons of Latin roots. I’m sure some of my French knowledge is the brain equivalent of muscle memory, and oh, if only we could harness that power at will. I’d be unstoppable.
But there is unfortunate truth to the phrase “use it or lose it”, especially in regards to language abilities.
My roommate also took French through school, though not as much, but always refused to speak it with me. My mother, who also took French in school and is self-studying currently (we compare Duolingo stories and streaks), also doesn’t speak to me in it. Yeah, sure, our accents would be terrible, and probably it’d be thirty minutes to have a two-sentence conversation, but it’s still practice.
(Also, admittedly: French has a very intimidating accent. It has an incredibly steep learning curve with pronunciation and listening skills. My subconscious still fears it.)
I keep telling myself that I’ll return to French studies, especially since the basics at least will come back to me quick-ish, but when will that eventually be? There’s no way to quantify knowledge levels—even if Japanese comes with a literal level system—and learning is a lifelong thing. I doubt I would mix up French and Japanese, since they are very different languages, but who knows? They do share pronunciation of “bread”. (Pain and pan.) Maybe other things will trip me up.
There’s also the small but annoying process of getting through the basics in Duolingo again (which is my app of choice for language learning basics). I don’t want to spend multiple lessons retyping “l’homme” and “la femme”, even if I don’t believe in testing out of lessons because the practice is always worth it.
Maybe in 2023 I’ll tackle it again. Maybe a random Thursday, I’ll open up my French Duolingo (I do technically have it on my profile!) and do a lesson or two. I hope I don’t let it waste away entirely, but in this day and age, it’s so easy to get overwhelmed by everything else that must happen in one’s life—writing blogs, writing novels, day job, running errands, petting cats, language learning—that it can be difficult to commit to another new thing to add to the pile of things already on your plate.
But I want to. I just don’t know when. As I keep telling myself, sadly enough.
