Speak French fluently

When I lived in Montreal, I was so shy about using French. I love speaking different languages, but the accent was a bit different than what I was accustomed to, and I was young and worried about sounding ridiculous.

When I went back last weekend, I had an amazing time… and used French all weekend without anyone having such a hard time understanding me that they switched over to English. I understood nearly everything too, without asking anyone to slow down or repeat themselves, and I was even able to joke around and flirt really comfortably. Of course I still feel more at ease in Spanish because I use it every day, but I’m not sure what I was being such a jerk to myself about, because I remember more French than I gave myself credit for. I want to keep working at this over the summer, so that if I decide to move to Montreal in the fall, I’ll have a really strong foundation for learning new words/expressions quickly.

Last night while watching a movie in French, I actually worked at learning phrases that weren’t familiar to me. I was a bit too lazy to accumulate many of them, but it was still an accomplishment.

I rented some French movies last night, and watched Clara et Moi. I liked the movie, and would watch it again, but I’m still feeling a bit sensitive over the loss of A., so stories about love that probably works out in the end isn’t really what I’m in the mood for. On the other hand, the movie was full of people older than I am that were still finding interesting people romantically… only one of the characters was married. Sometimes spending so much time with migrant farmworkers and Muslim friends that have 4+ children by age 25 makes me feel like a washed-up spinster at 30. It was good to feel a glimmer of hope.

I was able to catch most of the movie without subtitles, which makes me think that I haven’t entirely lost as much French as I suspected. I really need to work a bit harder at using it again though, because although I know the words when I hear or see them, they don’t come to me very easily when I want to say something. I also downloaded some music in French that I’ve wanted for a long time, and am going to ask A if he’ll speak to me more in French. I have the chance to practice with a native speaker on an ongoing basis, so I don’t want to be a coward and not try it.