Hello, fellow language lovers, language learners, and the simply curious! My name is Shannon, and I’ll be writing about my love of languages and my experiences traveling and living in countries where English is not the main language. Hopefully, this will show you how useful it is to be able to speak more than one language.
A bit about me: I spent several years of my childhood in India, a country where speaking multiple languages is the norm. My family’s driver, who helped us navigate the world which is India, spoke seven languages fluently—all without a college education. Having moved to India from Ohio, where, like in most parts of the US, few people spoke anything but English, this impressed me immensely. At that young age, it became a goal of mine to speak multiple languages like him. While in India, I also met a lifelong friend, a girl in my class named Louise who had moved to Bangalore, India from Paris. She spoke English at school and rapid-fire French at home, too quick for me to understand with my beginning knowledge of the French language. My primary school gave us the option of learning either French or Hindi. I chose French, and today, fourteen years later, I am happy to say that when I visit her family, I can join in on those conversations in French (though maybe not always as quickly).
This year I am writing to you from a small town, called Semur en Auxois, in the Burgundy (“Bourgogne” in French) region of France where I am living and working. I am a certified TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) teacher, and I am teaching English to secondary school students at two lycées (high schools). While I am teaching my native language at work, in every other part of my life I speak French.
When I first started learning French in primary school, I never imagined that I would be able to properly communicate in the language. But here I am now!
I’m fascinated by all things pertaining to language. Language shapes our brains, our culture, and our deepest beliefs about the world. The language we communicate indirectly shapes our thoughts and how we perceive events. I’ll share my experiences both teaching English as a foreign language—I can’t wait to see what new insights into English I will undoubtedly gain from teaching it to French students—and my experience living with French as my language of communication.
I’ll leave you with one story that will hopefully pique your interest in studying a language. Last summer I was on a bus crossing the Swiss and French border. When Swiss border control came through the bus for all our passports, the man initially talked to me in French, until he saw my passport. “Oh, you’re American,” he said, switching to English. “Yes,” I told him, “but I speak French, so you don’t need to switch languages on my behalf.” Startled, he looked at me, and then down at the book on my lap, which had a French title. Laughing he handed my passport back to me and said in French, “Well great, I guess you do. Enjoy that book.”
Most of the time when traveling everyone assumes that Americans only speak English. Imagine how fun it would be to prove them wrong!
À bientôt!
Shannon
