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On language learning, French, and life

Founder's Notes

The Soundscape of French

French strikes me as a language built around flow and resonance, where sounds seem to melt into each other through liaison and enchaînement, creating continuous melodic streams rather than discrete word boundaries. This creates what might best be described as whispered clarity - a language that has been smoothed with a cloth, fluid yet structured, soft yet precise.

Knitted, Not Forged

Nobody is simply born resilient. We are knitted that way, one stitch at a time, never by our own hands alone.

The Hamming Question

Try Hamming's question on your own French this week, with curiosity rather than judgment. Which part of your practice feels most alive, worthy and relevant, which one has had the greatest impact, and could you give it a little more room, energy and time over the next 6 months? Fluency is not built from everything we do, but from the few essential things that matter most over time, and that we keep doing.

Tu or Vous?

Why do the French say "vous" so often? How hierarchy, politeness and everyday codes differ between France and Canada, and what happens when they're ignored.

Deeper Reflections

The difficulty was not a flaw in the product. It was the product. The showing up, the plateau, the ordinary humiliation of speaking badly in front of people who speak it well, that was the whole machinery that turned a person into someone they had not been before.

Drop It

Today I turn fifty-six. An old life set down in cold water on a coast I chose. A new life rising beside the person I love, combined with work that feels like a life of service often. French keeps a word for the place I am standing now, before this birthday. Le seuil. The threshold. The doorway from one room into the next. You do not cross it without leaving a room behind. That is the law, in every language that exists. It is never too late to lay down what was never yours to carry. No one hands you permission to walk in. You decide, and you wade in and move forward.

Language Learning

Dragon at the Door: On Fear, and What a Teacher Is Actually For

The grammar was always the easy part. The dragon at the door is the real lesson, and every learner who crosses it learns the same thing: it was never as large as the fear that guarded it, and the strength — the power — to pass was theirs all along.

Language Learning

What Money Can’t Buy in Language Learning

Nine years of teaching don't compress into nine months of funding, or into several million dollars of it. And that's not a limitation of language learning. It's the whole point of it. The reason fluency feels like such a real achievement is precisely that you cannot buy it, cannot download it, and cannot fake it. You can only earn it, one uncomfortable step at a time, with none of the steps skipped. That's true of building a school. It's just as true of learning the language it teaches.

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