EPISODE 2
Find this episode on Spotify at: Episode 2: Is this Madness?
Find this episode on YouTube at: Episode 2: Is This Madness?
Benvenuti, Bienvenue, Croeso and Welcome
Hi, I’m Juliet. Join me on a journey through my language learning process, in real time, and learn my thoughts on different aspects of language learning with the ALLT Podcast, which stands for A Language Learning Tale. Today I’m talking about…
Is This Madness, or, Starting to Refresh My French
Yes, refresh. This isn’t a ‘from scratch’ deal, but a waking up of latent information hidden in those rarely visited cubbyholes in my brain.
Back in my youth, French was one of the languages I learnt. In fact, everyone at school had to learn French from the first year of Secondary School – that’s age 11 for those from other nations. However, I didn’t stop there. I continued on to A levels and then on further to a Diploma in Foreign Languages for Business, which was a degree equivalent. What I learnt from doing the Diploma, though, was not conversational language, it was, as the title suggests, all business-related, which is not very good for keeping up any ability you may have in conversation. And that’s probably why that is where the French stopped, never to be used again. How long ago is that? Well, let’s just say it’s multiple decades. Whereas Spanish, which I started learning in the second year of Secondary School I did eventually use at work, for about nine or ten years. Again, though, that wasn’t conversational Spanish, it was all related to business.
So, a few weeks ago I decided I was going to see if I could reactivate my French. I clicked on the English to French course on Duolingo. Where else? This, however, was on my ancient phone device that I don’t use as a phone, where the old Duolingo tree still exists. I did the test your French level exercise at the beginning and I only got one thing slightly wrong, which did surprise me after so long and it blew away a few of the cobwebs. Duolingo opened up to me everything up to the first line of Unit 3 on the tree, with every lesson before Unit 3 already at level 2. So, I started at the beginning, and began working my way through, mainly just doing that second level. It was all pretty easy to recall, which was encouraging.
So, I pottered along for about a week and then I had this thought. Back when there was a forum on Duolingo, I remember people saying that they were learning a language from something other than their native language, either through choice, or because their language of choice wasn’t supported from their own. And I thought, what if I tried to learn French from Italian?
Why would I want to do this? It sounds like madness. Um. Because it was a challenge?
When I started, I was a little concerned that I might get confused between French and Italian, because there are a lot of similarities, as there are with Spanish. I had chosen to kick-start my French, rather than my Spanish, partly because the pronunciation is very different. But if I used Italian and French together, perhaps that would help to split it out further. It might also help to improve my Italian.
So, I did that little test again to get my level, and, once again, I made one error. And where did it open the tree up to? Exactly the same place, Capitolo 3, with everything before that at level 2. Well, it wasn’t exactly the same. More on that in a minute.
In the early stages, this hasn’t been too difficult. But I do have to go slowly, because my brain needs a little rewiring. Have I, in error, given an answer in English? Almost, but I managed to check myself. Have I not noticed an agreement in Italian and given the wrong gendered answer in French? Why, yes, of course. Has my mind gone completely blank, because I just couldn’t compute which language I was looking at? Perhaps. Oh, alright then, yes. That one feels really strange. But even stranger is another fact I’ve discovered. I’m not thinking in English, at all. I’m just thinking in Italian and French. I wasn’t expecting that, especially so soon. I was expecting to be doing kind of a three-way translation. But, no. My brain had other ideas.
What this process immediately highlighted was that French and Italian have a lot of very similar words, more than I had expected from what I remembered, and that some very simple words like il and le, or le are used in quite different ways in French and Italian. The similarities might surprise some people, but I do remember reading about a report that said Italian was slightly closer to French than it is to Spanish. I think this is borne out by my current experience. And it seems to me that things are either really similar, or totally different. There’s not much in between.
Another thing I found was that I definitely needed to do all the exercises in the tree to sort all my issues out, which, of course, isn’t possible on the new path, on my computer, because you only have the practice level available for those first stages after doing the test exam. I tried it and it wasn’t enough. That has to be an argument for not doing the test if you’re thinking of doing something similar to me and only have access to the new path. So, I’ve been exclusively using the old tree to get going. Whether or not this will be how I finish, I don’t know.
The Italian version of learning French, though, is quite different from the English version. There are these little dialogues and multiple choices, that aren’t just a list of words, available in English to French, as you do the lessons, that don’t appear in Italian to French. There are also little tips that pop up if you make specific errors. I haven’t yet seen any of those in the Italian to French version. Honestly, I don’t expect to. Also, the length of the course starting from English is very long. Starting from Italian, it’s quite short.
There may be more than one reason for the latter. Firstly, of course, there are likely many more English-speaking learners, so more time will be spent on developing courses for them. And secondly, both Italian and French are romance languages, with a lot of similarities, as I’ve already mentioned. So, perhaps, it’s considered easier to learn French from Italian and doesn’t need as much time spent. In truth, it’s probably a combination of these two factors.
Whatever it is, I’m going to persevere, using Italian to French and see where this takes me. Will I have re-learnt enough of my French by the time I get to the end of the Italian-French tree? Or will I have to go back and continue with the English-French tree? Well, given that I learnt French to a fairly high level, technically, in my youth, perhaps the Italian-French tree will be enough to refresh my memory.
And, I definitely think it’s better to consolidate two languages at once. That’s the epitome of language-learning efficiency, don’t you think?
That’s all for today’s episode. Don’t forget to join me again next time, for more language learning tips, tricks and tales and in the meantime, check out the A Language Learning Tale YouTube channel for additional, non-podcast content.
Ciao, salut, hwyl and bye for now.