Can't speak French because they'll only speak English to me

Mmmhh so what is really happening? Why do people who you start speaking with in French, spontaneously decide to speak English with you, even if... let's face it, their English kind of stinks.

A lot.

And that's not something we should take personally as language learners. There are very real reasons behind it that you can use to your advantage to get a ton of practice even if your French isn't perfect.

First, let's take a look at the different situations where this could happen. It is almost never in social gatherings. It can be but that can be very easily fixed. Either the other person wants to get some practice in English and you can go back and forth between French and English (the best case scenario) or the person just underestimated your level in French, so after a few sentences exchanged and maybe an explicit request to speak French, it gets sorted, everyone's happy. Yayee.

That's not what is problematic.

What's problematic is whatever comes to SERVICE.

Anywhere where you are a customer. That's when it is discouraging. You're not talking with people who are directly interested in you and your French. You're dealing with people who want to do things efficiently and maintain a standard of comfort for your experience, and someone who doesn't want to waste their time or energy.

They learned, they adapted. In their experience, especially if they work with or see a lot of tourists, they hear: "bonjour" (with the thickest accent possible), and the person continues in English. It's extremely rare to meet people who are seriously learning French. So they associate: hearing someone with an accent, or a non-native, with speaking English. After all it was probably required for them to speak English in the job description.

Remember this, you're dealing with service workers that are working, it is not personal (also works with people you ask directions to in the street). I've heard people complaining about it, saying that it wasn't worth it to learn French or try to speak it because French people won't accept to speak with anyone whose French isn't perfect.

That's not true.

Non-personal interactions needn't remain non-personal. Telling a little bit about your context and situation can go a long way. Breaking the ice, giving them some more information about who you are and why you speak French, involves them.

And sure you might have given in and told yourself, "Is it important if I have all of my interactions in French? Maybe I can give it some slack and just speak with friends or during classes or in very controlled environments." And sure you have a point here, no need to keep this high a personal standard.

But it does a lot for your learning and it exposes you to vocabulary or situations that are crucial for a well-rounded French and it's pretty freaking gratifying.

So, giving a little bit of context can help keep the conversation in French.

You can also just explicitly say: "J'aimerais parler juste en français s'il te plaît / s'il vous plaît."

What also happens is that it creates unnecessary friction and effort, as many people don't realize they speak fast and don't articulate any of their words. Meaning, they can't express themselves 100% naturally if they want you to understand everything.

That takes the most nerves to handle. I've been there. In these situations, if it's wise, you can play the game of guessing and just going with what your gut tells you they're saying, or you can try to rephrase what you understand the other person is saying.

One thing is sure, asking to repeat and just saying "Quoi?" will just result in the other person switching to English (instantly) for ease of communication.

Stating what you understood and asking for what you didn't understand in a specific way, goes a long way. No one likes speaking and not being understood, show them it's not the case.

Of course, this type of speaker is just very challenging for anyone (including natives, sometimes) so keep cool, and shorten the interaction if you can, there's not much to do sometimes.

The last thing that could happen is that people might be very happy to practice their English with a native speaker! In that case, help them out! Make sure it's really the case first, though.

Those small interactions are highly contextual, very intense and somewhat fast-paced and they make life, or traveling in France, as someone that learns French, thrilling!

I love to give myself the challenge of only speaking the language of the country when I am abroad and this has allowed me to develop all of these small strategies and mindset shifts.

The last thing I want to add about this is that a little bit of confidence and ending your sentences with a low tone as opposed to keeping the tone high when ending sentences (as if you weren't sure of what you were saying) goes a very long way with this, even if you make mistakes. It shows that the channel of communication isn't going to require a lot of energy for the other person to use.

And by the way, it might make you feel excluded and lonely when people seem to refuse to speak French with you (hopefully not anymore after reading this), but this is completely NORMAL and even global. In any country where there's a little bit of tourism, this will happen (and France is the second most visited country in the world, let that sink in).

It becomes better the more you do it. After some time pushing through and persevering, it isn't a problem anymore. Hang in there!

Have I left out anything? Let me know in the comments.

Luca

Can't pronounce French properly, what can I do?

There is SO MUCH to say about this, and I'm aware that writing about pronunciation isn't the best (a formal video is on its way on my channel).

Form is essential for anything really, but when it comes to speaking French, it is a real catalyzer. Yes a catalyzer.

A catalyzer for the experiences you will live, how fast you will get to progress and how well you will communicate (not that progressing fast is an end in and of itself). Pronunciation is a fundamental aspect of learning French (or any language).

Nailing the pronunciation isn't about being megalomaniac and just boasting about how well you can pronounce French words, contrary to how some people might view it...

Nailing the pronunciation is being able to mirror a foreign behavior so well that you can sound to actually be one of the said foreigners, in this case the French speakers.

Now.

Having an accent IS 100% compatible with what I talk about in this blog post and doesn't mean being automatically rejected by French speakers.

But having an accent so thick that it impairs comprehension and communication... that's going to create barriers on a subconscious level. This is ESPECIALLY true for French because there still is a big pride and conservatism of the language.

This blog post isn't about how to sound native.

I want to make it clear. Appearing native is far more complicated than just pronouncing words properly, although this is the first step.

Now that this is out of the way, we can get started with this, how to nail French pronunciation as an English speaker?

It is one of the biggest challenges about French. It is not so much the number of sounds that is a problem, after all, some languages, like English, have considerably more sounds (44 English sounds against 36 for French). The thing that is complicated about pronouncing the French language comes down to two things.

The first one is the sounds themselves. They're very different from English, especially for the vowels, like eu; ou; u; on; in; en… They make use of different mouth positions and have a wide variety of high and low pitch tones (relevant for later). But this is, to be honest, challenging in any language.

The second complicated aspect appears when it comes to putting together all of the sounds to make it all work.

This is where the biggest differences between French and English starts to become apparent. French is UNCONTRASTED, UNSTRESSED and NOT aspirated (will explain this in detail, later).

If you want to realize what this means, just picture a French person say: "I'd love some chocolate right now."

They wouldn't say "CHOcolate," but instead: "ChoCOLAte," because the concept of stress just doesn't exist in French.

Actually it's not entirely true, it is just very subtle and sooo regular, that it doesn't appear to matter at all. French tends to stress the last syllable, or the second to last one, if that last syllable ends with an e.

But honestly, in practice it is not discernible. It becomes more obvious when French people get mad, though.

And English comprehension directly depends on how you stress which syllable(s).

A great example for that is the word: "perfect." If you say PERfect, then it refers to the noun, the quality: e.g. that's perfect. If you say perFECT, then it refers to the verb, as in to make something perfect.

This concept you need to be aware of, if you want to abandon it when speaking French.

The English speaker accent in French is predominantly recognized with this stress feature. And the English r's as well, but more on that later in the post.

Another caveat of French is that it isn't contrasted. What do I mean by that? I mean that there isn't any diphthong in French (or any similar to the English ones). A diphthong is when you start with one sound and you make it fade into another one, e.g. grEEEYYT (Great).

The only thing that comes close to this in French is the sound: oi in "quoi" or sounds like "oui" or "foin" (hay).

But they are dissimilar to English diphthongs for they are much dryer and pronounced faster. They don't get stretched.

So that is a big one with French. If you start fading sounds into one another, this will affect the overall quality of the pronunciation, although this accent is considered cute by most French speakers.

A great way for you to train this is by saying the word: "Français." Listen to how you end the word. Does your mouth fade into an "ee" position? "Fran-çay."

If it does, you need to keep it even more still as you say the last sound: ai. "Françai."

And what about that first syllable? Did you say "fraNçais"? Could you hear an "n" in what you were saying (record yourself saying it if not clear)? That is also a pronunciation mistake, albeit not a big one.

The nasal sound "an" needs to be absolutely constant. If you look at a graph of the pitch variation over time just for one French vowel, in this case the nasal vowel "an," you would see that the curve would be constant and FLAT. That is what I mean when I say that French is dry and uncontrasted. Perhaps that is what makes it sound so exotic to many people.

This requires a lot of conscious then subconscious work because it requires you to make use of your tongue and speech apparatus in an entirely new way.

Making that change is no small feat.

And from what I see with my clients, although the French accent can be perfectly replicated by any English speaker, with the right training and in the right conditions that is, it will still be very challenging in some situations.

Situations where there's a lot of noise, when you are very tired or just day dreaming, lost in your thoughts… will be challenging and require some time or effort to switch back to a French pronunciation system.

100% success rate isn't a healthy goal in my opinion, we want to aim for that sweet 95% that is already, quite frankly, impressive.

Now, when it comes to the specific sounds of French, like the more challenging ones ("an"; "ou"; "u"; "eu"; "r"), they present a great deal of difficulty, especially if you haven't learned any other language before French.

It is like learning how to do a handstand. You use the same body parts you have always owned and used, but in a whole new way, and the feeling is very different from anything else. And that also makes it fun and exciting!

One of the mistakes I see often here, is to try to replicate French sounds by recombining English words or sounds. Not a good idea. "Bawnjour je swee Luca" isn't exactly ideal.

You're learning a whole new and different set of skills.

And this is also, by the way, a way to make sure that you're on the right track. Does it feel familiar when you speak French? If it does, you are most likely using the English cousins of the French sounds you're trying to say (or you just mastered the French pronunciation, in that case why are you reading this? haha).

They may help you get around but it is overall a bad idea to continue with them. It's not going to get better with time if you're using sounds that you have used for your whole life. You're learning new words, so that comes with a new pronunciation system, and a big cognitive load, yes.

You're aiming for something close enough, not for perfection. Perfection in pronunciation is achievable but paradoxically, not if you care about it too much.

So for all of these new sounds, what you want to do is hear the words and repeat them as best you can. Try things, move your jaw around (French uses a much bigger range of motion for the jaw, opening wider is often the key), try to articulate well, take your time. What's important is to be able to hit the "note" once, have these small wins that are going to make you pronounce French gradually better.

From experience 90% of the sounds are at reach very quickly with some effort, but sounds like "u" or "eu" or some tricky combinations (like "Frère") will take much more time.

As long as the better part of your pronunciation is close to how a francophone would pronounce things, you are GOOD!

The harder words will come into form a bit later, if the rest is able to support them. What I mean is that your main mouth position needs to be correct (or corrected soon enough) in order to fix the small details.

I need to emphasize this one more time. The importance is to be trying, to be looking for the right sound (literally, with your mouth), not acing it right away. It is actually better if you take a little bit of time to reach the right pronunciation, as you are basically trying a bunch of possibilities and positions, you are training your mouth for new sounds. The trying component, and not giving in and going with the easy pronunciation, is very important.

Now, I will give you a piece of advice concerning the French consonants but that'll be pretty straightforward.

We hit them hard. Much harder than in English, Spanish, or most languages (okay maybe not Slavic languages :)).

Don't be afraid to make them sound a bit rough. That is how we speak. Rough t's, rough r's, rough c's. Don't be shy. Go ahead and pronounce these confidently. English consonants like the "t" in "water" are good counterexamples. I mean, just pay attention to French people speaking English with a French accent. They don't say: "a bottle of water" they say: "a boTTel of WaTeR."

Don't dismiss this piece of advice. It will feel weird the first 10 minutes but then it'll make pronunciation SO much easier. You have to trust me on this one.

Now, another aspect of it all is the melody of the language. And French is notorious for being melodic (it really depends on the speaker to be honest, but we'll take the title).

And it all makes it come together beautifully. When it's well executed, the message is crystal clear and doesn't need any effort on the receiver's part.

How do you, a foreigner, get to replicate that melody?

Honestly, there is no trying for this one. This isn't something you can reliably do consciously. Your subconscious takes care of it. That is only if it has enough training data to train on. Not to mention that different French speaking places will have very different melodies AND each person has a unique variation of where they are from and have lived. So technically, yours will also be unique, you can't steal it from someone (sorry).

Language exposure is really important here. This is not just important for the actual language, word, grammar, all that, its first role is going to be helping you decipher the sounds and being able to recognize them reliably.

Those sounds need to be anchored in your mind if you want to try to replicate them accurately and reliably. That takes time.

Hearing French in real life, from a variety of different speakers in different environments, yields the best results, overall. I know people that don't speak French but that can perfectly repeat any French word or sentence just because they had a lot of REAL LIFE exposure to French, it's very weird and counter-intuitive.

Of course, you can listen to podcasts and watch shows, but that isn't the whole picture. There's a lot you're missing out on. Being in a room with someone doesn't just allow exposure to un-curated and uncompressed French, it is also going to comprise a lot of little daily-life things that are irrelevant for any show or piece of content, but very relevant to your learning.

One thing comes to mind, and that is how people say "ouch" in French. Rarely will you hear it on TV, but all the time in real life. (It's said: "aïe" as in the sound that "I" makes).

But, now I can sense, I can hear you think, I feel that you're wondering about music.

What about music? Is it helpful for pronunciation?

It is, but probably not in the way you'd expect.

Singing isn't like speaking. I know, shockers.

But it does use similar speech patterns and speech elements. So there is something there. And by all means; listen to all the French music you can get your hands on, for the musical culture it will bring you, alone.

Where music can help with pronunciation is in singing. Not hearing someone sing, but in singing yourself.

Picking a song and trying to learn it is great lateral work that's fun and that helps with fluidity in your speech, being able to alternate between different sounds that you find challenging. It forces you to follow a rhythm and patterns that you can feel through tones and notes, and it feels great (eventually). It doesn't leave you any choice and the song acts like guide rails.

It also helps you pronounce those challenging sounds more accurately.

You must have heard about shadowing, right? For those who don't know, shadowing is picking some piece of content (or having someone speak right in front of you) and repeating that, trying to mimic everything to the T. I like this technique and I truly believe it is powerful, but I have found it can be quite repetitive and boring, it misses this emotional component. I have personally learned all the languages I know without using any shadowing techniques (or if I did, it was naturally occurring).

And singing kinda is shadowing that makes more sense. It doesn't help with adopting a natural voice melody when speaking, but it is very efficient to learn how to pronounce all of the sounds and sound combinations. We humans are just really good at copying others. So if you struggle with one or two sounds or sound combinations, just pick a song you like in French and practice singing it, from time to time. It's a lot of fun.

Now, I will just throw in pieces of advice that didn't make it up to now but that are relevant.

Your gut knows better. If you think something is pronounced a certain way, go with it. If it's not you're still training your intuition, if it is, tap yourself on the back. Consciously trying to pronounce stuff doesn't work long term, your intuition needs to be trained, let it experiment.

You're not opening your mouth wide enough. Yes, most speakers are not showing the inside of their mouth when speaking French. But making more space in your mouth is going to make it so much easier to say things (especially sounds like "a" or "è" or many others) that it is worth the slight discomfort. Even words that have your lips form a tight "o" like the sound "o" require you to drop your jaw quite low. That is for the lower pitch sounds. For high pitch sounds, you do the opposite and close your mouth and get your jaw higher. That's weird for English speakers I know.

You're speaking too fast. Relax. Not all of us speak as fast as a bullet train (TGV in French btw). We sometimes take our time. Better say something once a little bit slower than repeating yourself over and over cause the other person's not getting it. Speaking fast comes later. Speaking slow doesn't equal being dumb by the way.

Allow yourself to speak with the accent of the region you're in. If a French person goes and lives in Texas, they'll get the accent from Texas eventually. It's not weird. We humans adapt. If you're in the south of France, you'll naturally get that sweet southern French accent. Don't fight it, go with the flow. I promise you, it's not weird.

When someone repeats what you say directly after what you say, they're most likely correcting you. This is great, don't ignore these signs, they're vital for your progress. There's no taking it too seriously or personally. Put on a smile and take a mental note.

People aren't judging you. Do not go around thinking they are. It will just create an uphill battle for you and create weird dynamics. It goes without saying that you shouldn't feel guilty or ashamed for mispronouncing things, it's normal, no one expects you to pronounce everything perfectly. If you say something that sounds off or funny, laugh it off and move on.

This is never ending. In any language you speak, pronunciation can get improved (including in English). Checking on it every once in a while, by recording yourself speak or by asking natives how you're doing, is good practice.

Despite bearing the same symbol, the French and English r's are two different sounds (monsters). There's no overlapping. If you want a reference point you would know as an English speaker on how to pronounce the French r, the position is close to how you would pronounce the Spanish "j" that you find in certain words such as "Baja California," or "San Jose." Same position but different pressures on the soft palate and almost no air gets blown out with the French version. I know this isn't going to help everyone in the best manner possible (how much better can you do with text), but I know that for some of you who've been trying for a long time, it will click. For all of the others, listen to more French.

That is the end of a very long blog post about pronunciation in French. I hope I haven't left out anything too important. I hope you had fun reading it and that everything was clear and helpful. If I left out anything or if you have questions, as always just reach out or write a comment.

If there's anything you need to remember from this, it's: Listen to French. IRL's better.

Yours, Luca

I get too nervous when I speak French, how can I relax?

This is a question I love to answer because it says a lot about our biology and psychology. And at the same time, it is something that we will all experience when speaking a foreign language, in this case French.

The situation looks like this: you, or someone else initiates a conversation and all of the sudden, you are lost. It isn't just the action of initiating the conversation that is stressful, but also continuing the conversation, that requires a big cognitive load!

What the person you're speaking with is doing, conversing in French, they have been doing their whole life and they have no idea how it might feel like for you, a foreigner. You're totally lost, can only grasp some words that the person is just vomiting at a rapid pace, and what you get doesn't allow you to continue the conversation well.

That's so frustrating, and let's face it, a little bit humiliating, as it happens. That being said, it needn't be the end of the conversation. It shouldn't be the moment where you give in and switch to English, the seemingly better communication channel.

Not so fast.

Comprehension is a very complicated thing we take for granted when we speak our own native language. When you speak with someone and they understand you, you literally project a mental image in their mind thanks to what you say. How cool is that? This relies on many different factors and more often than not, comprehension is altered. It's not just understanding the words, it's also understanding the concepts, having a relatively overlapping knowledge base of events, and I could go on and on...

So yes, this is incredibly complicated to understand a native speaker for the many required elements I stated above. If you can understand a native speaker, that is no small feat, tap yourself on the back. You deserve it.

Now, back to our nervousness from interactions. Because yes, I have not yet met anyone nervous to read something in French, or to watch a video or listen to a podcast. If that's your case please contact me. Let's talk, I'd love to dig into this a bit.

But as I said, the stress comes from the human/social interaction, or potential interaction. And this makes complete sense. We are social beings, so the way others act, directly impacts us. Our emotions primarily depend on how others will interact with us. So that's no different when we speak French, or any foreign language.

Now, it looks like there isn't much to say about this, but there is indeed a lot to be said about that theme.

This spectrum of pain/fear and pleasure/fun is at the center of the language learning discussion. Should it be tough so that you can adapt faster or should you gradually adapt into it so that you can have fun while doing it and enjoy yourself, and supposedly do it more often for longer?

Well, I find this debate kind of trivial. I don't think one can exist without the other. You have fun because you can be bored (and have been), you experience pleasure because you have experienced pain... One doesn't exist without the other.

Now, the real debate is about how you should handle difficulty and challenge. Should you mitigate it and avoid it a little bit or should you just dive head first?

There's a concept in psychology that really fosters a wide variety of things, including phobias, that comes up now.

Avoidance.

Avoidance is the act of consciously and actively getting away from something. It's a good thing if you avoid drinking poison. Don't drink poison. It is not a good thing if you avoid having a conversation, if you avoid encountering any dog, if you avoid what you are afraid of (but that isn't going to harm you automatically, let's be clear on that).

That is how a child can have a bad experience with one dog, and then avoid all dogs for years, and when they are confronted with one, they panic. Avoiding is fueling a mind monster in a perpetual motion.

It's like checking under your bed for monsters when you were a kid. The longer you fear to do it, the worse the monster then gets. Until you poke that bubble in your mind, by just checking. Yep, all clear under the bed.

This is also something that I have noticed with people learning French. It has not become a phobia but rather, a worse than should be, fear of engaging in certain situations while using French.

I love this quote from Seneca: "Is this the condition that I so feared?"

The mind projects qualities and consequences that are often blown out of proportion. Language learning is full of these fears.

What if I forget how to speak if I go back home and don't speak French for a month? What if I don't speak French well enough before the summer? What if I don't know the words during this conversation? What if my mind goes blank?

It wouldn't be terrible. It wouldn't be comfortable but really you would survive, with this light feeling that it wasn't so bad and that you could go through it again.

Embarrassing moments are an integral part of the game. But it's not too bad. It doesn't feel good either.

So, that problem of always being nervous is perhaps a little lack of bad experiences.

There is another side to this coin, though.

Stress is really not something inherently bad. Chronic stress is bad. But acute stress is really something great. It boosts your cognition. It narrows down your focus, it is a powerful signal for your subconscious to deal with something correctly and carefully.

Then again, this is something that directly depends on your beliefs. Either you're part of those who dread stress, or you're part of those who look for these experiences, those adrenaline junkies (I might be part of these peeps).

Research from Stanford Psychology Tenure Professor Alia Crum shows how powerful one's own belief about stress is. The takeaway is: if you believe that stress is good it will give you that little kick we ALL like. If you believe it's bad, then it'll come in the way...

So, let's all welcome stress, after all that's an evolutionary advantage!

The good thing about this "stress is enhancing" mindset is the fact that we're going with our biology and not against it. Not only does it alleviate the potential bad consequences of stress but it allows a rapid switch to the other mechanisms of our nervous system associated with: "rest and digest."

And this feels good. Literally.

Just like when eating a nice Thanksgiving dinner with all your family, you just feel content and full, during and afterward.

That can be the case when the conversation you're having in French goes well, when the tension is relieved and you get to know the person you're speaking with. This releases a number of different neurotransmitters that, guess what, are crucial to the learning process (neuroplasticity).

It's not just approaching the dog you're scared of and getting your heart beating fast. If you stop here, you're not going to be any more reassured next time you come across a dog. It's also petting that dog, realizing it's not aggressive or dangerous, and having a good time. The come down is also crucial. I need to emphasize that.

Yes you want to have mental arousal and go through a not-so-comfortable phase but coming down from that state is the last part of the equation.

"Look brain this is important, I need to be focused and pay attention to this. But it is also something positive and enjoyable, it really is, learn to seek to experience this more often."

It needs to be a positive feedback loop, NOT a negative feedback loop that drives you away from French. Break any cycle of that sort as soon as you can.

Now, in the comments of a YouTube video I made in January this year, one person asked me to write about how relaxation also played a role in learning a language. Here's the answer with the different caveats:

Being only nervous doesn't work (and isn't theoretically possible, there will always be a small calm down at least), and neither does being relaxed all the time.

Both groups will reach a plateau and view their language abilities fossilize. You need both. One after the other. And the order isn't trivial. See it like this, you can go for a run and be in pain then experience pleasure later on, or you can scroll on social media for 30 min and experience pain when you stop. The former option is a bit more productive.

Same thing with French. Go for something thrilling, exciting, that gets your blood pumping, your mind well aware and focused (but not in a state of panic). And then experience this comedown, the good feeling of connecting with someone, the feeling of accomplishment.

And then repeat.

That person also mentioned that they didn't feel comfortable relaxing too much and felt guilty in some sort for being relaxed.

I have not personally dealt with this first hand.

But I can see how this happens, perhaps approaching the problem from a mindset in which one would try to optimize learning as much as possible. Or perhaps it is to feel productive as much as possible, I'm only taking guesses here.

Regardless, my answer is that relaxing is an inherent part of the process and it is not something that you can control. Even taking a look at our biology, surpassing psychology and thoughts, we are always in one of two alternating states: arousal and focus (also called fight or flight) or rest and digest, aka relaxing.

This 90 min cycle is physiological and can barely be impacted through training (surgeons or certain people from tactical forces can stay aroused for a long amount of time for example). I personally think that fighting this doesn't make any sense in the context of language learning.

This is also why I like to spend a long time with people when I meet them and not just meet for 30 min for coffee. It sparks different conversations when we're in different phases of the cycle and it takes a bit of time to match phases with someone else.

I find engaging in deeper, more relaxed conversations as interesting and stimulating as having a good high-energy banter. I like the well-rounded experience of going for a meal with my friends (and speaking a foreign language at the same time). Actually I love it, and you reader should give it a try with French speakers if you can.

So, I hope that I was able to give you more elements on this subject and debate of stress and learning French.

Not something we can control, but something that we can and should make use of, and even appreciate.

That's it for me, hope you enjoyed reading this blog post. Have I left anything out? Please leave a comment and tell me!

Yours, Luca

I don't know enough French, what can I do?

This is by far, the most common concern for people who learn French: knowing enough words. I mean... duh. That's the whole point, isn't it? Isn't language comprised of words?

Allow me to go geeky here. Yes, on a fundamental level language's made of words. I know, shockers. Just like we, humans, are made out of atoms.

Only...

If the combination of atoms isn't right, we would just be gas, or liquid. And if you think about it, the environment we're in, also greatly contributes to us being healthy humans.

To come back to our problem, if you don't arrange the words in the right way, in the right environment, those building blocks become irrelevant. And the precision and exactitude of the word order and how they are pronounced and put together cohesively really shouldn't be underestimated.

So it is true that you will need to know words to speak. But it is also an incomplete statement, at best. Because a word can be encoded with only 26 different symbols (in French and English), it really looks like it's straightforward and easy to remember, use, and grasp.

But let's go back to the atom and body analogy here. If you stand in front of a white wall and if I shine a bright light at you, you will have a 2-dimensional shadow. But that 2-dimensional shadow isn't a simple 2-dimensional object and is visible only because you, a 3-dimensional complex being, stand in front of the wall and I shine a bright light at you. If you rotate in front of that light, your shadow will warp and change in a completely unpredictable way.

So now think of words as a complex concept but that we can capture and represent with a mere 26-symbol system. The word's writing could be their figurative shadow.

Now, do you see the problem here with: "I need to learn more words" / "I don't know enough words"?

Still not convinced there is a problem with this?

Okay. What if I tell you that you know, or you have access to (almost) every word that was ever used in French in less than 10 seconds with one book? Yes, most of you have one lying around. A dictionary!! Your knowledge of words is only limited by how many words there are in a language. In this case, French (and boy are there many: +60,000).

But, what's that? You can't have a conversation with someone while having a dictionary open? I agree, would be kind of rude and strange... Don't ask me how I know.

Okay but then, how about these people that can remember thousands and thousands of stats and numbers? They surely could learn a few thousand or even a dozen thousand curated words of French and engage in greatly stimulating conversations, am I right?

Now the mental image should become a bit more apparent and obvious. It should even get you a little giggly.

Imagine seeing someone just reciting words (or sentences) to someone else, without even being able to listen to what the other person responds, continuing to pour out absolute non-sense.

Sure that person has great knowledge of words.

But what they need is the skill to judge when each of them is appropriate to use, with what timing and how to string them together to give the right meaning to those words.

I'm sure those of you who have dogs have done this before. I'm sure you have looked at your dog right in the eye, and said mean stuff with a big smile on and in the cute voice you normally use to talk to your dog. We're not going to question the ethic of that because it is hilarious to do so (I know first hand), and it tells us something interesting. What's interesting is that your dog reacts completely normally to that, and you don't feel like you are really being mean to your pet (cause you're not).

The words you use do matter when speaking to humans, there's no questioning that. If body-language and non-verbal speech make up for most of the message that comes across when we speak, the verbal speech is the key to understand the message. And in situations where the emotional component is non-existent (e.g. "Can you pass me the salt please?") the verbal aspect is really important.

So this is to say that it matters what you say, but it isn't the whole picture. It is one element of a complex communication system.

Because if you think about it, there needs to be synching when conversing. Synching of tone and energy. Synching of time. Synching of meaning and subjects. Communication is a two-way road. You need to understand what the other person says, and you need to make that person understand what you mean. You don't need to use all of the person's codes, voice tone and speech patterns (that would be weird, I'd advise against it) but you need to use codes and patterns that exist in the realm of the other person's language/experience with their language.

And all of this information does NOT get to be encoded with symbols, or with the alphabet...

Have you ever tried to describe music without singing it? If the other person knows of the music, it can work. If the person doesn't know the music, they need to experience it only to be able to understand what you say and what you mean.

I want to focus on this shared experience concept. This is crucial.

I know, I have taken a few tangents but stick with me.

An experience engages all of your senses, and more.

You feel things, you hear them, you feel emotions. And, you interpret them consciously or subconsciously, in real time. In that interpretation part is language.

When you are in an environment where people speak French, you will have the unmatched opportunity of having all of these sensory inputs (crucial to use later when communicating) and they will be labeled. Literally and figuratively. People describe what they are doing, they ask questions, say things, rarely do they do things in silence.

Here is the worshipped "input" that people have been talking about, only now it is forced upon you and much more comprehensible (and exciting).

And this is how you actually acquire words.

Notice how (seemingly) effortless that is in comparison with: finding a list of the 1000 or 2000 most used words; printing it or making it accessible; reading it every day; making flashcards; learning and rehearsing again and again, just to learn the word itself!!! Imagine if you should learn the detailed explanations or the mental image that goes with it! What a nightmare! I know some people enjoy doing all of that, and honestly, congratulations! I wouldn't be able to do it.

But the nice thing with experiencing words and new concepts is that all of this is naturally taken care of: finding what's important; learning and rehearsing it; making you understand the meaning at a deep level. And, yeah, it's also free :)

Now, all of the words you learn you will end up experiencing (this is fundamentally true), but you don't have to experience every word first hand to know of it.

An environment doesn't need to be physical (even one that encompasses different senses). I'm not talking about virtual reality here. Or if I am, I'm talking about the one we always knew: day dreaming. What an interesting twist to this blog post.

So, what about day dreaming? What is there to it?

It is a fascinating brain state that really bears its name well because it resembles dreaming in many different aspects. But what is fascinating about it is, despite having your eyes wide open and being in a physical environment already, you're barely aware of what's around. Much like during dreams, your brain makes up an environment to evolve in.

This state is crucial to process information, emotional stimuli and it's useful for a bunch of other things. During that state, there is a certain amount of creativity (after all it's called day dreaming), and that creativity and subjective state of consciousness, you can harness to "memorize" words.

You basically will at some point feel the need to know something in French, a curiosity of the sort: "Mmhh I wonder how I could say chair in French..."

That is when you create an environment related to chair and experiences that you've had with the concept of a chair. All you need to do is to top it off with the French word for "chair": "chaise."

This isn't a foolproof technique, it'll let you down sometimes, it really needs some sort of repetition (that occurs naturally, e.g. oh what's the word for chair in French again? I know I looked it up the other day, oh yeah "chaise").

What you need to keep in mind is the order of things. It shouldn't be like school brought us to think: "Here, assimilate all of this information and if it happens to strike your curiosity that's great, if it doesn't, learn it anyway."

Blechh.

Any word or concept that isn't previously called for in your mind, that isn't relatable is not going to be internalized in any interesting way. Learning French really isn't a game of memory. It is a game of experience. Haaa, that is a much prettier picture right away, isn't it?

So if you don't really want to know how it is said, don't learn it. Because no environment will support the word, any physical or mental environment that is.

On a practical note, you should look up a word that tickles your curiosity as soon as it arises (unless you're driving, in that case ask Siri, both hands on the wheel!) and if you can hear it out loud, it is much better. Google Translate really is your friend.

I should also add that you should give Google Translate as much context as possible. It is a phenomenal tool, but boy, is it bad at guessing. You don't want that. One English word can have many French equivalents and the opposite is also true. Give it a sentence that narrows down the meaning.

The limitations of this "system," which is really primal at its core, just like children ask their parents for all they don't know (and want to know), you ask the good old translator, come from the fact that it's not real, it is all in your head.

And getting stuck in your head is really something that you want to avoid. Curiosity leads to looking up and to a short term satisfaction but that is really just the first step. The second step is putting to use what you learned. And that comes through experiences. And then we come back to the same problem as we started with. "I don't know enough words to speak." Don't let this mind parasite get too big. Because yes you're right if you think that. Obviously you're not going to have a conversation about life, on a very deep level, for hours on end, right away. But truth is that a conversation can be tweaked (or chosen) to what you need it to be.

Talking to order a drink or food has back and forth communication that we could call a small conversation. Not very complicated but nonetheless, a conversation. You will have countless opportunities for interactions like this that will push you out of your comfort zone while still staying at reach. Before going up to someone to order ice cream or reserve a hotel room or any interaction of the like, it's ok and even good to look up the words you will need (try to keep it at words and not sentences) and to put your best foot forward, even if you know you're going to make mistakes.

It is this attitude of "it's going to be rough but turn out well" that will get you through this phase of: "I don't know enough words."

Why is that?

Because both being too optimistic and pessimistic won't lead you to experience things, and just lead you to put it off for later (avoidance is going to undermine any progress by the way).

And because as we covered earlier, vocabulary expands with experiences. It is crucial that you, learner of French, understand this. A few courageous interactions in France (or a French speaking environment) have a much bigger payout than a year of French class, for the environments alone. The fact that they change in different, unpredictable and interesting ways is so stimulating. Novelty makes you listen. Hearing the same teacher give the same lectures for a year in the same classroom is not going to be stimulating (on a subconscious level anyway).

Now, I hope that you understood the paradox that is "not knowing enough words" and will be able to make that mindset shift.

I always tell my clients (and it is a personal mantra of mine too): Satisfaction is the root of all progress.

Once you stop fighting this and just let go of your expectations and place your focus on the outside and not on what YOU know, how YOU sound like, and what YOU understand, you will see that interesting things will happen. You will end up living and feeling what French is, and it isn't just a beautiful sounding language, it is the language of many different cultures over the world, that each have a fascinating history and fascinating people.

That is the fun there is to have in learning French, it's living it and leaving the classroom for the outside world.

Obviously this blog post is directed at people either living in a French speaking place or able to access French speaking environments.

Have I left anything out, is there anything you would want me to cover next? Leave a comment!

Yours, Luca

I want to learn French, where can I start?

This blog post is, I hope, the first step to a myriad of different experiences that you will live with the French language and speakers. This is the first question that will ever arise when it comes to learning French. How do I even start learning?

This is a paralyzing state. There is such a big valley to cross ahead of you. It is a beautiful valley, but it sure comes with its lot of challenges.

There is no directions.

You hear people get stuck there for years.

Others make it safely and quickly, without sweating or going through much, at least as it looks like.

I will just tell you now, that way, it's out of the way and it won't bother you anymore. No one is born a language person. Even very intelligent people struggle with languages, and some less intelligent people do become "language people." If someone is good at languages, seemingly, it is only from their experience and because they like languages. Now that this was said, let's get started.

So I opened with this analogy, of standing on top of a mountain, overlooking a valley that you will need to cross, for the first time, alone, without much guidance. A lot can be imagined, a lot can be reconstructed from what others describe of it. One thing is sure, it's that you will have to cross it. So a good first step would maybe be not to listen to anyone that says it's impossible, too hard, not worth it... We don't want negativity, especially at the start. Nor do we want any specific expectation. The mindset I'm talking about can beautifully be encapsulated by this quote from Dean Kamen:

"Don't tell me it's impossible, tell me you can't do it. Tell me it's never been done. Because the only real laws in this world, the only things we really know, are Maxwell's equations, the 3 laws of Newton, the 2 postulates of Relativity, and the Periodic Table. That's all we know that's true. All the rest are man's laws."

Long intro, but worth it. In September this year, I made a video about how to start learning a language. I'll put the video at the end of the article so that you can take a look for yourself. It'll essentially be the same as this article (but watch it). Learning French isn't different from learning any other language.

So, where to start? Grammar? Reading? Listening/audio input? With a book?

What I will describe will be outrageously simple, and pure. Forget the basics. They're a myth. There's no basic version of any language, because by definition, a language is complex. Don't waste your time with that idea. What you find to be basic another person will find advanced.

What do YOU want to know? What do YOU want to say? What would YOU, reader, like to express in French?

It's easy to take your time and think about it when I ask the question through a blog article. But a lot of times when working with people one on one and this question came up, they felt nervous and didn't know what they wanted to say in French past pleasantries (that don't get anyone far). So here's a little trick. What did you find yourself answering to this question in your mind or aloud? That's the answer to the question I just asked. Get a starting point, get comfortable with one word and then that word will lead you to another, and another and another... Diving down that rabbit hole is fun. Follow your curiosity. It is your learning ENGINE. Forget apps, forget lessons, forget all of that, let's be selfish here. What do YOU care to know, what's relevant to YOUR life, not anyone's life, but YOURS in particular.

That's how you want to get started. Or, that's one component of it, there's a second one. And that second component is pronunciation. Maybe you saw it coming, maybe you didn't, but it's actually crucial that with your first experience with French you include pronunciation. There's a companion article on this site that goes into more detail about pronunciation in French.

Those words you will want to know about, you also need to focus on how they are pronounced. And try to approximate. I say approximate and not exactly replicate because let's be real, French pronunciation is very different from English pronunciation. The accent of speakers of one language when speaking the other language makes it pretty clear and obvious.

But you're not doomed to have an accent in French. And it starts now. Try to replicate, try to mimic. Don't have anyone to tell you how something is said? Just pull out your phone, go on Google Translate and have a listen. It is pretty accurate. Try to repeat.

French should be very foreign to your English speaking ear, if you have never been exposed to it. How do you change that? The answer is in the question, hiding in plain sight. In order to build a certain familiarity to French, you just need exposure. Now, not all types of exposure are created equal. Some will be better than others. Music? Pretty much no effect. TV shows? That's more like it. Podcasts or live shows? Mmmhh we're getting there.

The best you can do is listen to French in real life. If you have someone talking right in front of you, French is then very very real for your brain and your subconscious will pay attention. You will become more comfortable with how French sounds, not how French works, at least not at first.

This exposure you want to have kind of regularly, so finding something that you like helps, but I'm aware of the fact that you don't understand French yet, so there's a big limit.

That's okay. Do what you can. People who have French relatives they live with or that live in France have a huge advantage. In most cases they can pronounce a lot of words and sentences thanks to that passive exposure alone, without even knowing what they mean.

This exposure is a prerequisite to learning how to pronounce words in French, the words that interest you and that you want to know, that is.

In the video I mentioned, I draw on a cool analogy to describe the process of learning those words you find interesting and what that does. I will reuse this analogy here.

I say that you need to satisfy your curiosity when learning a language as if you were scratching an itch. Just like when a mosquito bites you. At first it itches a tiny bit, and then every time you scratch that bite, it gets a bit bigger, the urge to scratch gets a bit stronger...

And then... boom!

All of a sudden you're super annoyed because you keep scratching your bite and you can't stop, you are "obsessed with it."

The process is similar with French. You scratch an itch as soon as it occurs. And maybe the word you learn about when you satisfy that curiosity, will go away... Or maybe it will seem to go away, but it will still be here, deep down, and when you will look it up again because you forgot about it and want to know again, it will feel a bit familiar. Doesn't matter if you forget. What matters is that you remind yourself of it when you seemingly do forget (and wonder again).

But the (big) limitation of this is that you won't truly be obsessed, unless you have first hand personal/authentic experiences with the French language.

If that's the case, then you will easily become obsessed, dream of French, always wonder how to say this or that, or wonder why this or that is said like this in French. That is the goal we want to achieve with that first step of learning French. This very first step is to get you obsessed with the language so that you can actually withstand the tough challenges you will encounter in the valley ahead of you.

It also makes it uncomfortable for you to not know French. This obsession will turn into a passion (often temporarily, don't worry) and it will burn you to know more, experience more, try to say more things. That's exactly what this "system" is about. When you scratch an itch, look up a word you want to know, every time you do that, French will take a bit more place in your mind, until it becomes an obsession, a fever.

Wow. To have the French fever.

Not the sexiest thing I have written about. But you know what's super sexy? The opportunities that this fever will bring you. The challenges it'll make you overcome. The resilience. And eventually, the ABILITIES it'll give you. The brain adapts to what's important for survival. Passion is literally suffering (check the etymology).

If the only way to stop that suffering is to go forward and get better at French, your mind has no choice. We want that. I have taken advantage of this many times and this is exactly how I am able to write this article now, in English. A language I did NOT master, just a few years back. How many times was my back against the wall? How many times was I in hard situations, did I feel overwhelmed by English? Dozens if not hundreds of times. Would I have succeeded had it not been for my obsession for the English language? No.

This seems extreme? Good.

It is extreme. Learning a language is a non-negligible change in your brain. That is why it is so cool, precious, and it brings you so much. But I'm talking about things that you will experience, much, much later. I do that because I need to convince you that just satisfying your curiosity and exposing yourself to French is enough.

Most people don't believe it is.

But here is another caveat that is also a very important pillar of the whole endeavour.

Satisfaction.

"Of what? I don't know French, what can I possibly be satisfied about?" This is the whole point and it is single-handedly the most important paradigm shift, that will allow you to make the most of this language learning machine that you have in you.

Just be satisfied. You want more, there's no questioning this. Great. So do I. Your stance should be that you want, not that you need. That's a weird concept when you first think about it. I'll make it make more sense.

If you learn how to say a few words that you find relevant and you use those to have a small internal dialog, you have achieved something. Wouldn't your self from just a few moments ago be happy about this small achievement? It took you a moment to get to this small achievement, some effort. So, you bet, that this previous version of you would be satisfied on some level. The more you progress, the more the comparison can be contrasted. You now, vs you 2 weeks ago. You now, vs you 6 months ago when you started. The contrast gets starker and starker as time goes.

The key takeaway is that you know, that what you want hasn't come yet. You don't just hope it will come and need it. This is called abundance. It is a very powerful mindset that you want to use to learn French. Ignore this piece of advice at your own risk. You can either be satisfied now and let yourself be guided by your candid curiosity, knowing deep down all you want will come, even if you have seldom control over it (try to force yourself to learn anything complex...), or you can be forever unsatisfied. If that still feels off, spend some time with that idea, it'll make sense eventually.

Ok, enough philosophy of learning for now. After all this blog post is about starting to learn French. It's not going to be perfect and you will make some mistakes in regards to your strategy and mindset.

Great! That's also part of it.

The only fundamentally wrong mistake is to put it off and not start. But guess what, it's easily correctible.

Start NOW!

Any questions? Please leave a comment.

Yours, Luca

How to go back in time and become a native speaker of your target language

I have long wanted to write about this. This idea of blending in and appearing fully natural among native speakers of one's target language has long lingered in my mind.

Through this blog post, I will explore all that I know, witnessed and experienced with regard to appearing to be a native speaker of a language one can recall not speaking. That is, a language that one has learned after the age of 7, that's where I'll set the bar.

This blog post will be quite extensive and will probably have some chapters for you to navigate it. It is a subject that is (very) dear to me, that has made me struggle, and that can, quite frankly, change lives, believe it or not.

I don't even know where to start.

Actually, I think that setting the basis of whether this is possible or not, and to what extent, will be a great starting point. Then I'll give you some warnings, because there are things you should be aware of when dealing with this.

Possible?

Some notable figures in the language learning community have deemed language learning to eventually hit a ceiling. Stating that appearing to be a native speaker (or sounding native as they phrase it, although sounding and appearing are different) is a limit that one will never attain.

I'm thinking of Steve Kaufman for example. However, his explanations as to why that would be, just rely on his own personal experience and a few anecdotes. This blog post will go much deeper than this.

Linguists have, for a long time (and some, still to this day) been saying that a language can only be learned during the critical period, that is from birth to age 5. We now know that languages can be learned all the way through life. Advances in neuroscience always seem to indicate that the brain is far more capable than what was previously thought. We used to think that intelligence was something fully genetic and that it could not be improved. We now know that although genetics are an important component of intelligence, environment and experience seem to have an even bigger influence on it. That's great news.

In the language learning space, many people claim to know people that, although not born English speakers, can speak completely without an accent and blend in completely among native English speakers. Those are anecdotes. But, they are very much true, people are not making this up, it is possible. This blog post will cover in depth, how this is possible, and how this illusion can be carried through, almost creating an alternate reality. If that sounds like magic, it's because it probably is. The brain after all, can store what looks like to be an infinite amount of data. For what it's worth, it might as well be supernatural. Even if the brain is not a computer, it can store and process things that the most powerful computers cannot begin to comprehend. We don't know much about how this is done. All we know is that there is much, much more to find out about the brain.

Fixing limits as to what is possible or not possible is only the role of conventions. Appearing native in a language you remember not speaking is unconventional. You will be going off the beaten path. It is both scary and intriguing as much as it is exciting.

Here's one of my favorite quotes, that is perfect for this blog article. It is a quote from Dean Kamen: "Tell me it's never been done. Because the only real laws in this world — the only things we really know — are the two postulates of relativity, the three laws of Newton, the four laws of thermodynamics, and Maxwell's equations. That's all we know that's true. All the rest are man's laws."

Facing such a complex and misunderstood reality, it is vain to assume something that is not an inherent quality of the observable world to be IMPOSSIBLE.

After all, reality is something we all perceive differently. And our psyche is made in such a way that what we believe to be true will turn out to be true for us, in our own reality. So I am not saying that what others in the linguistics or language learning fields are saying is wrong. It is true. For them. My reality is different from theirs. So can yours be.

Although, I will say that the title of this blog post is figurative, we haven't found a way to go back in time yet, therefore, you will never have lived as much life experience as a native speaker of your target language with the said language. Sorry. But can you live enough meaningful experiences so that you can have a similar language and cultural background as a native speaker? Most certainly.

Now, I think it is time for you to know what are the dangers of this. What are the dangers of wanting to become a native of your target language?

There's actually no danger in wanting. The danger lies in the thin line there is between wanting and needing, craving, desiring… Those are all correlated not only with failure in doing this, but also in feeling a void inside, that nothing can fill. But the truth is that, that void was created by the mind, and there is nothing that is good enough, big enough, perfect enough to make it go away. Only letting go of the attachment to success in appearing native can make it go away. The more importance you attach to it, the more miserable you will feel.

If you need to appear native to blend in where you are, if you need this to be accepted, to live the life you want to live, it will be a constant uphill battle for you, and you will be the one placing sticks in your own wheels. I've been there, you don't want this. Or maybe you do, just to know what not to do, that's up to you to decide. Just know that the false feeling of almost being there is deceitful. You cannot overcome your own self.

Other danger. You will be tempted to alter your identity. This can be very damaging on a deep level. Just like a person with one sexual orientation trying to deny it, and hide it from themselves and the world, it will be damaging on a deep level.

You were not born in the country where your target language is spoken. An alternate version of you that was, would be a totally different person from you. And the tricky thing is that you can't meet that version of yourself and copy it. That would be way too easy. You have to emulate what that version of yourself could be, slowly growing into that person.

Because, the fact is that you were brought up in one or maybe two cultures. It is your nature. It is your identity, you do not need to change it to appear native in another language/culture. The assumption that you need to replace your native culture with a new one is false. Both can co-exist. And the limit isn't just 2. There is theoretically no limit.

In practice, it's a bit different. We cannot have and nurture an infinite amount of relationships as humans. Some researchers coined that number to be close to 100. So this naturally sets a certain limit on how many languages you can learn and appear to be native in. But the goal cannot be to maximize the number of languages and cultures for which you apply that process anyway. That's another danger, trying to appear native in too many languages at once. Focusing on one at a time is by far the better way to go, not to burn out.

Switching from one language to another, and likewise from one culture to another, is very costly in terms of energy. It is like a fee for all the benefits there are to knowing different languages. Even if those languages are seemingly very close like French and Italian for example.

All of this is to say that you should first nurture your own native language and culture to be able to fully devote yourself to your second language/culture. And come back to your own culture and your friends often. I overcame most "plateaus" like this, just taking a break and forgetting about a language and culture for a little bit.

So, to stay completely safe from all the pitfalls that evolving in a foreign culture can bring, keep this your mantra: "I am enough as I am, I strive for better, but in no way is this going to make me more valuable or accepted as a person. Likewise, my level in my TNL (target native language) is enough."

Now, we can get started and get into the nitty gritty of going that last mile and appearing to be a native speaker of your TNL.

First off, you need to know that achieving this is going to be exhausting, annoying, discouraging at other times, and a plethora of paradoxes will need to be understood and overcome.

The first paradox is: "Studying in a formal way will never make you appear native." Knowing how the language works in however much detail you want, will never yield the desired outcome. Why?

Yes, I agree. It's counter-intuitive.

Wouldn't having more knowledge be advantageous? It is, only to a certain point. The first reason is that grammar and technicalities are only attempts to understand how things work. No one ever sat in a room to design a language (excluding conlangs that don't have native speakers). It is believed that language has been around for over a million years. It wasn't always in the form of speaking. One of the lead theories for the evolution of language is that it has evolved from signed language, and has slowly moved up to the face and was vocalized. Many convincing elements point toward this theory. We don't need to discuss this here. Language has been around for a very long time and it was never formally designed or perfected (hence the many exceptions that make no sense). Language is evolutionary.

A good parallel to draw onto to prove this first assumption wrong, is riding a bicycle.

Do you think scientists, physicists, know exactly how people can ride bikes and why it works? Think again. Scientists are always learning more about this. Even if riding a bike seems incredibly simple.

Can any child ride a bike with sufficient practice? Yes.

Do they know all the physics behind it? No. They just do it. They know it's possible, they roughly know how it should look, and they just try until they succeed.

Those same children speak languages that we still do not fully understand. English, the most studied language ever, still bears many different mysteries.

Knowledge isn't skill. Why would people assume the opposite? Because they see that skill most of the time comes with knowledge. But the two do not have any direct relationship. Moscow University students (Russian native speakers) that have spent thousands of hours studying English still get the usage of articles (the/a) wrong. Is it possible that these same students could master the use of articles and reach a near 100% success rate? Yes.

Just not through studying.

Of course, knowledge can be useful for skills, but the problem is that we want to copy behaviors of the native speakers of our TNL. They don't know. They don't measure, calculate, or think about how they use words. They feel. And this intuition cannot be acquired through simulated environments.

A simulated environment is an environment that was purposely created by other human beings. Simulated environments can include movies, shows, books, and many other forms that are derivatives (or compressed versions) of the physical reality.

This bulletproof intuition of theirs comes from non-simulated environments. It comes from first hand experience (of the physical world). Not from just chats on social media, apps, or watching Netflix shows. But with experience in the physical world, without any barrier. And all of these simulated environments can be appreciated because they draw onto experiences of the real physical world the viewer has had.

Non-simulated environments bear all of the necessary stimuli and information you need, to successfully adapt to your TNL. Human to human interactions are the real deal. Most linguists and language learners (choose to) completely ignore this truth.

Seeing faces, and eyeballs directed at us is a stimulus that cannot be replicated. It just can't. No matter the technology, the technique, the approach… Your brain cannot be duped.

This is just the emerging part of the iceberg. It's not really about how you say things, in the grand scheme of things, when, why and what you say is just as important.

You can only make someone think you're a native speaker of their language if they see you behaving in a way that is natural for them. Or at least, within the realm of their experience with other native speakers.

This is incredibly subconscious and deep. Sometimes, people from the same country or culture can recognize each other without speaking to one another. It isn't just luck. It isn't just about how those people are looking. It is in the behavior, the micro-expressions, the body language, the aura if you want to get a bit spiritual.

There is no exercise you can do for that, no drill, no practice, nothing. It is uncharted waters when it comes to learning. You are not even aware of how you act in your own native language, how would you want to learn the micro-expressions and behaviors of another culture?

That's the other thing. Humans communicate a lot through their body. On the more shallow side you have the way you dress, the way you put your hair, what you carry with you. On the deeper end, there are micro expressions, movements of the hands, variations in the voice, how much and how you swallow your saliva. All of this combined is going to indicate that you're a foreigner. The way you look isn't the only clue. I would say the louder signal is going to be the fact it requires you a bigger cognitive load than a native speaker, when speaking. And rehearsal of words and sentences, or of verb tenses, cases, modes (things you learned by heart and you couldn't reconstruct on the fly)…. All of that screams: "I'm a learner."

If your reality is that you are learning, then others will perceive it. Choose a reality where you are in fact ADOPTING your TNL. Claim it. Make it yours. When you will have done this for long enough, it will erase the other cues that show you're non-native.

Culture. It is your right to claim a culture, only if… Only if you have enough shared experience with the culture. And here's the thing. We never stop growing, we never stop changing, we never stop having breakthroughs, shifts in what we believe. All of these changes, with the right stimuli, make you belong a little bit more to your adoptive culture.

Children are almost like blank slates, change is not only encouraged for them, it is also vital. A child doesn't know that crossing the road without paying attention might kill them. The sooner they learn this, the better their chances of survival. Language and culture are also part of this. Had you not been able to communicate, you would maybe be dead. You can surely think of a big number of situations where language saved your life.

But culture? How can that be vital you might ask?

Culture starts and ends with bonds. The first bonds you ever formed were with caretakers. They gave you love, and you showed them love in return. You formed a very special bond. That bond allowed you to communicate without speaking, which maintained you alive in your first years. And later in life, forming bonds based on common experiences and commonly understood "traditions" or ways of being, were vital on some level. That is what culture is. A deep level of comprehension. Using the same words, the same variations of a set of behaviors…

This is very theoretical, I agree.

I'll give you a very practical example of what that all means. An English speaker, or more specifically, one from North America, will interpret the question: "how old are you?" differently from someone from Europe. It doesn't bear the same message. In North America this question is going to be received as a slight offense. In Europe this will only show curiosity. I remember how once, my American friend was mad at me because I had shared his age with other people at a party we were at, and he didn't want his age to be known. What a weird concept it was for me, someone born and raised in France. There are different standards around sex, age, background, money, political opinion or a wide array of different subjects in different cultures and subcultures. This is how it is.

This example is very practical by design, so it can seem shallow. It's really not. And there are a myriad of different examples that you can find if you have been in contact with different cultures for long enough that can show the difference between cultures, on a very deep level. Little actions can give away where you're from, or just the fact that you aren't a native.

But like I said above, by living shared experiences with natives, you will train your intuition, notice patterns. On a subconscious level, you will always be learning, even if it doesn't feel like you are learning new words or new ways of saying things, new idioms.

The thing is, this part is ALSO how you acquire the different linguistic aspects of a native speaker of your TNL. It isn't through analyzing. No no no no.

It is through experiencing the language first hand.

You want their truth, their standards, their expectations as a culture to become yours.

And this task can get extremely hard.

The more a language is spoken (natively), the more cultures will use this language, the harder it'll be for you. Because there are just so many cultures, you cannot adapt to and or learn all of their ways. That would require a lifetime. The myth of neutral accent, neutral culture, and neutral version of a language is just that, a myth. You need to pick one variation.

You need to have a home base, or a new home base. This is why the crushing majority of non-natives who made it to appear native are residents of a country where the language's spoken. It is just that much more practical.

If you want to succeed in learning your TNL, you need to be there. Sorry.

If you can't travel, you can't do it. This is the limitation. You need at least a few dozen people around you on a long enough period that act and speak naturally. The good news is, a few full immersion trips can be enough (or perhaps several), I'm talking one to two month long trips. Living with someone that is a native of your TNL is also a huge boost although it can bring other complications that I'll talk about later.

You need to find a base, it will make things so much easier. Your pronunciation, the idioms you use, how you swear, the melody of your voice, they cannot be baseless, you cannot invent them… If there is indeed a neutral version of all of these things then you will appear robotic and soulless. Non-native.

The size limit of your adoptive home base can be large enough, it can be a country or a region, but it will be harder. This is why, spending one year in one area is so powerful, it narrows it down a lot. It also makes exposure frequent enough, the novelty factor is big, and novelty makes the brain LISTEN.

But there will be a transition, regardless.

This is why that first mantra I gave you about being enough, knowing enough and just feeling gratitude and satisfaction, is THAT important.

This is the key part of your success in adopting your TNL.

The amount of mistakes you need to make in order to not make any more mistakes is huge. In other words you need to appear non-native a lot in order to one day appear native 99% of the time… and one day 100% because the mistakes you will make will either be indiscernible (as in, just in your mind) or they will be native-compatible, mistakes that natives usually make and that don't disqualify you.

This idea of not being disqualified is important. That's the game you will be playing, but this game needs to be so natural for you that nothing in your behavior shows that you're playing a game, nothing shows that you are trying.

Cause eventually you're not trying, you're just doing something that you convinced yourself you've been doing your whole life. That's it. Your reality and nature extend. They extend to envelop this culture and language. That is no small feat.

But if, like I said at first, if you want to forget your native culture and language, you will just lose yourself. Not only will they subconsciously resurface at the wrong time and hurt, it will also be as clear as day that you are someone trying to appear native.

How paradoxical?

No native tries to be a native. That's all they know to be true. It is their reality.

So if you attach any value to the outcome, you're essentially stuck. Pardon my French. You will just refuse to learn, and straight up jump to trying. That's not how it works. You want to not care about appearing non-native.

This mindset will lead you to comparing yourself to natives and other learners. This SCREAMS "I am a non-native," this will lead to people trying to reassure you by telling you that you are doing well… or criticize you. Whenever doing something, ask yourself: "would a native be acting like that? Would they need to do that?"

Keeping in mind, though, that if there is something you don't understand, don't know how to say, or just can't say naturally, YOU NEED to do something about it. Avoiding it is not a solution.

So, essentially, sometimes you'll need to "blow your cover" in order to progress further. It shouldn't hurt, that is if you don't attach value to seeming native. The more you desperately want it, the less you have it.

If you know that your pronunciation is wrong or just that you have a noticeable accent overall, it is your choice to keep it and there is NOTHING wrong with this, but this blog post is about that last mile.

To correct this, you want to change your markers. If you want to pronounce things properly, you need to change your ways, you need to try, experiment.

Here again, you have to be willing to sound dumb and fail. You have to be willing to ask if you're saying it properly, there's no way around that. Until one day it becomes natural. We change all the time so, this too can change given the right intention and stimuli.

Shadowing can be useful.

But if you live in an environment where people speak your TNL, it shouldn't require too much effort to erase your accent, if you're detached that is. Always keep this in mind. This is a state of observation, but at the same time it shouldn't be too energy consuming and you should feel relaxed.

So, just a little recap with everything we covered so far:

It's possible to appear to be native in your TNL if you believe it is. The mantra is very important: you're enough, you know enough, you want better but don't need it. It's not just linguistics, it's also your behavior. The correct behavior comes from shared experiences, and from you not trying but intuitively doing. You want to adopt one subset of a culture, the more specific the better, you need to be in a physical environment, for long enough. You want to be detached from the outcome and willing to blow your cover if you want to one day succeed in adopting your TNL. Don't compare yourself to others and don't try to act native, instead do what it takes to extend your nature and reality to encompass your adoptive culture, so that it becomes your reality too. Pronunciation isn't enough on its own but crucial and needs to be changed if it is too far from a native pronunciation.

I will also point out the difficulties that will likely occur along the way.

Because this includes relationships with different people; and those people being humans, there will be different emotions. These emotions will likely be provoked by you speaking your TNL at a high level. These reactions might be negative, or not. It's very well worth covering, though.

Some of the people that learn languages and have your TNL as a native language will be envious, jealous and will want to put you down, in some way or another, and to varying degrees. There is nothing evil about it, it is just that most people will compare themselves to you, and compare their level in x or y language with yours in their native language. They will either rationalize or put down your success and point out your flaws. Not to mention that those people might not know how to react if you are secure about your level and if you're approaching your TNL with light-hearted optimism. They will get quiet if you just don't react to their comments about your level and their rationalization. They can actually point out some flaws you might still not be aware of. So for the sake of your mental health and your progress, be grateful for these people and thank them. They're not mean, they're human, I think we've all judged and compared ourselves to other learners. It's okay.

You can either choose to tolerate these people if it is just occasional, or leave them alone, up to you. Language learners in general will compare themselves to you and your success. It's fine, let it be, there's no controlling that. It's pretty easy to navigate that problem if you don't care about your level and keep doing your thing, regardless of what people are saying.

Languages that are not commonly learned by foreigners are going to be easier to appear native in. People won't have as much training data to figure out that you have a foreign accent. It doesn't make it easy but it's still noticeable. They won't be on the lookout for it either.

Your friends that will notice your progress and will likely be impressed and compliment you, but rarely will they ever admit that you appear to be native, because they will always have in their memory experiences with you where you appeared foreign. They'll always say, you're almost there. Although it depends on people.

When a native has a doubt about you being one, they will pay attention to everything you say and be on their back foot. It is a weird feeling for natives to meet someone that speaks like them, that acts like them and that has become one of them, so to speak, when that person is from another culture initially. From there they will almost always ask where you are from. Don't lie, people know when you lie. It's okay if they know that you're non-native. You can be elusive about how you learned and not call attention to your level, just shift the conversation subject to something else. It's no big deal. Take the compliments or the criticism but don't dwell on your level.

Don't talk about your level or how you speak and sound, that's a pretty clear indication that you're not a native.

When people ask where you're from, always be truthful, you won't appear less native on a subconscious level, they'll just know consciously and likely forget, if you don't talk about where you're from too much and keep the illusion going, up to you.

When people find out you actually learned their language, they will most likely be very surprised and compliment you. Take the compliment but don't take it too heartedly; again, it's no big deal, that's just who you are. Don't get addicted to this feeling, it affects your judgment and ego. You're not better than other people, but still, you're awesome. So, it's no big deal.

Now I will give you some guidelines I didn't get to cover earlier in this post:

Don't dwell on your pronunciation mistakes and grammatical mistakes if it's a mistake you know you've been doing and understand. If not, break out of character and don't miss that opportunity to correct yourself and understand the language further, or practice getting better. You don't know when the next occasion to get better will be. Though, most of the time, your mistake will go unnoticed if you don't call attention to it.

Listen more than you speak. You're trying to soak in as much as possible, you want to learn about people more than you talk about yourself.

Practice your humor, go for it, try and fail, it is a very important aspect and it makes the whole experience more fun. It is however a very hard component of language. It is also a fundamental aspect of culture. By being witty and funny, (and by watching comedy, that's great input) you can further understand and train your intuition on the norms and standards of your adoptive culture. With comedy these norms just get exposed and they're more explicit. It's a slippery slope, but you have to get wet. To the extent you feel comfortable make jokes and fool around. I give humor and comedy a lot of credit to any success I've had.

Don't argue with people about your level. Remember, be secure about it. If they think you have an accent, it's fine. A lot of the time it's just one word you misused or mispronounced, and or they are biased. You don't want people's approval because you already have your own. The thing is that there are varying degrees of fluency, even for natives. Pronunciation is also a spectrum. You can make different sounds sound different. An "r" isn't always pronounced the same in English, even by two people from the same place. It's all a spectrum. You have an accent when you routinely get out of that spectrum, and when your voice melody isn't within the realm of the culture and language. It's all fluid. Even if everything you say is in the spectrum, that is that all the sounds are pronounced correctly, some pattern may emerge that could disqualify you as a native, when you do "sound" native, but don't actually appear native. This is why, what you say, and how you behave is so damn important, they can cue the subconscious of natives that you too are native.

When someone learns you're non-native, they will try to disprove the fact that you appear native, in some cases. But if you stay consistent, they will act as if you were a native (they will be more themselves) on a subconscious level. So, it doesn't matter too much what people say, it's how they act. Do they speak to you and act with you like if you were one of theirs? If yes, bingo. That's exactly the point. To be fair, it is mostly with strangers that you will appear to be 100% native, for the fact they don't know where you are from and that you're non-native. But like I said, this is no big deal. Always keep nurturing this mindset. I understood this after a couple of years, and it changed me.

When you meet other learners of your TNL, help them but never judge them. Give them advice if only they're asking for some.

You are a guest in the culture and the country, and by extension in the language. Act decently, don't hate or complain too much. Openly criticizing the culture and language is also not okay. Be grateful you can peek behind the curtains and see the culture from the inside.

Don't curse at people, but that goes without saying, just don't get in verbal or physical fights, if you can avoid that.

Be observant, sometimes you will catch yourself on auto-pilot, but I've noticed that when you pay attention to things, signs, movements, etc., you stay sharper and you improve faster overall. You're guiding your consciousness.

If you want people to spontaneously think that you are a native of their language, there's a few things you can try to do, but it's not foolproof. You can try to dress with brands people like in their country. Appear like you're from there on a physical level. But it won't have as much of an effect as practicing thinking in your TNL as much as possible (while still nurturing your native language, don't force yourself). Not only will this shine light on the words and expressions you still don't know, that you can then learn, it also further expands your reality on a very intimate and personal level and this can be observed from the outside.

Remember how I talked about bonding and culture? The bond with self is also very important. Self-talk in your TNL, assuming it doesn't require too much energy, really expands your level and reality. Practice this and thank me later. But also, be honest with yourself, if you don't know how to express a particular idea, google it or ask a friend.

Okay, but when?

I think that there is a question that I specifically kept for later, and that burns you.

When will you be ready to do all of that?

And this is the plot twist of the blog post.

After all, this is a very valid question and one that I should have addressed first in this blog post. When is too early? Can it be too late for me?

And you will now understand why I left out this question.

It does not matter.

Wait what? What do you mean it doesn't matter?

From day 1, hour 0 to 10 years in, this applies in the same way.

The circumstances are different, yes. But no circumstances disprove any of what I talked about above, it just helps you navigate things. At NO point did I advocate doing anything wrong, or lying. I only talked about extending YOUR reality, it is all personal. It's no one's business that you're trying to appear native. Trying to give the impression of having always spoken the language. Adopting your TNL. And I do think it's something you should absolutely keep for yourself.

What do parents do with their new-born baby? Do they wait for the baby to grow up to form bonds with them? Or do they act like the baby is theirs the minute that baby lives? I don't know about every parent, but the trend is showing the latter scenario to be more accurate.

Adopting is a stance, it's fluid, it's not a state. Parents constantly are in a dynamic relationship with their children, it is never done, never is education accomplished or finished, they don't take it for granted and they have to put in the work every day. It's the same thing for you and your TNL.

It's fine if you have been speaking a language on and off for a bit and now want to appear native and adopt the culture. That's not an issue.

Finding a culture interesting from the outside and wanting to appear native from day 1, hour 0, isn't an issue either. You are not judgmental about the language and culture, you're not overestimating your abilities or underestimating the task, you're just showing immense admiration and curiosity. There's nothing wrong with this. Of course, if you tell people you want to appear native in a language that you are just starting with, well you will get weird looks and comments… That's why you never tell anyone about this, it is personal at an utmost level.

But, essentially you will start soaking in the culture and language in a very subconscious way from day 1, which is a great thing, and something I personally have practiced for a while. Of course, there is no question that you will appear non-native in the first stages, and there is nothing wrong about this, it is just about the dynamics you have with the language, you will see it in a much more interesting light than someone who's just studying it.

You will feel many things, and you will eventually form an obsession with the language. Motivation won't even be a word of your vocabulary anymore because you will just do what you find interesting, you will live your life, and both conscious and subconscious learning will just be a part of it.

It is the most casual way you can learn any language.

The mantra doesn't change, in case you were wondering, satisfaction and the feeling of enough are by your side, from day 1, hour 0.

Had I told you this first in the article, you would have maybe not even continued reading, thinking all of this was foolish. But now you actually know that it is not knowledge, it is intuition. Intuition that you can train from day one. You can learn behaviors regardless of how much you understand or know in a language.

That doesn't feel right. Most people would think that first you need the basics and then you need to master an intermediate level to even pretend to act native. On that route that's what you do, you pretend. This is all slow and uninteresting if you want my humble opinion.

What I wrote about is much more intriguing and interesting. Because you extend your reality without an ounce of judgment. Without considering if what you're doing is possible or not.

I promised myself not to share anecdotes, because I think they don't really show anything interesting and there's no way to check that what I say is true, but this one will illustrate this blog post. And if you have read this far, you will know that I have no incentive to lie.

Last year, I went to Portugal, for a full month, setting to learn Portuguese. I couldn't properly align 3 words when first arriving. Over the course of a month, I applied all of what I talked about in the post. By the end, I could easily go into stores and not be disqualified as a native, I could do a lot without people knowing I wasn't Portuguese. Of course, my Portuguese was far, far from perfect, but my behavior in these situations were matching, and my pronunciation and my Portuguese could, not arouse suspicion in some situations. Did it happen every time? Of course not. Many times I got it wrong, I asked questions, I was confused, people started speaking English with me… But these times were equally as valuable, if not more, for my progress. Later last year, I booked a one hour conversation practice with a tutor. It went great, we covered a lot of different subjects and in many of them I made mistakes, and I must admit, it was exhausting to talk during a full hour. But, regardless, I was happy about it, I felt satisfaction. My tutor wrote a review for the lesson and wrote that she thought my level was C1.

Was my level really C1? Maybe, maybe not. Not in every situation that is for sure. I am not a fan of labeling levels, I don't think it makes much sense. But C1 is typically what a native level would be. However, a learner with a C1 level, almost never appears native. Here again is the difference between skill and knowledge. The thing about all of this is that I stayed a month in Portugal (in Porto specifically), and I soaked in a lot of behaviors, in many different environments. And even if my level was far from perfect or great, it was enough to peek behind the curtains and have some amazing interactions. I have yet to go back to Portugal and further apply all of this. And I know that, given enough time, I will be able to appear native most of the time, in most situations. How much time? No one knows. Does it matter?

No.

So, this anecdote with Portuguese is to show you how the mindset I talk about applies in real life. I am by no means a genius. What I do, could not be more human. I never remember anything (or much) consciously. I soak in. I know people that do this too. There are too many cases, from very different people to just be about intelligence, it is about having the right mindset, and not being pressured by limitations from self and others. At the end of the day, we don't know how capable we really are.

So, is this all worth it? What are the benefits of all that, if any?

I imagine that most of you are sold on the idea, and do want to appear native. But for the few skeptics out there, those of you who don't think there is much value in doing all of that, I will answer these two questions.

It is worth giving a try at this, changing your views on the topic, and experimenting. You are the only one able to find out if it's worth it or not. This is not being snobby, trying to appear native isn't just an ego thing. And if it is for an ego boost, it would be one of the worst ways. You can't buy progress or cheat.

You're doing it for yourself, not for how others will perceive you. You can't control this. What made me want to appear native was to feel a sense of belonging. I later on discovered that you could belong to a group regardless of whether or not you appeared native. But it is still very intriguing and fun to do this. There is so much more beneath the surface, beneath what you can see and witness. There is so much behind closed doors. I used the expression of "peeking behind curtains" and I think it is very accurate. I think that's exactly what it is. You want to see and feel how it is. You want to experience something else, so different from what you have always known. All of this is a way to experience more. That's it.

And of course, for those of you who permanently live somewhere, where your TNL is spoken, it can really be advantageous to appear native for people sometimes are wary of foreigners, or behave in a different way with them. Having a sense of blending into the decor, of not standing out where you live is awesome.

We are reaching the end of this blog post about appearing native in your TNL. This was a real pleasure for me to think and write about all of that, and may this post find people that need to read this. It is personally a subject I don't find trivial, for all of the reasons I stated above, and it makes my experience in different cultures extremely fun. I hope it will be the same for you!

Thanks for reading all of this, if you have questions, please make sure to ask them in the comment section.

Yours, Luca

Why is French so hard?

At first, I didn't want to write about this. I didn't see how that could help people, my readers, to get better at speaking French and to seek more opportunities to be immersed, to satisfy their curiosity. I thought: "there's no control over French itself, why even talk about it and make them think about it?" I still think that this is true. However, I was biased to think that my readers could intuitively understand that French being hard isn't a real obstacle but an opportunity to find excuses for inaction and a source of unproductive complaints that led nowhere. How could I think that this was intuitive? It really isn't. I can't tell people to just shut down these sort of reactions when facing the difficulty French, or learning French as a foreign language, brings. I owe you explanations, I shouldn't just give advice that makes sense to me that you should blindly follow. This is against my philosophy. This is what I am going to do in this blog post. I will answer the question of why French is so hard and I will give you elements and tactics that you will be able to use to navigate the next situation where you will feel overwhelmed by French. The next situation when you will think to yourself that French people specifically designed their language to piss you off and make your life unnecessarily hard.

Let's get started, shall we?

First of all, I just want to make the distinction between hard and complex, clear.

For that, a little exercise: Running 100 m in under 10 s. Hard or complex? Explaining the difference between left and right. Hard or complex? Riding a bicycle. Hard or complex? Asking someone you like on a date. Hard or complex?

If you answered: Hard; Complex; Complex; Hard. Then you get it. You're a champ, give yourself a tap on the back.

If not, all is good. The explanation won't be long. The difference between something being hard and complex or easy and simple, is simple but hard to explain. Hard or easy = the amount of effort you put in; complex and simple = how many independent principles and variables go into doing something.

Let's take the: "running 100 m in less than 10 s" example.

On a fundamental level, what is needed to achieve this? To run fast enough. Is it easy to run? No, it takes some effort. Is it simple? It should be pretty straightforward, you just need to put one leg in front of the other and jump in between. You need to do all that, fast enough. And this is incredibly hard. Only athletes who dedicate their lives to it, get to achieve this.

So, going back to the initial problem. Is French hard or complex? The question in itself is implicit and ambiguous. There's two ways to understand the question.

1. Is learning French hard or complex? 2. Is speaking French hard or complex?

That makes more sense already. Because French doesn't exist. It only exists partially, it's scattered and shared between all of its speakers. Talking about speaking or learning it, is more appropriate.

So, to answer question 1, learning French is hard, not complex. What you need to do, is obnoxiously simple. To be exposed to French enough, and try your best until it works, if I'm being a bit reductionist here. Is it easy, though? Not at all.

Question 2. Is speaking French complex? Is speaking French complex and easy? Yes and yes. It is easy for me, a native French speaker, to speak French. In fact, it is the easiest thing in the world. My mind has grown to accommodate this communication tool. It is both intuitive and effortless for me (still being a bit reductionist here). But is French so complex that you need decades to even start to understand how complex it is? Yes. So much so in fact that we might never fully understand how it works and why it is the way it is. Talking about a complex thing.

So, what brought you to this post, I'm sure, is the fact you wanted to know if learning French was harder than learning other languages and why it would be.

After all, French has this reputation of being a hard language to learn and to speak as a foreigner. What is that about?

This long introduction about complexity and hard/easy wasn't for nothing.

You see, every language has its own complexity. And the tricky thing is that, you cannot compare these complexities between one another. Ask two people that learned the same two languages to describe their experience, chances are low that they will agree on which is the more complex language or why that is. All languages are human-evolved, and there is no reason that one language would be more complex than another. They're just different. And that's hard to conceive before learning how to speak different languages, I know.

Even if different, French is as complex as English, German, Korean, Spanish, Punjabi...

Not convinced?

Pronunciation-wise, French doesn't use any sound that you couldn't find in Portuguese and German. Of course it sounds different, and it has its own touch. But so do German and Portuguese. It doesn't have any emphasis on syllables, unlike most languages. And it doesn't have the most sounds. It only has 33 sounds versus more than 40 for English for example.

Grammar-wise, French's conjugation is relatively easy, not changing too much, and not using the past and future tenses of the subjunctive anymore. No cases, only two genders.

Do you find vocabulary to be harder? It is as complex and diverse as every other Indo-European language, so that doesn't work either.

Listen, you can find a huge amount of aspects of French that are hard to grasp and use, and equally as many that are easy and intuitive to you.

This comes from the nature of language. It's infinitely complex. French is a language. Therefore it is infinitely complex. Like EVERY other language. It is an inherent part of LANGUAGE.

Still not convinced? Consider that French speaking children don't start speaking French after English speaking kids or kids from anywhere.

I hear the argument about French's writing system a lot. Yes, sometimes you don't know how to write a word or a sound, if it's "ai" or "er" or "é"... Indeed, this is hard to learn and remember. Does it make French hard to write in? Yes. Are other languages also tough to write in? Absolutely. The task of putting sounds and emotions on paper is hard, in any language. Some languages make it a tiny bit easier, but I assure you, it's as hard for me to write in English, that it is to write in French. Writing in any language is a tough exercise.

And the point of this blog post isn't to say: "there is no reason for you to struggle with French, it isn't harder than other languages." It's quite the opposite actually. In fact, it is totally normal for you to struggle with French, because it is complex, but as complex as any other language, not more.

Not to mention that learning French requires adapting and learning the associated French speaking culture. This is incredibly tough and brings about so many challenges. Modulating your value system, your views of the world and your own culture awareness, isn't something that is done without challenges. But guess what? You would need to do this with any language you learn, that's not something exclusive to French.

Then, why? Why do people think that? Why do people feel like French is so much harder than other languages. Most people that say this, are either people that haven't learned any other language before, and that find themselves guessing, or are people that have learned languages that they had prior exposure to. For example, a Spanish speaker learns English and then French. The problem is, that they didn't start with English when they decided to learn English and set the goal to speak English... They started to learn it the moment they first got exposed to it: from music, shows, tourists, social media... And rarely were they exposed to French. This is why, in my opinion, English has this reputation for being a very easy language to learn, among other biases.

French people struggle just as much to learn English as English speakers struggle to learn French, period.

Exposure to French, passive exposure to French is much rarer than English... in most countries. But there are exceptions like countries of North Africa (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia) that have taken in a lot from the French culture and borrowed many words. People there are then very predisposed to learn French, because they hear it often, and there is still this cultural relationship between France and the Maghreb. Is French similar to Arabic? Not for a second. They are completely unrelated. But still, it's easier for them, because of the prior exposure.

So, does it matter to know all that, if you still feel like French people designed their language to give you the hardest possible time?

It helps to know and be conscious of the different biases. Now, I'll help you navigate the occasional feeling of overwhelm French gives you.

It's not going to be too long. This feeling of overwhelm, of being powerless, of not knowing how you could one day speak and understand French, isn't a bad sign... No, this is all excellent news. Hard to believe, I know.

This overwhelm is the single best signal to tell your subconscious that the current system it uses to speak and understand French just doesn't cut it. It says to your subconscious: "yo, change something about what we're doing, cause clearly, it ain't it. It ain't working." How else does your subconscious know it's time for a change? It doesn't. It's lazy, it has to be forced out of its rut and bad habits.

So that's that.

And if you feel hopeless, you have to redirect your thoughts elsewhere. Because the feeling of hopelessness will not help with directing change in the right direction. You will just learn how to be even more unsatisfied and how to despise French even more. Destructive.

You just have to trust yourself on this one. Be confident that you will one day succeed — that you will achieve what you want to achieve — while considering that you don't control it. Too bad, I know.

One way to kill the problem at the root, though, is to just not pay attention to your level, and what you can't do, have as little emotions about it as possible. Let your subconscious do its thing without interfering. I know, easier said than done.

The thing is, even if it's tough, it's possible. You are the only one that decides to be satisfied and not give too much thought to your mistakes (while still noticing them), and you're the only one that decides whether you are going to go back to the same train of thought or not, blaming the complexity of French for your failures and challenges.

You need to reconcile success with failure. This is incredibly cliché, but please bear with me. Failure is the first step to success (I swear it gets better). Failure indicates that something needs to change, failure makes up small accomplishments. Because failure is painful, it allows change to happen. If success feels good, it's only a by-product of the pain experienced with failure. Once you are aware of this, it gets easier to let go of control and adopt more of a neutral look on everything.

So, French is hard for you now, but it is 100% temporary. At some point, through many many different (painful) failures, like native speakers, you too will develop a solid intuition for French. I'm talking about word order, intonations, pronunciation, genders... all of the things that make you struggle now. All of these things will eventually become so natural and intuitive. You just have to be patient.

Did I leave anything out? Do you have any other question that I didn't get to address in this article? Leave a comment!

If you want to take a look at your French journey together, book a free call with me now here.

Yours, Luca

French sounds like gibberish to me...

Of course it does, French is French, it's its own thing, different from anything else, it's hard to understand. It doesn't make sense now, but it shouldn't remain this way. Read this blog post to find out how you can start understanding French, now!

It doesn't make sense to you when you hear it, but it makes intuitive sense to all the people who do speak and understand French. Can they explain why they understand what they understand? They can try... But the answer will mostly be: "Because... Ummhh... You know..."

Like I said, it is so intuitive, that it is impossible to explain. This is puzzling for outsiders, or learners of French, like you. There's nothing to latch onto, it is just a string of random sounds!

How do you jump on a moving train? You can't ask that to the people on the train. These people don't even remember boarding the train, they wouldn't even be able to tell you where the train station is.

So, how do you make sense of French, how do you understand the meaning of what people are saying? How do you make out where each word ends? Where they start? How do you start understanding? So many questions that don't get any definitive clear-cut answers... Too bad, I guess the only thing that we can do is throw in the towel and go do something else...

But wait, hold on a second. How are people able to understand French, those who do? How does it work for them? There is an infinite amount of sentences that are possible in French, and they understand all (most) of them! Hard to believe it's not magic!

Alright, let's break things down a little bit to try to find some clarity. Let's say that you work in the sales department at a company that also hires engineers to design a product. One day you walk into the wrong meeting, and you find yourself in a meeting full of engineers talking about how they can bring down the cost of operation of a very specific machine you've never heard of. Picture this in your mind. What will you understand? Chances are, you'll be pretty lost. From the first sentence they say.

You still don't see how this is related to you learning French? Alright, let's take an even simpler example.

You are at a party and you join a group of your friends and they talk about another party you didn't go to, with people you don't know. You get in the circle and you try to make sense of things. But you don't know who is Michelle, who is Tyler or Ron! You don't know about their relationships to one another! You don't know what happened during the night, so you can't understand the conversation, you can't contribute to it! Ring any bell? Would that feel similar to you being in a group of French people talking about a random subject?

That feeling of being lost isn't because you're not smart, hard working or paying attention enough! It is because you don't have enough shared experiences to understand!

In the first example I used, you could've made sense of the conversation if you would have started the project along them and listened to everything, asking questions when you didn't understand something, you would get familiar with the main concepts, and the names of the different concepts, the lingo... It doesn't mean you would understand everything but you could follow the conversation. Would you be able to correct one of your fellow engineer colleagues if they're wrong? Not likely. Would you be able to contribute to the conversation? Of course!

In the second example, you would have understood much better if you had spent some time with the same people that were at the party your friends are talking about. You would have understood even better if you were there! Of course maybe not everything because you usually don't follow everyone all the time at a party, (I mean you gotta take restroom breaks) so you'd maybe have to ask a few questions at one point or another.

So there's times you don't understand a conversation in English. Does it mean that you don't speak English well enough? I doubt it. Does it mean you didn't share enough experiences to connect the dots and understand the lingo or who everyone is? Most likely.

Now, how is this different with a foreign language you want to learn such as French? It isn't. The only difference is that with English, you have the confidence to assume that you could get up to speed with the conversation, because you've done it thousands of times!! In French, you're not that confident because you haven't done it enough. How could you be more confident? By doing it more..? YES!!

Only when you will have evidence that you can understand and get up to speed with a conversation in French, will you have the confidence to stay calm and do like you do in English. Asking questions, paying attention and not doubting yourself. "Why even have doubts? I've done it thousands of times!"

So in English you don't understand who is Ron or Michelle, and how they relate to one another... In French you might be confused about what is "j'ai" and "peur" and what's their relationship... That's okay, just ask. You can even ask a translator app or Google, it's never a waste of time. Or you can even try to feel your intuition. What do you see? What is the person doing? What does it look like they're thinking, how are they feeling? Make inferences. After all babies and children do it all the time, you can't explain words with words to someone who doesn't know words!

The beauty of this is that if you are in the right environment (e.g. in France, or in a French group where you live) you don't have a choice, it's right in front of you. If you're at least a little bit interested in French, you will listen, you will pay attention to the conversation you're witnessing. Sure you won't understand all of their words. You won't know when each word is ending and when each word is starting (that's a problem with French), but you are gathering data from two different channels. What you hear, and what you witness — two French guys showing themselves photos of cars, having a conversation, asking questions, and whatever emotions you feel (excitement, sadness, amusement...).

That's it, that's your shared experience. Right there, right then.

"Wait, that's it?" I hear you think.

No, that's not it, you're trying to learn French, also known as a full LANGUAGE. Do you know how much shared experience you need with other people to start to understand what they say and what they mean reliably? You don't know? Me neither.

Spend as much time as possible having shared experiences with French natives. You don't need to be an active part of it, you just need to be there, and observe (without being rude or nosey, obviously) and boom, you get better at understanding. It's great if you are in the conversation, as it raises the stakes significantly, but it can be too much to handle, especially when you start out. On the other hand, watching shows or listening to podcasts is, I think, not engaging enough, because it doesn't matter if you tune out because it is too hard to understand, you can literally turn it off and go do something else. And you don't witness all that much, you hear, maybe see what the cameras allow you to see. Shows aren't real life, and what you want to learn is French that is applicable to... real life. So, getting out there in a French speaking environment and just paying attention, while also speaking when you have the opportunity, will make your comprehension skills sky rocket. I've experienced it first hand. This is exactly how I learn languages.

Also, if you listen to one hour of French content a day, you can consider yourself a hard worker, and it is pretty draining. If you are in a French speaking environment (again could be a place or just a friend group) you will have little bits of conversations about different real life things that you wouldn't hear in shows, and in many different situations. Of course, this will be very draining but you don't have to rely on motivation, and that's the point. You train your ear.

And you know what? As a bonus, your accent is going to be so much better. Just from having people speak around you, and you paying attention. This is what comprehensive input is.

So, how do you jump on a moving train, and understand everything French people say? At first you don't, you observe the train from the outside, you can ask it to slow down sometimes and try to jump on it if you can. You build up your listening skills, from experience. And guess what, it's exhilarating.

Does it mean you just need to do this? If you only want to do this, sure. If you feel curious about other things, about what you hear ("Why was it a "de" and not an "à"?"), go ahead and ask your questions. Want to try to jump on the moving train, look up some words and give it a try. Can it be a wreck? Yes. Will this be a great experience either way? Absolutely. But that's a subject for another blog post. This is about comprehension.

Eventually you will be able to understand an infinite combination of words that make up different ideas because you have enough shared experience to guess accurately what the new idea is. Because there are many building blocks, but there's a finite amount. You can count how many words a language has (around 160,000 for English, that we use, and 100,000 for French if you were wondering).

When your friend tells you to shut up on an amused tone, you know exactly what they mean. You're not going to get annoyed, or ask what you should "shut up" because you've had the experience before. They're just amused at your joke or your teasing so they say "Shut up" as a comeback. So you just laugh. You understand.

That's it for me.

Having trouble with your French and planning to move to a French speaking country? Let's look at how you can find solutions together over a call!

Yours, Luca