A few weeks ago, I traveled alone to France with the goal of speaking French as much as possible. Should be pretty easy, right? Sure, I was excited about walking around museums and eating beaucoup de frites (I’ll share a guide soon), but I intentionally took a solo trip to France so I could practice mon français. As some of you may know, I received a Bachelor’s Degree in French, I studied abroad in Paris during my junior year, and I have long been obsessed with all things French (photo evidence below). For a long time, when people asked, I would say I was “almost fluent in French.” While in Lille earlier this month, I could not for the life of me, remember the word for bill…
Despite my week-long rendezvous with Duolingo leading up to my trip, I did not pick up my French as effortlessly as I had hoped. I pathetically chatted with the border agent at St Pancras while they were inspecting my American passport. The first two opportunities I had to converse in Lille (at the hotel and tourist center), I chickened out. I was afraid I wouldn’t know the right words to use, so I resorted to English. I left the tourist center disheartened but determined to put my nearly decade-long education to use. Sure, I might not remember how to say something as simple as “I made a booking online,” but no one in Lille knew me. Plus, my entire justification for booking a random solo trip in January was that I would practice my French, so I really had to get to work.
At my next stop, I had a breakthrough. I decided to own the fact that I was bound to forget some words and just try to speak anyway. At the Musée des Beaux-Arts, I started my conversation by saying j'essaie de m'entraîner à parler français. (I am trying to practice speaking French), and then asked my question about ticketing (in very rough French). The ticket agent was gracious to me and spoke slower than he would’ve otherwise. He even wished me luck in my practice. Empowered by this experience, I did the same at dinner that night, and the waiter was even friendlier, telling me that it “didn’t sound like I was practicing, it sounded like I was fluent” – Mon Dieu, mon ego!
I spent the next two days walking around and speaking to as many people as I could (As a note: the people in Lille are wonderful. Everyone I spoke with was friendly and excited to share their city with me). While I left Lille excited that my French had started to return, I had the realization that if I wanted to maintain my fluency, I’d have to put in some effort.
I also had the realization that I am incredibly fortunate to be in the position to lose and regain my second language at will. My desire to speak French is one that really only matters to me. I don’t have family that speak French and for most of my life, I’ve had no real need to speak a second language. Ahead of writing this, I read many articles about the importance of second languages for people around the world and the implications of second language attrition. The New York Times interviewed teenagers about what their family language meant to them, and a teenager from New Jersey wrote, “losing my ability to speak another language felt like an entire world was cut off from me.” While losing my French felt a bit like a waste of a degree, it by no means separated me from those I love. Language is a powerful tool. If you’re lucky enough to be able to speak more than one, I urge you to practice it when you can. In fact, if you have any skill at all that changes the way you think about and engage with the world, then you should hone your craft. The world may be a better place if more people were willing to look at things from a different perspective.
P.S. Last year, I published a story about how moving to London has made me forget my American-English. You can read it here.
A quick academic detour:
In preparation for this article and in procrastination of other tasks, I did quite a bit of research on second-language attrition (the phenomenon of forgetting a language you’ve learned). It turns out, there’s an entire area of study dedicated to just this affliction. According to Wikipedia (I said I did research, I did not say I did hours of intense academia), the study of language attrition is not just the study of the loss of language but the study of what is lost? how it’s lost? and why it’s lost? In an article in Cambridge Press from last year (okay, maybe a couple hours of academia), Monika Schmid claimed that “language attrition is a genuine phenomenon and a genuine problem, but one about which we know relatively little.”
What I found particularly interesting about this study was that people who have started to lose a language have the ability to identify words, even if they can’t produce the same words on their own. Hence, why I had the ability to understand what was being said to me in Lille, even though I couldn’t remember how to ask for the check at the end of a meal.
A German researcher, Schöpper-Grabe, posited that "almost everybody who has learned a foreign language shares the experience of forgetting the acquired language skills once the period of formal instruction is over." So while I’m disappointed I didn’t regain my fluency instantaneously, I was comforted by the fact that this issue is so common that there’s a field of study dedicated to it. Even more comforting, Schmid found that for that an individual who learned a second language “regardless of how long ago it was and how little use they made of it, retains a hidden treasure trove of knowledge that is only waiting to be made available for use once more.”
Weekly Reccos:
What to read: Julia Child’s My Life in France
What to watch: I am enjoying watching Masters of the Air, though I would not say it’s changing my life.
What to do: Test out a skill you used to have.