Learning French as an adult, freshly arrived in the country and in survival mode, is a challenge. I know something about it; I have been there.
Three years after moving from Belfast, Northern Ireland to a small rural town in Ontario, I accepted a job offer in Montreal. It was the summer of 1978, and with the ink on the Charter of the French Language still not dry, I knew that to keep my job, I had to learn French.
However, in high school, French had been incomprehensible to me. I had a vocabulary of about fifty words and very little grammar. Due to my responsibilities as head of department, I was not available during the day to attend classes. In the evening, I was too tired to learn anything.
How did I go about learning French, then? By immersion. My first accommodation was on rue Papineau, not far from my place of work, a tobacco factory, at the intersection of Iberville and Ontario. In the factory, I was immersed in French, and on evenings and weekends, I listened to songs, watched French-language TV shows and movies. Although not practicing, I went to mass to encourage my neurons to transpose into French the prayers that I knew by heart in English.
Despite these efforts, my progress was slow until I invited a neighbor to the restaurant. To my surprise, our meeting was a success—probably because I could only listen. Then, thanks to her, and to the blondes who succeeded her, my oral expression improved a lot. Although my written expression is lacking, I had never thought of taking the necessary French lessons to correct it. Finally, it was only when I retired — when I had so little need for French — that I decided to remedy my language deficiencies.
Grammar, my top priority, posed quite a challenge, a real black box. The manual did not help me much. Some explanations were more opaque than the grammar itself. The manual was not encouraging; ” […] the genre is rarely predictable, but it does not pose a problem for those whose mother tongue is French”. In English, the plural of nouns is “simple comme bonjour” while in French…
Expanding my vocabulary was more enjoyable. Since I am a born reader, I would devour novels, jot down words and terms that were unfamiliar to me, and then look up their meaning and pronunciation.
After two years of learning, I made progress. According to an online test, my vocabulary is at 20,000 words. A note I slipped into a neighbour’s mailbox silenced the infernal noise of his shower that I heard at home, often after 10 p.m. In front of a judge in Small Claims Court, I was clear, calm and confident in my testimony. (She invited me to testify in English; I politely declined.) Even the most grumpy neighbors smile at my puns: “Every day has its own weather forecast. “What a joy to be a “Montrealable”. These are some signs that my “organic and osmotic” approach is working. Efficient? A little less.
Would I have been better served by in-class courses as it should be? Logically, yes, but too brutal contact with grammar could have made me abandon French, Quebec, and finally Canada.
You see, it’s not easy for an adult to change culture, society and language. It is a delicate dance, which requires a long patience.