My French Language Journey

Bonus: Do you need to speak French to move to France?

Before I answer this question, a bit of background…But if you’re not interested in background, ce n’est pas grave (that’s not a big deal). You can just scroll down to see my thoughts and some great resources I’ve used to help myself along the way.

I've spent years studying French just because I love the language and I love France.

At school when I was eleven years old (I guess that was fifth grade), we had to choose a foreign language to study. The decision was to be made between Latin, German, French or Spanish. For mysterious reasons even I don’t fully understand, I immediately knew that French was my language, even though my family came to the US from Germany about 150 years ago. Even in middle school, I was française de coeur (French at heart).

I studied all the way through high school, but after that I kind of lost it. I didn’t seek out opportunities to practice and I didn’t have a lot of confidence with speaking at all, so in my typically perfectionistic way, I just avoided talking so I wouldn’t have the shame of making mistakes.

Years later I had a partner who was a chef. Although he was American, he had learned French from working in upscale kitchens, but for some reason, he absolutely refused to speak French with me so I could practice. That’s just one of many reasons why he was eventually #cancelled by moi, ha!

About eight years ago, I was toute seule à Paris (all alone in Paris) and I realized I could still understand French just a bit. My speaking was awful and every time I wanted to try, I could only get past the first few sentences. If someone asked me a question in French, I just crumbled. If I couldn’t think of one word in a sentence, I wouldn’t want to speak for fear of making a mistake. Inevitably the other person would speak back to me in English because they could see me struggling, and that only made things worse for my ego.

But as a result of that trip, I decided to pick up my studies again. It had been my lifelong dream to become fluent French. Now was the time. I took classes in New York at the Alliance Française, in France at a small school in Lyon called Lyon Bleu, and at a number of other spots, including the Sorbonne in Paris.

CCFS-Sorbonne, Paris. This is their newest location (I studied on Blvd Raspail).

At the beginning of 2017 I decided to prepare for a really difficult exam, which I wanted to take in Paris (although you can sit for it in the States, too). It’s called the DALF C1, and it’s more than just a basic evaluation. So I hired a special teacher to train me and we worked every week by Skype for four or five months. Then I came to Paris in June and took the exam over two days, and the day I found out that I would receive mon diplôme (my diploma), j’étais sur un petit nuage (I was on Cloud 9)!

A lot has happened on my language journey since then, but the most important thing is that I met my husband in Paris en pleine pandémie (in the middle of the pandemic) and as a result, I moved to France. It’s an incredible story, but even more so because I was fifty-four at the time, with a whole life in New York City.

Now that I live here, I have the opportunity to speak French every day. It's amazing, challenging, fun, sometimes embarrassing (like when I tried to order meat at the butcher shop once and basically got thrown out for saying something I didn't know was inappropriate).

But I have so much support from my family here. They speak to me, joke with me, make fun of me and help me with every aspect of the language.

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In fact, my stepson, who is himself a brilliant language learner (he currently speaks German, French, English and Russian, he’s working on his Dutch and has taught himself the Arabic alphabet) will even stop a TV show to explain "les refs" (the cultural references or jokes) to make sure I feel included.

In this, I know j’ai de la chance (I'm really lucky) because I've heard from some of my American friends here that if you don't start speaking French together in your relationship from the earliest days, it can be really difficult to try to make that shift later. Can you believe, I didn't even know until our third date that my husband speaks perfect English, because he indulged me completely in my quest to only speak French. That’s just one of the many reasons I knew I would marry him. He gave me so much respect.

I'm sharing my language journey with French in the hopes that it will encourage you. I've had (and continue to have) plenty of ups and downs. On the ups, as I mentioned, I have an advanced diploma and I'm very proud of that accomplishment because it was really difficult to achieve.

On the downs, the other night we went to see a one-woman show in Paris and I was completely dejected because about 50% of the really fast jokes went right over my head, while the rest of the (completely French) audience was just laughing away hysterically.

It really is a journey, and I hope you're staying true to your desire to master a language. My number one piece of advice: start speaking NOW. Even if you don't know much about grammar. Just try to learn phrases you can say to help you connect with other people. This is so motivating and really helps you build confidence and enthusiasm for everything else that is more challenging. You can pull the few phrases I shared in this article and work them into your next convo opportunity!

If you have a fun story about your own foreign language journey, I hope you'll drop a note below in the comments.

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Online Resources

Below I'll put some of my favorite online resources for learning French. They're not necessarily the ones you'd think, so check them out (and if you want more, let me know!)

1. Lawless French

I love the free newsletters and the paid subscription to their Kwiziq program, which maps your language brain, finds your weaknesses, and serves up personalized quizzes of 10 questions at a time to drill you on varying concepts. Each answer has links to articles explaining the concepts to help you understand where you've gone wrong or reinforce your skills. They also have dictées (dictations) and reading exercises, along with articles about idiomatic expressions like "être à l'ouest," which means "to be out of it."

2. @innerFrench

This is a YouTube channel that is all in French and is best for intermediate students. He's a professional French teacher, but doesn't teach grammar on this channel. Instead he talks about varying subjects en français, but at a very clear and easy pace.

3. @francaisauthentique

Another YouTube channel that is just awesome. His lessons vary, and he's more structured, but as an advanced speaker, I love the lists of 20 Expressions for example, because they help me to increase and vary my vocabulary.

4. La French Tribe

This cool woman offers short lessons that are more on the beginner/intermediate level, but I love that she acts out scenarios of real life such as going to the hairdresser, buying clothes and asking for your size in a shop, how to pay for things, etc.

5. @thepurplepalace85

This is a mostly English-language channel created by a lovely young artist named Shayna Klee. She originally moved to Paris as an au pair (nanny), but transitioned to going to art school and actually getting her masters degree in France, then making a very cool life for herself despite lots of challenges. She speaks French and will pepper her videos with bits and bobs along with vlogs of Paris and France and gobs of motivating affirmations. It's great if you dream of moving to France to create your dream life!

Some of My Language Schools Over the Years

In NYC: L'Alliance Française
In Lyon: Lyon Bleu
In Paris: CCFS-Sorbonne
Also in Paris: a smaller school France Langue