Studying French: Part 3 (Why am I studying French?)

***Read the French version here.***

Everyone I meet tend to ask me, once they learn that I'm learning French: "Why are you studying French?"

Good question. I was born in Japan, my family members are all Japanese, and even though I've lived in six countries I've never lived in a French-speaking region of the world.

My first "additional" language within a school curriculum I learned in elementary school was French. I started learning French when I lived in Malawi, a small country in Africa, some 15 years ago. I didn't have any other language options, for example Japanese, as the school was fairly small. (Luckily my parents are Japanese speakers so by talking to them in Japanese I managed to keep the language.)

I continued learning French in Egypt and Uganda in elementary and middle school. While I studied French in those countries, I had learned from my French teachers and parents that they thought I learned the language pretty fast for someone whose maternal language is not similar to French. My confidence with the language increased after passing the GCSE exam in French one year early in my final year of staying in Uganda.

I moved to China with family and went to an international school in Beijing. Even though I did have the option of choosing another additional language to learn for the IB Language B (Chinese and Spanish) I decided to continue studying French, as I thought I've advanced too far in my French to give it up altogether. I was the only Asian student studying French in my grade, but that wasn't too big of a problem: I told myself I was pretty brave to take that class as a minority. :P I was a lot more worried about not having enough chances and options to practice French outside of class since there obviously weren't a lot of French speakers in Beijing. Nevertheless I thoroughly enjoyed studying French, because my French teacher often showed us movies and funny videos in class. She also focused a lot on speaking and writing in real-life situations (e.g. letters of complaint, magazine articles), which to me made the learning process a lot more active rather than passive. I liked it very much.

I didn't study French during university...I picked it up again only five months ago, by my parents' advice and to hopefully increase my chances of working in another Canadian city (Montreal for example). (As much as I like Vancouver, I'd definitely like to live elsewhere in Canada as well. I'm particularly drawn to Montreal due to their renowned music scene and interesting French accent.) I'd also like to visit other French-speaking countries as well, like France and Belgium.

I believe that my French studies would lead me to some interesting job opportunities or otherwise rewarding experiences. Who knows?

Studying French: previous posts (English versions)
Part 1 (Reading and Listening)
Part 2 (Writing and Speaking)

Studying French: Part 2 (Writing and speaking)

***French version: Étudier le français: Partie 2 (Écrire & Parler)***

In the last few posts I talked about how I practice reading and listening in French; in this blog post I'll write about how I practice my writing and speaking.

 Writing

It's my first time writing blog posts in French; I only started the day before writing this article! I do sometimes tweet in French to practice outputting something in French. Tweeting in French isn't easy since you tend to use up a lot of characters to describe small things, unlike Japanese and even English. Even though my tweets in English can still be long, I know how to use abbreviations and colloquial language enough so I can still write tweets that are concise and easy to understand (or so I think).

I started writing some French blog posts to talk about how I currently learn and practice French. To be honest, I almost always rely on the WordReference site to translate both French and English words to use in writing these blog posts...
I find that WordReference is the most useful online dictionary, especially for translating individual words. It's very effective for English-French translations. You can also translate English words into Japanese but currently not the other way around.


Sometimes, when I'm free and we're able to chat on Facebook or Skype, I help my sister with her French homework. She's currently in university in Japan and she's taking French classes at her school. I find that the Japanese tend to focus a lot on grammar. For me, I don't usually tend to pay attention to my grammar; I tend to work on understanding what people are talking or writing about as a whole than focus on little grammatical errors. As a result I'm starting to think I'm going to have to really start working on my grammar, because you know how using the wrong verb forms and tenses can affect clarity of your message...


If you were reading the French version before, I hope my blog post was clear enough for you to understand! If you think my communication needs a little work, do not hesitate to let me know.

*Also, in the English version I've written some additional information which I felt would supplement what I wrote in the French version. I'm actually right now trying to get out of French mode so I feel my English is a little awkward. :P

Speaking

I tend to find I'm horrible at speaking no matter what language I speak in...I'm often a little nervous (especially when speaking to large crowds of people), and I have to think before I can speak. In English it's gotten a lot better since I started working as a radio show host at CJSF 90.1FM...I just hope I can be a better speaker in other languages.

LanguageCast has helped me quite a bit to find nice friendly French speakers to practice speaking French with. Before joining them I was very shy, but I've gained a lot more confidence in practicing French with people I haven't known very well prior to meeting them.

Now, whenever I learn that someone I meet is a French speaker (not just in LCV) I try to speak to them in French. Most of the French speakers I meet are from Quebec, which shouldn't be surprising as I live in Canada. The Quebec French speakers have an accent at varying degrees that's definitely noticeable and quite different from the Parisian accent, but I like their accent very much. I find that learning different accents and dialects within the same language I learn and speak are very fascinating.


Coming up - Studying French: Part 3 (Why am I studying French?)

Studying French: Part 1 (Reading & Listening)

***Si vous êtes intéressés à lire cet article en français, cliquer ce lien.***

I learned French for 10 years until I finished high school, and I started picking up the language again in 2013 to improve on what I managed to retain. Here I'll explain how I practice French...I'm planning on talking about how I study French right now in three posts.

This blog post talks about how I currently practice reading and listening in French.

Reading

Thanks to the internet, there are many ways to work on my French reading comprehension, so that's not too difficult even in a non French-speaking city. Sometimes I read news articles on the internet, like on the French language news site TV5Monde. I also read Wikipedia articles in French sometimes; I always tend to go on the site to learn about random things that capture my interest. Usually I read those articles in English. One day, a thought occurred to me: "Why not use Wikipedia to learn some new French vocabulary?"

Wikipedia article on French electro duo Daft Punk, who won five Grammy Awards this year.

On occasion my Facebook friends and public pages I follow post status updates in French. (I still don't know how to say certain social media-related words in French, even though I have used Facebook in French before.) Those updates are a pretty good way to learn more colloquial language. :P I sometimes read French tweets on Twitter, mostly from French-speaking musicians.

Offline I turn to a rather unusual form of French language learning: playing computer games which have been translated into French. My favourite game is the Sims 3. Through playing this game alone my French vocabulary has expanded quite a bit.

I couldn't take a proper screenshot of the game for some reason, so I used a digital camera instead. The quality isn't so great but I hope you can read the French on the screenshot.

Every day I get my Sim family to read the newspaper. I find that the news articles are pretty decently translated.

The translation isn't perfect though. Sometimes I see some weird mistranslations in-game. For example, the word "Great", which is mostly used to describe the quality of food items, such as fruits, vegetables, fish, and cooked items. The word is also used to describe factors affecting job performance, like whether the Sim has enough Writing skills to advance in his or her career (see image below). Trouble is, "Great" is translated as "Un délice!" for all of the above...including the job performance factors. While it's fine having delicious food items, we wouldn't exactly say a Sim's writing skill is "delicious" now would we?

Writing skill is "great" enough for this Sim to advance. In French, it's "delicious" enough.

However, even though I know enough French to be able to understand French-language Wikipedia articles and play the Sims 3 without major problems, I can't seem to find a good book in French to read. Right now I can't even find a good book to read in English or Japanese anymore, so I have no idea where to begin for leisurely reading regardless of language. Last November I tried reading Antoine Saint-Exupery's "The Little Prince" in French, but I found it impossible to read. :/

Listening

Even though Canada is recognized as being a French-speaking country, where I live? Not so much. Vancouver is mostly anglophone, and we have more Cantonese and Mandarin speakers than French speakers. As a result, it's a little difficult to work on my French listening skills.

The internet is still useful for finding French-language videos and music to use for listening practice. My sister (who's also learning French) recommended me the Parapluie French channel on YouTube, which talks through French grammar (which, for those of you who know some French, can be very complex). I`m on the hunt still for some more awesome French-language shows to watch.

Recently I started tuning into a French show at CJSF 90.1FM, where I volunteer as a radio show host. The show's called Franco Délice, and it airs at 3pm on Fridays...2 hours before my own show. Franco Délice showcases French music, news and events, as well as having some French students at SFU talk about things like good restaurants to eat in Vancouver and the Olympic Games. To me it's a great way to practice listening, as the speakers and hosts don't speak too quickly.

I also go to LanguageCast, a language exchange group. There aren't many French speakers or learners in LanguageCast Vancouver, but luckily I've found a small group of awesome French learners and speakers who are willing to practice. I go there every Monday evening to practice listening and speaking French.
Sometimes I try and work on my Japanese. There are a lot more Japanese and Korean speakers, so learning those languages would be a lot easier.

LanguageCast takes place at Lost & Found Café at Hastings and Abbott in Vancouver. If you do go to the café (for LCV or not) I recommend you try their honey lemon ginger tea, which I order every week...as the Sims would say it, it's "un délice!" ;)

Really cute teapot, and my favourite tea. Perfect drink for the winter.

Coming up: Studying French: Part 2 (Writing & Speaking)