Your children can learn a world language today!
I feel like a little re-introduction might be good, so here goes. My name is Shannon and I am a 25 year old American currently living in France. I live in Dijon, a town in the Côte d’or region of Bourgogne (Burgundy). It’s a region known for its beautiful architecture (the Bourguignonne dukes were once richer than the king of France and that shows in some of the old architecture), its wonderful wine (pinot noir is from this region), its delicious cheese, and of course, mustard!
I hope that all of you are safe, healthy, and adjusting to this new normal of being at home indefinitely. This is a great time to learn some new phrases in a foreign language, and that’s exactly what today’s blog is all about.
Hi everyone! Last month in France, it was cold and rainy. However, I was in hot and desert-y West Africa, in Senegal to be exact. The difference between 5 degrees Celsius and 45 degrees Celsius has been a difficult readjustment, to say the least. However, this is not a weather blog, it’s a language blog, so let’s talk about why I was there.
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.
This month, I want to ask you to think about a question: how do you feel about formal “you” pronouns? I think about this quite often when I compare English with many other languages which have formal and informal “you’s” and singular and plural “you’s”. For us English speakers, this can feel a bit tricky to navigate because we use the same word anytime we are referring to someone in the second person, “you”. The only time we differ is when we refer to something someone owns, aka the possessive case, where we use “your/s”.
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.
Have you ever found yourself contemplating learning a new language but backing out before you can start because you tell yourself, “I’ll never be a native speaker, I’ll never be able to speak this language perfectly, so why bother trying?” If this is you, don’t worry, this is only fear talking, and it’s a common fear. Putting yourself out there to learn a new language is scary. There is unknown pronunciation to master, confusing verbs to conjugate and a whole host of cultural differences apparent in the structure and practices of the language. If you’re a perfectionist, then this can seem like a whole storm of things to master, things which you may never master to 100% perfection. But, does the lack of perfection mean that you shouldn’t even try to learn something new?
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.