Happily Ever After

This past weekend I jumped up to 36% fluent in French according to Duolingo. The fluency tracking is more inspiring to me than other elements of Duolingo, so I"m happy they added this feature.

This weekend I also watched Happily Ever After, a 2004 French film starring Charlotte Gainsbourg. The movie was charming and beautifully shot. It's on Netflix if you're looking for French films about long-term satisfaction (or lack thereof) in monogamy. Great performances all around, beautiful Paris apartments, and a lengthy Johnny Depp cameo.

I was oddly moved by a scene set in the Paris Virgin Megastore (it closed in 2014, alas), where I bought my first Françoise Hardy album when I was 20. Ah, memories!

Practicing French & some tweaks

According to Duolingo, I am 28% fluent in French. I'm at level 11 and feel like I have plateaued a bit, but hopefully, with practice on some of the things I'm finding more challenging (bonjour, conjugaisons de verbes), I'll pop out of this stuck spot and keep getting better.

Two of my coworkers can speak conversational French and do so from time to time. Hopefully, I can offer more in those conversations soon.

I am practicing French and Spanish simultaneously, though I only added Spanish a couple weeks ago. Because there is so much literature in Spanish in my daily life (signs on the subway, advertisements, etc.) I think I am coming along in that much faster, which is a little disheartening considering that I lived in France for a summer and took two courses in the language in college. Immersion makes a huge difference, and that summer in France was 13 years ago (wow)!

To try to increase my level of immersion, I've made the following little tweaks in my life:

• Set the language on my phone to French
• On an iPhone, choose Settings>General>Language & Region>iPhone Language>Français
• Set the language on my internet browser to French
• In Chrome, click the three vertical dots to the right of your URL bar. Choose Settings. Scroll down and open the Advanced tab. Set your language (I almost exclusively type to other people in English, so I have left my spell check settings in US English, but my browser is now in French!)
• Writing my to-do lists in French. This one is harder as I tend to jot things down in a hurry, and now I have to stop and think about them more. Also, to-do lists are always verbs. But that's where I need to work the most, so it's probably good that this is tough.

Have you made little adjustments in your daily life to help you learn a new language? Any tips?

Bonjour!

Bonjour! Je m'appelle Becca, and I am a Francophile.

I, like everyone else, am busy most of the time. I work, I have social obligations, I cook, I have a side hustle. Nothing special. We all do.

But I also wish my French weren't so abysmal, so I thought I would start a blog to track my practice and the cultural tidbits I alway seem to be checking out. Nothing fancy.

I use Duolingo to practice both French and Spanish, and I'm always happy for some friendly competition. I'm whynotbecca on the Duolingo app.