Blog Post #19: French Frustrations

One of my main goals this year is to improve my foreign language skills. If I had to score how I am going out of 10, 7 excluded, I would say a six. While I have been consistent on DuoLingo (21 day streak baby!), I am caught up in an annoying vortex of where to go next.

The crux of my issue is that I have three languages that I would love to know, but they each offer pros and cons that don’t make a clear decision easy.

• German: I studied German at school, and have spent ten months in Germany working and living all up. That experience and my interest in the language means that this language is far and away the one I am best at, and I have the fundamentals down. The downsides are that German is not a very useful language, and I have few opportunties to use it here in Denver.
• French: The advantage of French is that I am a Francophile, and I would love to be able to order in French at a restaurant. Paris is one of my favourite cities, and I would love to live there at some point. I have also been grinding a fair bit of DuoLingo on this language, and so I am not bad at reading it. The downside, and this is a MASSIVE one, is that for the life of me I cannot understand it when spoken. The combination of silent letters and the inflection just makes the whole language a black box.
• Spanish: The best thing about Spanish is that it is a language with the biggest personal upside. Even in lily-white Colorado, Spanish language is a major asset, and I think I would have lots of opportunities to practice it. Plus we are thinking of going to Mexico in December, which would be a great chance to focus on it. The downsides is that Spanish is just a bit, I don’t know, meh? It feels the most like homework.

One of the reasons I write this blog is to get my thoughts out on paper, which helps me think clearer. Having thought about this a bit more, I think the way forward is to plan out some discrete goals, rather than just “get better”. I’ll think about it, and get back to you.

In the meantime, do you speak a second (or third!) language? What has worked for you, and what would you do?

Tschuss, Salud, Adios, Ciao