I am writing to you a little late this month because I have had a hectic start to the New Year. I am taking my language learning even further this year by attending a school in France to study naturopathic medicine. Let me tell you, studying science in a foreign language is not easy. I’m only a few days into the course and I know that this course is not only going to fill me with knowledge about naturopathy, it is also going to greatly improve my French skills.

We’re coming up on the end of the year and with two months left to go, it’s a good time to reflect on what you’ve accomplished so far this year, and what you still want to do before the end of December. This time of year can be very busy, with holidays, family commitments, work parties and more. It is easy to say, “It’s too late this year to start something new. I’ll wait until the new year.” But come January, won’t you say the same thing? “It’s too busy now, I’m tired after the holidays, I’ll start when the weather is nicer out and things are less busy.” There is always going to be another excuse to not do something. While you can make as many excuses as you like about starting your other goals, if you want to start learning a language, I’m here to tell you that there is no better time to start than now.

Hello and welcome back! This month, I’m going to tell you about my favorite aspect of language learning: the potential to make international friendships, with interesting people who speak a different language than you, live in a different culture than you and have different daily life experience and viewpoint. The best thing is, these people may also be fascinated by similar things to you and have similar hopes and dreams, leading to beautiful friendships. The point here is that having a different mother tongue or a different daily existence doesn’t mean that you won’t find lifelong friendships with people from different cultures.

Hello again language learners! In the last post, I talked about the language barrier when traveling to a country where you do not speak the language. This time, I am going to talk about what happens if you go to a country where the spoken language is English, but the people’s accents and the words they use are so different that you don’t understand what they’re saying. This would be a bit disconcerting, wouldn’t it? But it’s not the end of the world. In fact, it’s a wonderful way to learn more about your own language.

Let’s talk about the language barrier when traveling. Recently I took a trip to Vienna, Austria and Sofia, Bulgaria. While I was in Vienna, I took two-day trips to Budapest, Hungary, and Bratislava, Slovakia. All four of these countries speak different languages even though they are relatively close to each other. And none of these four countries speak English or French, which left me feeling a bit out of my depth.

Life in France is way different than life in the US. Everyone always asks about the differences, so I decided to compile a list about the biggest, weirdest, and more surprising differences.

When I was preparing to move to France, people often said to me “That’s so exciting! I am really jealous you’re moving there, except there is no way I could ever go that far away from home.” When people say this, what they are really saying is “I’m too scared/unsure/nervous to move away”. While these are completely valid fears, they’re not reasons to avoid a new life experience. Here’s the good, the bad and the different experiences about living abroad—and why you don’t need to be scared of it!

It might be helpful to think about this in a slightly different way. You probably don’t speak English in your everyday life, the way you are taught to in your English textbooks in primary school. It would feel a bit unnatural to speak that formally, wouldn’t it? Well, the language you learn in the classroom is more formal than how you will hear it spoken by native speakers. This is necessary to properly teach grammar and vocabulary. Think back to a time you met someone from a different place, whose second language was English. They probably spoke a bit more formally than you did and didn’t understand every word you said. Not knowing everything in a second language is okay.

I’ve found that I belong in a minority of people in the US, as a person who can speak two languages. An average American is overly impressed when they discover I speak French as if speaking another language is a superpower. Americans are a minority in the world. Most people in other countries speak several languages. Every country where English is not a native language teaches their children in school how to speak English. Because of our privilege of being born in a country where English, the international political language, is the mother tongue, there is a trend of Americans dismissing learning another language. “It’s too hard,” we say. “Everywhere else speaks English,” we reason. “I don’t have the time,” we argue. Here’s the truth: yes, it can be difficult, but it’s an immensely rewarding process. When I read French, I read it as naturally as if I’m reading English. That’s one of the most amazing feelings. Yes, it takes time to learn a language, which is why I started learning at the age of six or seven. In fact, the best time to start learning a second language is as a child. The younger a child starts learning a second language, the more easily they will pick it up. The brain is very malleable in young children, meaning that they can easily grasp a new language and learn it right alongside their first language.