I've been studying French for ten years, how come I'm not fluent?
"When it comes down to it, learning a second language is a long process of trial and error. It's also a deeply humbling experience."
Some mornings, I wake up and go about my routine forgetting that I’m in France.
I drink my tea and eat my pastries, thinking my English thoughts. I turn on an English-speaking show on Hulu. I send my friends memes on Instagram and Twitter, both of which are in English.
Then, I leave my apartment and it’s like a switch is flipped.
I’m no longer the fast-talking, quick-witted English-speaking Emily. I’m the somewhat nervous, always sweaty, frequently rambling and slow-to-comprehend French-speaking Emily. These are different people.
English-speaking Emily uses big words. She sprinkles “dogmatic” and “astute” into sentences like they’re pretentious sprinkles on a pretentious cupcake.
She references Sylvia Plath, the cultural impact of “normalcore” influencers and recalls Sabrina Carpenter lyrics with such ease. Words don’t just tumble from her lips. They flow with rhythm and verve, at times without thought. She captivates the room with a joke (or she likes to think she does). She knows who she is because she has the vocabulary to tell you about it.
French-speaking Emily is a bit awkward and unsure of herself. She pauses in the middle of sentences, pondering how best to package her thoughts into understandable boxes. Her jokes are late. Her thoughts and desires seem simple, uncomplicated. There’s a lack of nuance when she speaks.
I don’t dislike French-speaking Emily. She’s polite and she tries her best, despite not having had much practice socializing with other people. She’s always curious and always learning.
Still, sometimes I think she pales in comparison to her English-speaking counterpart.
English-speaking Emily has had 24 years to learn the ins and outs of her language. That’s more than two decades of cartoons, books, movies and musics to wrap her brain around. She’s shopped for back-to-school clothes, scraped her knees falling off her bike and learned to drive a stick-shift, all while using English verbs and adjectives to describe herself.
Everywhere she went, for 24 years, she picked up new words. Her mother gave her the words to describe basic needs, school gave her the words to discuss the water cycle and geometry, and books gave her the words to fantasize about other worlds and talk about the future. She had Cat in the Hat, then Junie B. Jones, then Nancy Drew, Harry Potter and Holden Caulfield. Her world revolved around people that spoke English, and so evidently, she would too.
French-speaking Emily had a delayed start. Whereas English-speaking Emily learned the days of the week in Kindergarten, French-speaking Emily didn’t learn them until high school. At 15, she could ask your name and give you hers. At 16, she could talk about the weather but only in present tense.
She didn’t open a chapter book until her second year of college. The foods she could name always existed in abstract, never seen or interacted with at the store.
I used to be ashamed of her. In truth, I was upset that she couldn’t be more like English-speaking Emily.
It was embarrassing to watch her struggle through conversations, to hear the tremble of uneasiness in her voice. At night, I’d lay awake thinking about her little mistakes and questioning why she made them.
In the past two months, I’ve come to realize that French-speaking Emily has never been to blame for her stunted language skills. Had English-speaking Emily been raised in the same conditions, she too would’ve underwhelmed me.
When it comes down to it, learning a second language is a long process of trial and error. I’ve spent my whole life speaking English and have worked for two years as a writer. I still make stupid fucking mistakes all the time. I mispronounced “Juneau” and “demeanor” for way too long. (I said “Hwa-noo” and “dem-EN-nar.”) I’ve mixed up “adieu” and “ado.” (Honestly, I think we should just stop using both.) I’ve said “Thanks, you too,” in response to “Enjoy your food.”
My point is, learning a language isn’t for the impatient or prideful among us. It’s a lifelong, deeply humbling endeavor. Anyone who tells you otherwise is attempting to sell you something.
When I first got to France, I had a lot of anxiety surrounding everyday interactions with French people. I shuddered at the thought of potential small talk at the grocery store or an incomprehensible question at the bakery.
What if they found out I was American? What if they switched to English? What if they thought I was dumb?
Getting out of the house everyday has been a kind of exposure therapy for me. I go to book stores, pharmacies and thrift stores with no knowledge of the interaction I’m about to have. It’s not even predictable, based on past experience, what anyone will say to me or how I will respond. I go to these places and just have to trust that I know enough French to get through it. People might not understand me when I talk. They might correct me, or ask where my accent is from and I just have to be okay with that.
I never thought I’d live someplace where I’m considered a foreigner, but now that I do I have a lot more sympathy for Sofia Vergara’s character in “Modern Family.”
Living in fear of being perceived as stupid is also the only truly stupid thing you can do. So, speak your second language with a crazy accent if you have to. Misuse words because you like the way they sound. Throw conjugation out the window.
It only matters that you try.