A number of you have asked for ways to improve your French now that you have a francophone girlfriend or boyfriend.
If you feel frustrated that you cannot maintain conversations completely in French, there’s no need to give up. Try a different approach to keep moving forward in French if your frustration level is really high.
For most of you in this situation, your boyfriend or girlfriend is probably bilingual. If you’re with a unilingual, I’ll guess that your French is probably already very strong and that this isn’t a concern.
If your bilingual boyfriend or girlfriend agrees to it, consider speaking in English yourself while the other speaks in French.
This way, you’re still getting all the exposure you need to French but without the frustration of having to speak it yourself right away.
Start incorporating more French into your speech as time goes by. This will become much easier after you’ve been listening to your girlfriend or boyfriend speak to you in French for an extended time.
I don’t feel that you must eliminate your language to learn French.
Listening to French is essential. Don’t think for a minute that it doesn’t count towards improving your French, even if you’re still speaking in English right now.
Speak whatever French you know and keep extending your boundaries, but just because you resort to English in the earlier stages doesn’t mean that you won’t learn French.
If you both resort to always using English, however, then you’re stuck!
I love the title of your article! Sounds like good advice to me.
I’d like to ring in with my own experience.
I’m Québécois and my girlfriend — now wife — is from Manitoba. When we first started going out in Montréal, she hardly new any French except for the written French she learned in high school. Now, I was a FSL teacher and I did help her by answering all her questions, but we always — to this day — spoke English together. The language a couple uses together from the onset is a very difficult thing to change. Yet, she was determined to learn the language and she did in a relatively short period of time (certainly less than year to be comfortable both in the workplace and in social settings). She constantly immersed herself and always made an effort to use French even when swtiching to English would have been easy. Obviously, her desire to learn meant that people were very receptive and eager to help her as well.
In other words, the boyfriend or girlfriend is not always the best person to help you: you have to want to learn it and you need to put yourself in a situation to do so. Significant others are never responsible for one’s failure to learn a language. On the upside, anyone who wants to learn can do it with a high degree of success.
You’re absolutely right that a significant other is never responsible for someone’s not learning a language. It is always the learner’s responsibility. If learning the language isn’t occurring within the relationship, then it’s important to put yourself in other social situations where it can occur.
The language a couple uses can change (this has been my experience) or become a blend of both, although some might find this difficult or strange.
I can definitely attest to this. From the beginning, my bilingual Quebecois other-half and I (an American) started our relationship in English. After deciding that I wanted to learn French, I found ways to learn it and practice it on my own and I’ve gotten to the point where I can actually keep up with a conversation in social settings, similar to your situation with your wife. Now, for us it does feels awkward if we try to speak French, maybe in the future it will become more natural, but so far it’s just plain awkward. Lol. Not to mention that he is completely useless at “teaching” me or explaining things to me when I have questions – ‘Umm… just pick the one that sounds better’, which I don’t mind 🙂 but yes, I agree with your argument that a significant other might not be the best person for the job. I got to where I am mainly because I have the motivation to learn the language and because I looked for ways to practice it without relying on him to teach me.
I am glad I learned it (still working on it, of course) because visiting Montreal is much more enjoyable than it was when I didn’t know any French.
Yes, significant others aren’t always a sure bet for answering language questions!
It could be beneficial to socialise with shared francophone friends or with the family of the boyfriend/girlfriend. It will broaden the range of situations in which you use French together.
will this approach help me find a French girlfriend?
I would also like to mention that there is now a book that teaches real Québécois, much like this wonderful website, but in the form of a structured book with dialogues, grammar, vocab, exercises, etc. — and even recordings.
http://www.lulu.com/shop/alexandre-coutu/le-qu%C3%A9b%C3%A9cois-en-10-le%C3%A7ons/paperback/product-20413778.html
Disclaimer: I am the author.
Thank you for this fantastic advice! I married a Québécoise, and everything you said in this article is absolutely true. For those who are trying to learn Québec French, as I have been doing, I strongly recommend the book ‘French Fun’ by Steve Timmins, which deals solely with the French of Québec. Another fantastic resource is ‘Dictionnaire de La Langue Québécoise’ by Léandre Bergeron, published by VLB Editeur. It is very complete and very useful. If you use the latter, you are best to talk with a francophone friend to find out proper usage of the words, as some are very regional.
Hi Kevin, I agree — French Fun is a good book to get an introduction to many informal features of Quebec French.
I was in a long distance thing with une Québécoise whose English is fairly good, but she is not fully bilingual. I, on the other hand, had very poor French when we met. Though a relationship didn’t work out, to this day we still talk constantly… I text her in French only, and she texts me English, and we only switch if it seems there has been a misinterpretation. Sometimes it takes us 3-4 tries in 2 languages to see that we have been saying the same thing all along :). We correct one another’s errors if we feel the need to, and the progression has been astoundingly fast on both sides.
(also, thank you so much for this blog… it has helped me so, so, so much)