I began three days ago

Monopoli in summer. Next time I am here, what will I be able to say?

I have been learning French for a long time and despite thinking that choosing maths as one of my Uni majors (maths and French) was wise given the dearth of maths teachers at the time that I graduated, it has always been the French that has got me the next job, onto the next adventure, living in the next place and meeting new people. I am competent in French, there is no doubt, but I continue to learn, and enjoy my language learning, every day.

My methods are tried and true - watching the French news (a whole lot easier now given that I can replay episodes on my computer, phone or television at any time), getting French email alerts (franceinfo) day and night, reading in French (a random choice of whatever I can lay my hands on from the libraries), communicating with my French friends (I never did think that Instagram and Facebook would work for me but they have proved me wrong) and being alert to any and all expressions, discussions and articles that would make my language more correct, more colloquial, more authentic. I also continue to speak French to my son, which keeps me on my toes but has become such a habit that I'm not sure we'll ever change our ways.

I have loved my role as a French teacher (no, I am not writing a cover letter although re-reading this it looks that way) and this too has continued to reinforce my own skills.

So, becoming a learner of a new language is exciting, but strangely disconcerting. I know how far I have to go, I know how much time and passion I will have to dedicate to my learning and, if I am honest, I am slightly trepidatious that it will impact my French (change my accent, interfere with my fluency) even though I know exactly what I would respond to someone voicing this fear to me.

In my last blog, I recounted the linguistic surprise that I received at the Italian Consulate, which resulted in me having to take a much quicker journey to speaking Italian than I was expecting.



I began three days ago...

by heading over to Duolingo. My teaching sensors were on high alert from the very beginning...why was I being taught this, what could the pattern be that I was being exposed to by repetition, would I learn which word needed il and which la without a list of masculine and feminine nouns by my side, would the lack of grammatical explanations hinder or help my progress...? It is so very different from the classroom text books which mostly start with simple greetings and progress so very slowly. In the first five minutes of Duolingo I was writing, repeating and putting together sentences.

I then headed to Babbel. Just the faffing around with setting up the microphone was a hint that it was not going to be the right fit for me, but confirmed when I was made to repeat Grazie, Ciao and Buona notte over and again in the same time that I had put together Io mangio il pane (I am eating the bread) on Duolingo. But, this is not to knock Babbel. I suspect that the rapid introduction of new words and grammatical ideas (without them being explained explicitly) over on Duolingo would be off-putting to many complete beginners.

Some of what I have completed so far: 

conjugation of parts of a few verbs (eat, cut, drink, be...but I don't yet know the infinitives), introduction to a couple of prepositions (nel, ai), making a sentence negative with a single word 'non' (in French you need two words), not noticing initially that 'no' and 'non' were different and used differently ('no' when you mean 'No' and 'non' to make a sentence negative), the use of gli (not i) to make an article plural when you have a noun beginning with a vowel (eg gli uccelli), the pronunciation of the 'c' in forchetta (not ch), discovering that some words are great fun to say (cuochi, bicchieri, burro, aglio), finding that my ear is not tuned into the difference between il and un when said quickly in the middle of a sentence and using il (French) for he (instead of lui) and wanting to pronounce un as I would in French...

Fingers crossed I can keep it up... what if this were just the universe's way of letting me know that my next adventure will be more verde, biancho e rosso  than bleu, blanc, rouge?

PS I love the photo of my son and I, which seemed to fit today's blog ... in Italy and reaching up, up, up.