60 Days Trying To Learn French • Life/Change

We challenged four Americans to learn a new language by using a language learning app for 20 minutes a day for 60 days straight. I know zero French. I'm sorry in advance. I'd say I probably know about 1% of the French language. Au revoir. Oui. Non. C'est la vie. Man. It's shit. There's words in French that have letters that you don't pronounce. It's like English, it's a disaster. French sounds like a very sexy language. The reason I wanna learn French is because I wanna not watch French films with subtitles. I think it'd be kinda nice that I don't always have to read the subtitles at the bottom. I kinda hope that this time around I learn it in a very conversational way, like the way you learn a language as a baby. It's such a romantic and beautiful language I wanna be good at. This just seems really easy. La femme. Oh, I was half right, come on. Le gesso. Oh, I got it right! I have to do all of these today? I said, what did I sign up for? You're 40 points away from being on track today. 40 points? Yeah, I could totally do this for 20 minutes a day. I'll probably feel like an idiot, but hopefully by the end I'll be speaking French. I'm better at reading it and plugging it in and having my hand held through it as opposed to practically using it in real life situations. I can read it, but I can't pronounce any of it. I don't know, I think it'd be a lot easier if I knew somebody who spoke French that I could talk to to make sure I'm not just sounding like an idiot. So we brought in Annabelle, who is a native French speaker. How long have you spoken French? I'm French-born and raised. You're native, great. Fabulous, I'm embarrassed myself. Bonjour, Patrick. Bonjour. Comment ça va? Comment se passent tes cours de français? Say something to me in French. Um, j'aime manger, uh... Everyone was a little nervous at first, but as the lesson went along, they were able to get more comfortable. But is it fi or fille? What's the difference between using to and vous? Uh... That's flippin' hard. We gave them a quiz halfway through to see how much they actually learned. Parlez-vous français? Oui ou non? No. We are eating cake. What's cake again? Two out of three words here I'm sure are right. What the fuck is that? I am just making stuff up. I don't know. This is all I got. No, this isn't right. I mean, it's basically a pass or fail, and I think we're failing. Yep, we're failing. Based on the quiz, it was easy to see that they hadn't been practicing every day and only remembered basic words and phrases. It's tough as an adult with a life to learn a language. I overestimated how difficult this would be. So we brought back Annabelle to help them prep for the final dinner party where they would interact with other French speakers. Vous allez au restaurant, d'accord? Je suis votre serveuse. Vous allez manger, vous allez boire, et vous allez parler ensemble. So you're the server, we're the guests? Yes. We're gonna have drinks, we have food. We're gonna eat, we're gonna drink, and then we're gonna talk about it. It doesn't have to be the most complicated conversation. Just try to make a simple sentence. Qu'est-ce que je peux vous servir pour dîner? This is really... Excusez-moi, je parle pas anglais. Oh no, she doesn't speak English! Je suis désolée. Ah, no! Poulet? Du poulet, très bien, nous avons un poulet. Et qu'est-ce que vous voulez... Et vous, monsieur, qu'est-ce que je peux vous servir? What do you want, biatch? Une pomme! Une pomme? Just an apple? Une pomme! Try to make full sentences, guys. How do you say, this is gonna go horrifically? Okay, guys, so the rule is that we're gonna speak only French. Oh, s***! Wait! Really? Attendez, attendez. First, a little context. Je suis désolée. Okay, before we even start! Okay! I don't know how to say dinner, but it was très bien. Felt like a four-year-old around a bunch of adults. Had no idea what the f*** they were talking about. C'est chaud. C'est froid. C'est bien. C'est quoi? Baguette. I probably practice, like, twice a week. And most of it was, like, brushing up on the stuff I learned the previous week, so I didn't get through a lot. I feel like if I practiced every day, like, if I kept doing what I was doing in the beginning, I'd probably know, like, a lot of French by now. This, I've learned more tonight than I did ever doing it on the app. You need to be with people. You need to be in person. The moral of the story is that you should get a personal teacher to teach you French. Really, to learn a language, you gotta practice. French is no f***ing joke. It's hard as s***. I'm a little bit drunk, too, so I don't know if what I'm saying makes any sense.