Flirting with French: Book Review

I read mostly non-fiction books in my own time, and most of them are language-learning or linguistics books, so I was thinking about writing about the ones I read. I should come up with a catchy name for this series, but first we'll see if I actually get around to making a second post.


The book I just finished is called Flirting with French by William Alexander. It's a travelogue/memoir/linguistics/Francophile book. The book it about Alexander's 13-month quest to try to learn French as an 57-year-old who fell in love with France after visiting in his early 20s.

There were a lot of funny things in the book that kept me entertained and even got me to laugh out loud a few times. The chapters are cleverly named and it was written well. I like the writing style, because it made it a quick read and it was entertaining. For me, it was a light read, so I didn't really want anything too pedantic or academic.

I also enjoyed all of the accounts of embarrassing mistakes Alexander made, because they made him a lot more relatable and, again, it made the book entertaining. I really enjoyed the references throughout the book. Alexander referenced Monty Python, Sherlock Holmes, and a few other pop-culture bits that also added to the entertainment factor.

There were a few things about the book that bugged me. The main one is his following Chomsky's work and the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. This school of thought is more popular than they are in the UK, from what I can tell, though there are certainly plenty of people in the UK that agree with Chomsky. I personally don't. This is a hot topic right now, and it's pretty polarized. You either like Chomsky's ideas or you hate them, and there are very few people in between.

I don't know if it's because Alexander did most of his linguistics research in the US or because these ideas are really easy to spread. The idea that there is a Universal Grammar (UG) and that language can change the way you think about the world are really fun ideas, but I personally don't buy it. I won't go into this more, but it did affect my ability to enjoy the linguistics-related parts of the book.

Additionally, I learned about all the linguistic theories and case studies in my linguistics course this year, so that aspect wasn't that interesting to me. And, because of this, the promised "surprise ending" didn't surprise me that much, because it has to do with the cognitive benefits of studying another language, which I have already studied pretty extensively. However, if you have never formally studied linguistics, I would imagine it would be really informative and interesting, especially because the information is presented well. And Alexander talked about some of the more interesting parts of linguistics - the things that related to language learning!

When Alexander turns to linguists to help explain the troubles he faces while learning French, he talks to a linguist named Birdsong, who told him that the most important thing is to not translate, but to think in the second language (L2).

I have always known this, but unfortunately it's not very helpful to tell people struggling to learn an L2 that they should just think in the language. I think it's the first step to being fluent, because when you're fluent (depending, I suppose, on your definition of fluency) you can speak at a somewhat normal and fluid pace, because you aren't translating. I learned how to do this first with Spanish when I was much younger, and then I applied this to other languages I learned later.

You cannot translate word-for-word in your head before saying a sentence. They key is to know what you are trying to say generally, and to take those abstract thoughts (that should not be put into words in your head yet), and turn them into sentences in the target language. You have to make the sentence up as you go, just like you do in your native language. That's one of the keys to being able to speak in a language.

I think one of the most important considerations for this book is whether or not it encourages people to learn a language, which I  hope all language-learning books would strive to do. I don't think it actively does, but I think it does paint a very honest picture of what it is like for "normal" people to teach themselves a foreign language.

I don't think there's a gene for the ability to easily acquire languages. I think anyone can do it, but it takes motivation, dedication, time, and a lot of work. This book shows that wanting it alone won't make it happen. I think that is an important thing to tell people, because the reason a lot of people never become fluent in a language is because they give up. Something to take away from this book is that if you don't want to learn a language enough to put in the time, you will probably never learn the language.

I think the book was really interesting and a good read, and I would recommend it to people interested in learning a first foreign language, especially France. I think a lot of it could be very motivating and inspiring. If you are an experienced language learner, it might not be as stimulating, but it is entertaining and still fairly interesting.