Bonjour! Welcome to French Hacks. My name is Kristine and I am excited to share with you this website dedicated to promoting a greater knowledge and love of the French language and culture. In these pages, you will find some creative ‘hacks’ for learning the language as well as insights into understanding and engaging French culture as a foreigner. May your visit here equip you with some fun and affordable tools for strengthening your language skills and fill you with a deeper affection for the people that gave birth to this beautiful language.
Blog
Inspirational Learning
Can the work of learning a new language be put at the service of personal enhancement? A few years ago when I was enrolled in a graduate program which required me to learn four foreign languages within two years, I found myself asking this question as I searched for ways to incorporate the rote task of …
Learn French While You Sleep?
Can you learn a foreign language by listening to it while you sleep? Apparently, the jury is still out on this question. While some dismiss claims that languages can be learned passively while sleeping as unscientific, there are other studies that seem to suggest that memorization capacity is enhanced through hearing a foreign language while …
The French Pause
In many ways, I am stereotypically American in my love of promptness and efficiency. I find great satisfaction in all of the instant gratifications that our technology affords us, and if ever something strikes me as a great idea I am immediately plagued by a sense that I should have already implemented it yesterday! While this …
About
My own particular love affair with La Belle France began in junior high on the day that I first encountered the breathtaking musical Les Misérables based on the classic French work by Victor Hugo. From that day forward I was captivated by all things French, to the point of even locking myself in the hotel bathroom one family vacation with my unabridged 1642 page English translation of Les Misérables in order to sob over the death of Éponine (with the sound of my pitiful weeping mixing with the howls of my brother’s laughter at me from outside the door). And yet, despite my devotion and my many years of French study throughout high school and university, I still found myself tongue-tied in the presence of an actual French speaker and incapable of following along at the sound of their beautiful yet elusive language.
It is for this reason that I developed the methods that I will share with you in these pages as means of coming to train my ear to recognize the nuances of the language, and my tongue not to sound so … well… American. These little ‘hacks’ are fun and affordable ways of learning French in your spare time while you are walking, driving, cleaning, in between tasks, watching TV and yes, even while falling asleep! In addition, I will also be including posts on French culture in order to better understand the people who gave birth to this beautiful language, to assist in avoiding cultural misunderstandings, and in appreciating the beauty of the differences. I hope you will enjoy and will leave your own ‘hacks’ in the comment sections.
Also, although this particular site is specifically concerned with coming to know and appreciate the French culture and language, the language ‘hacks’ that I write about can be applied to any language. Thus I invite all students of a foreign language to browse the language hacks menu in hopes of finding aids in your own adventure of learning a new language.
A bientôt!
Kristine
