So, Paris is not the city you should visit. Let me explain. I read an article the other day that started like this: “Don’t expect Paris to always live up to its glossy, Hollywood-manufactured image. It’s also a gritty, imperfect, smelly place, with thousands of years of bloody, tumultuous history.” It triggered my curiosity. Read the article below for more on this, and watch the video that will help you go places. (This week: the verb ALLER – to go)

I realized that I’m telling you every day how important is to follow through with your desire to speak French, to turn pro, and not to sit back in the amateur seat while others are passing you by on their way to their dream vacation, with their dream friends, having their dream dinner, dream walk by the Seine, and creating for themselves dream memories.

Or so you think… they are YOUR dream vacation, dinner, stroll etc… for them, they are just something that they once desired, made a plan and followed through with it until they had the airplane ticket in their hand and went away on what once was their dream vacation, with their dream airplane ticket.

What you don’t know is that maybe you shouldn’t go to Paris after all. Not now anyway. Not until you reach an all too long dreamt level of the French language so that you can enjoy it the way the French enjoy what is theirs: les amis, le dîner, la promenade.

If you are still in the decision phase, let me give you a few reasons why you shouldn’t go to Paris.

1. Paris’ main Medieval Cemetery (today known as Les Halles) was exhumed & transferred to Catacombs

2. Paris didn’t always look like this: in the late mid-19th century, Emperor Napoleon III commissioned Baron Georges-Eugene Haussmann to replace the old and unsanitary houses with the new, beautiful architecture you admire today

3. The Duke of Orléans was murdered here

4. Paris has a network of “Ghost” Metro stations no one uses

5. The vast plaza in front of Hôtel de Ville was once Place de la Grève, the central place for public executions in Paris until 1939.

OK, all that was to help you want Paris “less” until you learn some French, but jokes aside (though everything I wrote above is part of true history), let’s see what you shouldn’t do once you do go to Paris where you’ll practice what you learned home.

1. Don’t spend all your time near the Eiffel Tower and the Champs-Elysées – imagine that you spend your day in the central area of your hometown, where most tourists are – nothing like your home neighbourhood, right?

2. Don’t get sucked into restaurants and food stands in tourist-trap areas – if you hear English around that means you’re not in the right place.

3. Don’t book a tour without vetting the company first – www.tripadvisor.ca is a beautiful thing!

4. Don’t try to see too much in a single day. Here are two examples of itinerary that you can have in a week vacation

5. Don’t be casual about safety. Relax but stay alert. Every city in the world has its own way to take advantage of the naïve.

To enjoy the city, the people and the culture you need one thing: the language, which you can acquire home, through this very computer. Do it daily, don’t rationalize what you have wanted for so long: to connect with the French people and immerse in their culture. You love it. You want it. It is up to you to do something about it.

Now it is your turn!

Tell us in the comments below, what do you think? Are you ready to commit to learning French and go to Paris?

Make sure you watch the Learn Parisian French – verb ALLER (to go) on Youtube! While you’re there, and if you like it, please click the ‘Like’ button!

Don’t ever give up on your dream to become bilingual – the world needs your enthusiasm when you go to Paris and fully enjoy it!

Want to learn French on your own terms?
Create a solid foundation for conversation,
master pronunciation, and travel the World,
starting with French Immersion 1-on-1

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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Llyane Stanfield is a Parisian French language coach, and founder of the J’Ouellette® French Method – an organic method using techniques that are employed by the world’s finest linguists. She travels between Toronto, New York and Paris, while teaching French via Skype in more than 15 countries. She is French language coach for busy traveling professionals, and has produced an unprecedented Intensive Program and French Pronunciation Master Class, as well as other visual and teaching materials. She now spends a large proportion of her time in Paris, where she also organizes an annual Immersion Retreat. Her unique methods produce a quantum leap in confidence and pronunciation, and a short session with her is the perfect start to brush up your French (whatever your level!) at the start of your Paris trip.

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