Review of The Novel "Flirting with French"

It has been a while since I last posted a review of a language-related book, which made me want to read a book for pleasure even more. The novel “Flirting with French: How a Language Charmed Me, Seduced Me & Nearly Broke My Heart”, written by William Alexander, had been sitting on my shelf at home for quite some time, because I had never gotten a chance to read it in college. Despite being a slow reader, I read a lot of it in just a few days, as I was instantly hooked.

If you are looking for a good read that makes you laugh, smile, and even ponder about your own life, this is just the book for you. The entire book is about William’s experiences wanting to become more than just a Francophile. His biggest change is having to learn the French language in order to truly become French.  As the inside flap of the novel says “Alexander eats, breathes, and sleeps French (even conjugating in his dreams). He travels to France, where mistranslations send him bicycling off in all sorts of wrong directions, and he nearly drowns in an immersion class in Provence… While playing hooky from grammar lessons and memory techniques, Alexander reports on the riotous workings of the Académie française, the four-hundred-year-old institution charged with keeping the language pure; explores the science of human communication, learning why it’s harder for fifty-year-olds to learn a second language that it is for five-year-olds; and, frustrated with his progress, explores an IBM research lab, where he trades barbs with a futuristic hand-held translator.”

If that description still has not gotten you excited about this novel, I do not know what else will. Before delving deep into the storyline, I did not have many expectations of what this book could offer, because I had wrongly assumed that I was very knowledgeable about the subject, but even I was wrong. This novel combines scientific evidence and facts, real life experiences, history, culture, linguistics, and modern language into a mere 260 pages. You not only learn about the history of the French language and how it has evolved over time, but also about the culture that is associated with it, which ultimately determines how language is used. He also did a significant amount of research about how he would go about self-teaching French at “such an old age” by consulting with many polyglots and language experts. You even learn a thing or two about how linguistics, therefore getting a small taste of what that field entails.

No matter how old you are, what prior knowledge of French or other languages you have, or lack thereof, I recommend this book to any reader, especially one who is interested in languages as much as I am. I will warn you that it may be hard to understand some of the nuances, words, phrases, or jokes that Alexander mentions throughout the book, as they are written in French, but do not fear if you have never had contact with the French language. He italicizes everything that is written in French, making it easy for you to look up what he is saying if you so desire. If you have studied French before, or, better yet, speak it well, you will find this book to be very enjoyable and entertaining. It may even help you brush up on your French.

I hope that you enjoyed reading this post and that you give this book a try. I promise that if you have accidentally or purposely come across this post, or even this blog, you will not be disappointed. Happy language-learning!