Practice what you preach
I came to Switzerland in 1978 and was surprised to learn enough French to get by with in the course of 4 months. Ever since that era I have perfected my French and consider myself bilingual. I often calculate, think and dream in French but of course make many errors most of which are more visible in written form. Then there is my accent, but I’m trying to keep on topic here 
Many people ask me how I managed and I always tell them that the only barrier to learning is in holding back and failing to try, because the person you are trying to communicate with wants to understand you and the errors you inevitably make aren’t as important as the message you are trying to convey. You always have to “Go for it!” and leave your inhibitions behind.
How come I don’t practice what I preach then? I’ve been mulling over this for a few days.
I have quite a few visitors and family members that are more comfortable in French and each attempt I have made to write in French and in English has “lost steam” after a few days or weeks due to lack a perceived lack of interest.
A good webfriend reminded my lately that it wasn’t because there was an absence of comments that people aren’t reading what I am writing. This must of course be true when I write in French too.
I’m going to try again and to hell with my faults in French (which incidentally is a lot harder to write than to speak, in my opinion).
I won’t even try to do too much spell checking and grammar sifting. I will only have one rule. Black writing for English and blue writing for French. (Once I work out a comfortable way of accomplishing that)
If I’m successful at it, I’ll consider adding a plugin and doing it as professionally (well almost as) Stephanie does on her perfectly bilingual blog.
Tags: language, messages
