French can be an Adventure

My adventure with French started very early. I  (Mirek Nowak) started to be interested in foreign languages in third or fourth form of primary school. It was very popular then to write simple letters in Polish to some foreign companies asking for some promo materials and believe me usually they sent something. Volvo was known for beautiful posters of cars, Champion for different stickers of sparking plugs etc.

French learning resources accumulated

As the result of such mailing I had obtained many labels and stickers, rarely T-shirts, with writing on them - in foreign languages. First nobody cared about these writings but once my friend checked some sentence offering “lucky drawers” and he found it was about pants :-D  So then it started to be simply improper not to understand what I had on my chest (I mean T-shirt of course) or on any of many stickers on my bicycle. The only solution was to have dictionary or - more difficult - to learn a language.

Help with French from above

We started to ask parents to let us learn languages. Here I must mention, in Poland Russian was obligatory from the fifth form of primary school but it was not so easy with so called “western” languages. Sometimes it was just the question of finding a teacher. My parents were always ready to invest in my education so they discussed this subject during the parents meeting at school. As other parents were motivated too, soon we started to learn French because such teacher was available.

My love of French

I started to love French from the very beginning of our lessons but the reason was quite different than you could expect - communication in French became to be some kind of secret among those who attended classes.
We asked each other about time or something to eat or drink and it sounded as magic, no outsider could understand us. And French sounded so nice and soft. It is necessary to note that we owe much to our teacher, he was preparing interesting lessons, thought us nice songs and poems, which I still remember.

French a higher learning

Soon French was more important for me than math or physics. And again I was surprised that motivation came from quite unexpected side - culture. Being a teen I started to be more and more interested in culture and especially songs. Formerly I didn’t care, I had heard music but I was not listening to it. But as I had been learning more and more, known words appeared as shapes from a fog. First song that shocked me was of course “Je t’aime (moi non plus)” by Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin, then many songs by Joe Dassin or later more difficult and sad songs of Edith Piaf (Je ne regrete rien). I must say I really became to understand them after many many years. You may check it by yourself as very interesting movie about Edith Piaf life has been shown for some months lately.
French live
After a few years of learning I decided to practise on live material, as I called it for myself. I went to big city not far from my home town and  started to look for foreigners looking for a way or any special place. Unfortunately most of them used English. So this experiment was not succesfull. Then I have noticed that the doors to French culture open more and more to me but I cannot limit to one language. In fact, as I have mentioned, I have been learning Russian for at least ten years then but soon I made the decision to extend my interest. Close to the French Embassy in Cracow (where I liked to visit their library) was the American Embassy having much bigger library with cinema!  A little further was also German library but German is the fourth language I have tried.

French today and beyond

So even  today I practice a little French watching movies with Louis deFunes starring or Jean Paul Belmondo, I still like to listen to French music, some say their language is so nice as created for the words of love and affection. And my interest is continued by my oldest daughter, French is the first foreign language for her, she is really good in it and she dreams of going to Paris to get to know France and French people much better.
From my point of view, French people I know are fantastic friends, but not known for business.

Tags: adventure, French, French language, learning French