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Priorities get in the way
One of the biggest obstacles in learning French is time. How do you find the time to consistently study your French?
It’s not that we have less time today than in the past, but rather that we have priorities. You need to work, go to school, take care of your children, make time for friends, walk the dog, and even make sure your job skills are up to date.
Who has time for learning a language? After all, it’s more of a luxury than a necessity, right?
Offense taken
In a monolingual country like most anglophone nations are, there’s an allure to that thought. English is the international language of business, IT, education, and science.
Most reasonably-well educated citizens of the world will speak it, and you can count on that.
The fact that most nonnatives speak English does not imply that they like to. In fact, Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the European Commission bluntly stated, “Slowly but surely, English is losing importance,” before switching to French in a speech—not English.
“There is a strong tendency for everything to be in English and for us it’s a big loss,” said Michaëlle Jean, the secretary general of the community of French-speaking nations known as La Francophonie.
“You can’t imagine a democratic country with just one party,” he continued. “And you equally can’t imagine international diplomacy with only one unique language. Why should we only use English in certain areas such as research, science, management or administration?”
You get the point—nonnative English speakers prefer their birth tongues.
Example
Now, imagine you work for a wholesale distributor that’s wants market share in France. You exchanged some emails with a large potential client in Paris, and the company has invited you to its headquarters to chat about a deal.
You plan the trip (and carve out some time for shopping after the meeting of course), and arrive ready to discuss a week later. Only when you get there, you end up waiting 30 minutes in the lobby, and when the client representative arrives finally, he asks you to lunch instead.
So you go. You realize that his written English in the email was much better than his spoken English is, and when you sit down to discuss details, he seems to avoid the subject.
When you finally get back to the office, the representative calls in his boss to discuss more. They talk about their operations and how times have been tough. After an hour, they ask you to come back the next day to finish discussing.
So you go to dinner with them, drink wine, and have a good time… although you’re still not sure you understand them 100%, and they often speak in French to each other much to your dismay.
They next day, you need to leave by 2p.m. to catch your plane, and start to insist that the conversation lean towards details around 1:30p.m. After more small talk, they ask for a price cut of 30%. At this point you’re frustrated. They had insistent that the meeting was mainly formality, and that the price looked OK.
But you didn’t know that they were nervous and embarrassed to speak English. You didn’t know that having a meal is customary for some French people before discussing business. You didn’t know that “oui” doesn’t always mean “oui” in France—often it’s used as a polite way of saying no.
You thought they were playing you, so you leave without closing—partly out of anger and partly pride. And there goes a $500,000 deal.
Bilingual in two languages, well-versed in many cultures
In the above example, knowing French and French culture would have helped you close that deal. But what if you needed to then go on to Germany, Italy, and Spain to close similar deals? You can’t reasonably learn every language.
Studies have suggested that once you’re bilingual and open to one culture, it’s much easier to adapt to other cultures (1).
Let’s say you were fluent in French and knew how to adapt to the previous situation. If you went to Spain, you might stop before getting angry or letting your pride get the best of you. Instead, you would ask locals to see if unsettling behavior from your counterparts was, in fact, normal. You might even draw some similarities between Spanish and French culture.
And then you would close $1,000,000 in deals.
$2 Billion per Year
The US Center for Economic Development notes that US businesses lose $2 billion per year due to linguistic and cultural misunderstandings (2).
Now, I’m not claiming that being bilingual guarantees you’ll close multicultural deals, but it will certainly help you in multicultural situations.
Even beyond business, languages help us remain open and understanding. If you’ve ever made an off-hand out of frustration and later realized you misinterpreting your speaking partner, then this is for you. When you learn a second language, you become more reflective, more open, more empathetic—even sympathetic.
These are essential skills in today’s increasingly globalized world, and successful business leaders of tomorrow will likely recognize the importance of cultural flexibility.
As a thought experiment, imagine that Americans, Canadians, British, and Australians, like most continental Europeans, were bilingual. Think of the world of opportunities in business, education, and science if we were able to exchange with less cultural friction.
Priorities
Perhaps learning a language isn’t a priority—and maybe saving money doesn’t feel like a priority either. Priorities deal in the here-and-now; they’re what we need today, tomorrow, and this week.
But like saving money, learning a language will open your life to new opportunities. It’s an investment into your future and the quality of your life.
I know it has for me. I learned French in Florida, came to Europe with a Fulbright Scholarship, and now I live and work in French every day.
For starters, I wouldn’t have my job if I didn’t speak French. But perhaps more importantly, I wouldn’t have the perspective to understand myself, my homeland, and the rest of the world, if not for French.
The investment in learning French has, for all intents and purposes, brought me money and happiness. Could French or another language do the same for you?
Why French Will Make You Happier
Can you recall your outlook on life 10 years ago? What were the most important things to you at that time? It’s likely that your perpective has changed greatly over the years–for many people, that change equates to calmness, growth, and wisdom.
But if you could speak to yourself 10 years earlier, would the old you listen to current you?
Learning a language brings a similar kind of growth. Before you learn one, it’s hard to see the value in it, but once it’s done, you live in a whole new world. It will make you calmer, more mature, more aware, happier.
How to learn French in 1 Year
As a first step, I would download apps like duolingo and begin easy. If you decide on French, The French Objective has a free eBook you can download about the basic 11 principles you need to speak everyday French.
Then you can check out the study strategy you will need to learn French in one year.
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Sources
(1) https://www.actfl.org/advocacy/what-the-research-shows/what-the-research-shows-about-students%E2%80%99-attitudes-and-language-learning
(2) https://www.ced.org/pdf/Education-for-Global-Leadership.pdf