From Zero To Conversational French In Six Months — How Harry Potter Helped Me Do It
Self-taught French. No Duolingo required.
Like many across the globe, I spent the best part of 2020 indoors.
As what started as a short stint working from home in March stretched into June, July and beyond I, like everyone else, embarked on a series of short lived hobbies to keep boredom at bay. I ran the full gauntlet of quarantine activities — I had the sourdough starter, the 5000 piece puzzle, a half-knitted blanket and even purchased the obligatory post ‘Queen’s Gambit’ chess set.
But one pursuit evade me in those 2020 pandemic days — learning a language. It’s not that I didn’t think about it, being bilingual and particularly speaking French had always been a dream of mine and one would think, given the advantage of ample free time, now would be the moment to start.
The problem was where to start.
I’ve always been in awe of the bilingual, those people who can flit between vastly different speech patterns, pronunciation and have trained their brains to access whole new tools of communication. I so wanted to be one of those people, it just seemed so complicated. So I procrastinated…
And I procrastinated…
