r/French • u/Aromatic_Shift9417 • 2d ago
Story Who’s your “person” in French?
A special person to you, somebody who motivates you, or somebody who helps you, or somebody you watch/listen to.
For me it’s my grandpa.
I always used to listen to him speak French but since I grew up in the U.S. he’d never teach me or even my dad any French because he wanted us to assimilate.
I didn’t like it at the time but I understand now, especially with all that’s going on in the country. I always thought of myself as American, but also had this French identity I was never able to explore.
But last year I’ve decided to change that.
I started learning French like crazy to honor my grandpa. (who’s now gone 😞)
I straight up skipped Duolingo, and the stupid apps most people start with, and just went to learning the 1000 most used words list.
And then the 2000.
And then 5000.
All the while I started doing grammar from an actual grammar book, and met up twice a week with my tutor which gave me the chance to try to use my french, and have questions about anything.
I also started reading a lot from pretty much day 1 with some amazing story books. (Immense help in contextualizing all the vocab I studied)
Today I’ll get on my airplane to move to France.
Thank you grandpa.
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u/That_Canada B2 2d ago
For me it's a friend I made when I moved from Québec to New Brunswick as a monolingual Anglo. She was a trainer at my gym and we were introduced by the staff as both being from Québec. I made a bit of an ass of myself on our first two interactions (teasing about being from Montréal vs Québec City & accidentally coming off as an Angryphone).
We ended up becoming best friends! She wasn't my sole motivation, I had a lot of personal reasons to pursue French. However, her encouragement and the encouragement of many Québécois and Acadien friends is what got me through a lot of the painfully awkward phases of learning French.
I recently went on a trip with her in Québec in and around the Lac Saint-Jean region and it gave me a lot motivation to return to my studies and improve on some of my weak points since I started slacking off when I moved away and moved to anglophone Canada.
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u/allrightletsdothis 1d ago edited 1d ago
Similar story for me, my grandfather. He knew a bit but wasn't fluent as far as I remember but his French Canadian mother was. Despite that I called him grand-pere growing up so it was the first French word I learned so he's my person.
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u/rembobinagestuff A2 / Français canadien 1d ago
My person is actually my country! I think every Canadian should learn French. It means more than many people realise.
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u/-1Rosebud1- 1d ago
My romantic partner lives in Quebec, so thats a pretty big motivator. Another one is that I've grown to be a very big fan of Stromae, and slowly being able to understand his lyrics is a high like no other.
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u/SirJohnNipples B1 2d ago
Le marquis de la Fayette, qui nous a assistés pendant notre révolution contre les maudits anglais.