The single biggest culture shock in moving to Switzerland is the French language.  It’s everywhere you look in day to day life from the grocery store, to street signs, to looking up information on the internet, to public transport, to restaurants, to people on the street…to everywhere!  We knew before coming here it would go a long way to learn as much French as we could.  I thought it would be interesting to write a series on what we’ve done thus far and how we’re continuing to learn.

To start, neither Melissa nor I have had any formal lessons in French.  We both had taken languages in high school, Spanish for her and German for me, which I think was a big help to at least have some of the language learning circuits in place.  We began learning French in May 2014 after Melissa decided to take the interview in Switzerland.

I was a very casual learner before our trip.  We had our wedding coming up, and I was still working a very busy job.  At the start my main tool was a free app with good reviews called Duolingo, and I mostly just tried to do a lesson or two a day.  I would also sometimes peruse the website  http://french.about.com/ for grammar tips and lists of essential phrases, as well as  listen to  a French radio station on our XM radio (but that was mostly just to annoy Melissa).

On our trip in July our French was terrible.  All we could do is say a few of the memorized phrases to a waitress or hotel front desk clerk.  If they spoke back in French, all we could do was give a blank stare and ask if they spoke English.   It’s a humbling experience to be surrounded by another language and it feels so embarrassing and rude to expect them to know English in their home country.  Our trip in July gave me a lot of motivation to learn.

When we got back in the states I  had a lot of confidence in Melissa taking the job, and decided to study hard. Plus it helped that I didn’t have a job, so I had lots of free time.  In addition to Duolingo,  my Aunt and Uncle, Joan and Dave, borrowed me their books and tapes for French in Action.  I also bought a book called “The Berlitz Self-Teacher”,  as well as a French-English dictionary, and a verb book.

I spent the most time on Duolingo, I would guess that by October when I had finished all the lessons I had spent around 200 hours on it.  It’s a good method because it’s free, it teaches lots of vocabulary, and it forces you to learn the difficult French spelling.  My only complaints about it are that it doesn’t teach pronunciation and speaking well, and that it doesn’t help you to think in French.  The whole program is set up to only make you proficient at translating French.

French in Action is an immersion method, so it’s a bit difficult at first, because the workbook, cassette tapes, and movies are all in French from the start.  I ran out of time to finish it completely; I was able to finish all 52 half hour movie lessons, but only made it to lesson 20 with the book and cassette tapes.  This is a harder method to stick to as it requires very concentrated listening and it is hard to make it through more than one lesson a day.  But, doing this method I was finally able to hear and understand very basic French at conversational speed.

The Berlitz Book is very good because it is easy.  The entire book only takes about 10 hours to read.  It is set up with a line of french words, then a phonetic pronunciation of those words, and then an English translation.  I read it cover to cover 4 times and am reading it again.  For me, learning without a teacher to talk to, this book is the most helpful in pronunciation and speaking.

The dictionary and verb book may not have been wise purchases.  Google translate is so much better and faster than the dictionary, it’s not even funny.  I even have the Google translate app on my phone, and can take pictures of text, or type words to translate when I’m out and about.  The verb book might be useful if I become advanced enough, but right now if I can remember the proper verb to use, I count that as a victory and just guess at its conjugation.

What I’m doing currently to learn French is: listening to French talk radio, picking up a newspaper every few days, and getting forced to talk to French people while running errands around town.

I would say right now I’m not quite conversational.  I can think of how to say most things I want, it just takes me too long for a conversation, and I get the gender, word order, and conjugation wrong all the time.  Listening to other people if they speak slowly enough and use small enough words and sentences I can get it, but that’s not quite conversation either.

I think for me to break through to the next level, I have to get the courage to speak more in public, or find French people patient enough to speak French with me.  Melissa will start formal lessons on the 26th.  If she can get good enough so we can speak French at home I think that would help a lot too.

So in conclusion, yes you can learn a new language when you’re an adult! (It just takes a lot of time)