Why Speaking French is Important to Me

And why I'm going to teach it to my (future) kids, too

It’s time to get a little more personal.

Does your family speak a language other than English? Did your parents teach it to you? Do you wish they would have if they didn’t?

Objectively—as I’ve already written about here—learning a language is a great goal to pursue: it can open doors to new career opportunities; it can help you discover a new world of art and media to enjoy; it can even provide you the means of forging new connections and lasting relationships with people you might otherwise never have met.

However, this time, I wanted to highlight another, more personal reason that language learning—specifically, learning French—has been especially meaningful to me. Learning French has allowed me to connect with my family heritage and revive a language tradition that had essentially been lost due to immigration and Americanization.

From France, to Québec, to New England, USA

While exploring my family history, I discovered that I have several ancestors who were part of the early migration from France to Québec, Canada: Gilbert Dupuis was born in 1710 in Bourges, France; Pierre Cressac was born in 1714 in Toulouse, France; and Antoine Laliberté was born in 1725 in Mansac, France, just to name a few. These men and their families immigrated from France to Québec and stayed there for several generations.

However, in 1882, two of my now Québecois ancestors, Pierre Matthieu and Marie Bolduc, immigrated from Beauceville, Québec, Canada to Fairfield, Maine. This couple taught French to their daughter, who taught it to her daughter, who taught it to her daughter—my grandmother—but the tradition stopped there. My grandmother did not pass on the French language to her children, who in turn couldn’t teach it to my generation.

My dad did the best he could with what little he did learn. He picked up the basics like certain important words and basic phrases, basic numbers, etc. He, in turn, taught me what he knew. I tried to build upon that foundation by taking French classes in high school, but like many of you have also experienced, those classes didn’t do much to help me learn the language. All it did do was fascinate me more and make me more desperate than ever to learn this language.

The French Revival of 2015

After graduating from high school, I had the fantastic opportunity to move to Southern France for 2 years to work as a volunteer missionary. This experience proved to be precisely what I needed to kickstart my serious French learning, forcing me to speak French day-in, day-out to survive.

Little did I know that this experience would forever change my identity. For generations, my family spoke French and carried on a linguistic tradition that tied them to their homeland, but after a while, that tradition was lost. Living in France and learning French at such a high level as a second language has helped me essentially reconnect with that heritage and restart a familial tradition that was all but gone.

Since then, I have continued studying and using French on a virtually daily basis to make sure that I never lose the skills I have been privileged to acquire. I pursued a secondary major in French Studies during my undergraduate studies. I taught French for two years at the Missionary Training Center to help a new generation of missionaries learn what I learned before going to serve in France, Canada, Tahiti, etc. I interned for the Foreign Service Institute through their VSFS program to help current U.S, diplomats practice and learn French before leaving for their diplomatic assignments all over the francophone world. I made friends in France that I continue to maintain relationships with.

As I said in my last post, I also have plenty of everyday input I listen to in French, such as music on Spotify (like by Boostee, my favorite French rapper), podcasts (like Une semaine dans le monde by France24), and audiobooks. Passing it On

Now, I don’t have children yet, but this idea is very important to me. The French language played a significant role in my family’s history and heritage, so I fully plan on sharing that heritage with my children so that tradition doesn’t get lost again.

How am I going to do this?

Great question.

My wife, Isabel, and I each have a different familial language tradition: mine is French, hers is Spanish. So, the only smart thing to do is to give our kids the opportunity to become trilingual and be able to speak English, French, and Spanish. Maybe I’ll have to give this book a try?

Have you ever heard a multilingual person—whose parents did share their native language with them—say that they wish their parents wouldn’t have taught it to them? Probably not.

In fact, the opposite is usually true. I have known many people whose parents speak another language but didn’t teach it to their kids, and those people often tell me how much they wish their parents would have taught it to them. That connection to family heritage is an important motivator, so I don’t want to deprive my future children of that opportunity, like was the case for my dad.

What About You?

Thank you for coming to my TedTalk. I have appreciated having you on this trip down memory lane with me!

Have you lived a similar situation to me? I want to talk to you about it!

This is such an interesting topic for me; I could talk about it all day. So drop a comment or message and let’s talk!