Learning French: My “why”
I first learned French back in high school. After moving from California to New Hampshire at the start of 9th grade, I switched my foreign language choice from Spanish to French because of New Hampshire’s proximity to Quebec. And I studied it all four years, though unfortunately I never had the opportunity at that time to practice it north of the border.
When I got to college, I technically “tested out” of my university’s language requirement with my written proficiency in French. But I loved learning languages, so I decided to pick up German. I started with 101 and, four years later, I ended up with a minor concentration in German Language and Culture.
I also spent a summer interning in Germany with a suburban bureau of the Frankfurter Rundschau newspaper. During that summer stay, I traveled to Paris for a long weekend, and I felt confident that I could dust off my French. But the first time I opened my mouth at a café to ask for salt and pepper, I blurted out “Salz und Pfeffer, bitte,” before I could correct myself.
Fast forward 24 years (gulp; that many?) and I’m now living in St. Albans, Vermont, just 20 minutes south of the US-Canadian border. I’m even closer to Quebec now than I was during my high school years in New Hampshire, and in fact, my family and I drive to Montreal very often – probably a good 25 weekends a year (more on that shortly). While my French reading ability is decent, I’m still finding that, when it comes to conversation, the “foreign language” center of my brain remains stuck in German Mode.
So, why do we go to Montreal so often? The quickest answer is that both my husband and I fell in love with the city through its sports. My husband, who grew up in St. Albans, used to drive up to the Big O regularly in his high school and college years to see Les Expos. After we got married, we unexpectedly ended up attending a Montreal Impact game one Saturday night in 2018, and I found my own sports hook to the city. (For the full story, see this article that RDS wrote about us.)
We ended up becoming season ticket holders for the Impact (now known as CF Montreal), but really, it was the 1642 supporters group, and their pregame tailgates in the parking lot of Stade Saputo, that made the Impact part of our culture – and made it apparent that our inability to speak French was a bit of a hindrance to our fully participating in theirs.
I say “a bit” of a hindrance, because everyone we have met through 1642 – who is either a Francophone or fully bilingual – has made such an effort to welcome us and include us, which means they speak to us in English, and even translate for us sometimes when side conversations happen en Francais. So nice, but also a little bit embarrassing, my husband and I agreed.
By late 2019, weekly tailgate chitchat had turned into friendships. When we wanted to take our young daughters (ages 3 and 5 at the time) someplace fun on a Saturday, we would just as soon think of Granby Zoo or the Montreal Science Center as something in Burlington, Vermont, 35 minutes south of us. (We also discovered La Licornerie – originally in downtown Montreal, now in Brossard – and then Anna and Amelia started asking to go to Montreal all the time, too.) At the end of that year, we put a deposit down on a condo under construction in Place des Arts, making official what we had been thinking for over a year: that Montreal felt like our second home.
Truly, it was time to act on the comment I had been making for a long time: I should really brush up on my French.
So I started asking around at the 1642 tailgates. Did anyone know where I could take a French class? Our friends definitely encouraged me, but didn’t have any concrete recommendations. (And to be fair, if any of them asked me where in St. Albans they could take an English class, I would come up similarly empty.)
Then, my husband mentioned one day that he had run into a work colleague from the Vermont State Government who had taken a French language class through a company called LRDG. I looked it up, and I remember thinking: parfait. This was what I was looking for. A combination of learn-on-your-own online classes and one-on-one tutoring, so you can put the concepts you learn into practice through real-life conversation.
Even better, this class wouldn’t just help me blend in at tailgates – I could actually achieve a level of fluency that would be recognized by businesses and the government in Quebec. I’ve been an independent consultant long enough to realize that some of the best work projects come through casual or social introductions. The more time we spend in Montreal, it’s possible some marketing work could come my way in the future.
So, in August 2022, I reached out to LRDG to set up a call. My daughters were getting ready to go back to school; this year, I would, too.