I love finding new book releases to get excited about, and I have a feeling we’ll be hearing a lot about this one as the release date (September 13th) draws nearer. When in French is the memoir of Lauren Collins, who in her early thirties moves to London and falls in love with a Frenchman named Olivier. As their relationship progresses entirely in English, Lauren begins to wonder about the things she might be missing out on by not knowing how to speak to Olivier in his native tongue. After they marry and relocate to Geneva, she embarks on a mission to learn the French language….along the way, exploring the history of how we learn languages, and how language plays into French identity and society. It sounds both dreamy and romantic, but also interesting and enlightening on a subject about which I know little. Something to look forward to in the fall!
I don’t know this book, but this looks pretty much like the story of my life, except than I’m the French one and my hubby is Italian. We mostly work in English and live in Belgium! We both speak each other’s language but French is more natural.
One thing I realised at the beginning of our relationship is that as there might be more difficulties to understand each other due to the linguistic barrier, we tend to be more patient, be more careful with the word we use. And we pay less attention to the vocabulary used by the other, because something may sound offensive in your language but is not in the other.
All in all, it is very charming and I fall in love everyday with my hubby’s accent 🙂
How wonderful! Sounds like you could have written this book. And color me impressed with you and your husband’s linguistic abilities 🙂
Maybe, one day, I’ll write about my own experience too 😉
And now we’re planning to move to Italy, we’ll see what happens!
this books is right up my alley. I took 4 years of french in HS and am always looking for ways to learn more about french culture + language.
I took French for years in middle school and HS too but sadly retained little! I love learning about the culture though and look forward to reading more about the language.