10 Commandments: Learning A Second Language!

As a native {Australian} English speaker, I can honestly say that learning another language has been one of the most rewarding and challenging things that I have ever done. It is something that I still struggle with at times, but when I think back to my early days of living in France, I realise just how far I have come. 

I didn't learn a language at school. The closest that I ever came to learning one was when I was a kid; my Grandma used to sit my sister and I in our study, with her old French text book and make us learn French Proverbs. It was actually something that we enjoyed, but as we got older, it was one of those games, like 'Eye Spy With My Little Eye', that you kind of just forgot about playing.

When I told people that I was going to live in France, everyone said, 'Don't worry, you'll pick up the lingo'... 'Immerse yourself in the culture and you'll be fluent in no time'! 

Those people were drips who didn't have a clue; and I was an even bigger drip for thinking, 'Yeah, they're probably right'! 

I mean, sure, that works well for some people {those who are adept at languages, perhaps} and it makes sense, doesn't it. Surely if you are living somewhere foreign, you should start to pick up a few words, at least! Um, no! Not me! I am someone who needs to hear a word, see it {on paper}, hear it again, see it again, repeat it a few times... and then I'll forget it and need to start the whole process from the beginning.

It took me a damn long time - over a year before I could even hear individual, french words. When French people spoke, their whole conversation sounded like one, incredibly long word and I found myself waiting for the next word to be said - or even for them to slow down and take a breather so that I could escape them and avoid the humiliation of them discovering that 'I only speak a little French' - which actually means, not a whole fucking lot!

With that said, if you are planning on travelling to a foreign land, it will only benefit and change your whole experience if you can speak, even a little, of the native tongue and what ever your reason for wanting to learn another language, I have put together some of my best advice, that I wish someone had given me, before coming to LIVE in France.

To learn another language, you need to have the right frame of mind. You have to commit yourself to learning and be willing to go at it with consistency. Decide which language you would like to learn and choose how you would like to learn it; are you going to sign up for a course through TAFE or University? Would you prefer to do it on your own  - online or by books & CD's? Do you think that you would learn better with a study-budy? What ever learning option you go with, make sure it is the right option for you, because you know yourself better than anyone else and only YOU can know what works best for you!

Before you start to learn your 2nd language, give yourself a quick refresher course in the grammar of your own mother-tongue! It is no good learning another language if you don't know the difference between a verb, an adjective, a noun or an article. When I got serious about learning French, I actually had to put it on hold, jump on line and refresh my memory. Make a cheat sheet and keep it beside you so that you wont forget! 

Once you have done this, start on the new language. A good place to begin would be with the verb 'To Be'. It's the most commonly used in every language and once you know it, go from there.

 

There are a wealth of free on-line courses in most languages at your finger tips, so if that is the way that you want to go, Good luck! However, if you feel more comfortable with books, CD's, MP3's - there are an array of applications ready to use on smart phones, the possibilities are endless. In fact, as I'm writing this, I'm wondering, with all of the available opportunities there are to learn foreign languages, why more people aren't doing so!

Unfortunately for me, when I needed to learn French, the internet at Mathieu's parents house was the old, dial up kind so it was pain-stakingly slow; it was for that reason that I decided to buy a few different books and CD's and learn French that way. I am proud to say that I am self-taught, and trust me, if I can do it... you can too!

This goes without saying, but in order to be good at something you have to practise at it and be consistent with it. It's no good buying a French book, reading it everyday for one week and then not picking it up for two. You will never learn anything that way! Try to set aside some time for yourself everyday, so that you can get in at least half an hour. You don't have to sit there for hours; you wont learn anything once you stop wanting to learn, so don't let it become like jail time. If you are someone {like me}, who believes that you don't have as many hours in the day as the average person - snap out of it! Even five or ten minutes will do you good and I'm sure that you can find that somewhere! 

No one can force you to learn a language and no one can do it for you; if life was that easy, I'd have other people dieting for me all the time and I'd have Uni degrees coming out of my ears! As I mentioned earlier, you know what methods of study will work best for you. Here are some things that I did on a daily basis to really embed the language into my brain:

• I set aside one hour per day to read over my French books. I sat at the kitchen table with a pot of hot tea and wrote out verb conjugations until my fingers bled {not really,but you know!}, one after the other. I read about grammar rules and if I didn't understand something completely, I would look it up online or refer to one of the many other French books that I had in my possession. Also, until I understood something and felt comfortable with it, I wouldn't let myself move on to the next chapter of the book. Even if I couldn't make the full hour, I always tried to do something, even if it was reading over the work that I had done the day before.
• Whilst cleaning the house, instead of listening to music, I would put on a French CD. I would put it on repeat until I knew it off by heart, just like a song. It really helped with my pronunciation.
• I watched my favourite DVD's with French subtitles, or I would watch them in French with English subtitles. 
• I started listening to French music. Sometimes as an exercise, if I didn't feel like reading through a text book, I would listen to one of the CD's, pick a song and try to translate it; it led me to the  discovery of new words all the time.
• To learn the names of everyday appliances, I made labels with a Dymo machine - and I labelled absolutely everything! I had the French name, the English name, it's plural and whether it was feminine or masculine. I cant tell you how much this helped me, not only with learning what things were called, but how they were spelled!
• For years, behind the toilet door, I had a picture of a Clinique model. I wrote all over her; what each body part was called; again, if it was masculine, feminine and it's plural. I did the same for clothes & cosmetics - I would tear pages out of magazines and made a quite a large collage behind the loo door.
• For the verbs that I really had trouble remembering, I started making my own verb cards. On one side, I wrote the French conjugations and on the other side, the English. I would keep them and test myself until I knew them by heart.

Like with anything, there will be hiccups along the way. Of course you will make mistakes, be misunderstood, misinterpreted. You will be treated like a clown, perhaps as though you are deaf and stupid. You will have people hear your accent and then find them starting to speak in English. What ever the reason, you are bound to get angry at some point. Learning something and learning it well is a long process. You will feel like you are not learning quickly enough and as though you are stupid. You will have moments when you progress quickly and then feel as though you are regressing. You will question your every reason for even wanting to learn another language and you will get angry - so just let yourself! Be mad and stop your studies - for a day. Or two days. Soon enough, something amazing will happen and you will have a breakthrough and realise how far you have come since you first started. 

This is easier said than done, and is more about YOU than anything else - but when learning a new language - when speaking a new language, you need to speak it with a little oomph, and pizazz! Latin languages are more musical then the English language, so you need to speak it and come across as though you know what you are saying. And, why wouldn't you, with all of the studying that you have been doing and all of the progress that you have made from the beginning, you should be feeling more confident within yourself!

Confidence is something that will come naturally and with a little time, so you don't really need to fake it. When you start speaking to people, you will find your voice and get used to hearing another language come out of your mouth. Remember, the more that you remove yourself from your comfort zone, the more you speak, the more confident you will become. Then, nothing can stop you!

I find that when I'm nervous, is when I have the most trouble finding my words - in any language! So, I take a deep breathe, hold it, exhale and then speak. It's as though that deep breathe has wiped the slate clean of any stumblings & stutterings that I have made in the past. That's my story anyway and I'm sticking with it!

So, after a while - hopefully you have developed your own learning rythm and you should be able to remember commonly used verbs and be able to form sentences. When meeting new people, even if they speak your mother-tongue, insist on speaking the language that you are learning. Otherwise, you will fall into the pattern of speaking your own language and you wont progress. 

It's one thing knowing verbs and nouns but it is another to be able to use this newly acquired talent in an everyday conversation - because trust me, one thing that language books do not teach you, are informal conversations like the kind you would have with family or close friends. Which leads me to my next point...

When meeting new people, they will understand that you are foreigner and if they have a brain in their head, they will try and speak a little bit slower for you - if they don't, don't be afraid to ask them to slow the fuck down! 

If you don't understand something that has been said, say so and ask them to explain it. I think that the French {and I say this with love and affection} love to hear the sound of their own voices, so they wont mind at all explaining the history of the expression they have just dropped into the conversation. There are a lot of expressions and idioms used in the French language, especially in the south and they don't always translate to what they actually mean - so, it is better just to ask, smile and find it funny!

Listening to what people say and how they say it, the particular words they use, the formal, the informal - it will only better your knowledge and understanding, so don't listen with deaf ears!

Don't ever get to the point where you think that you have learnt all that you need to know - not only is that arrogant, when it comes to a foreign language {anything actually} there is always something more to learn! 

I remember once when I was on a holiday with Mathieu, we met an English couple who were eating at the table next to us. Both had studied French at university, so obviously, they were quite adept at speaking it. I remember though, the husband made a lot of errors in pronouncing certain words and at the time, I was only learning French by myself, from books, yet I knew how to say those words correctly. It goes to show that no matter what your level of qualification, we are only human and are bound to make mistakes, especially if we don't revise things!

I hope these help in some way! Good luck on your journey and in your travels!