~LexFrench~

  Tree by Minna Sundberg –– See the article in the Guardian:  https://www.theguardian.com/education/gallery/2015/jan/23/a-language-family-tree-in-pictures

  Last week, I finally caught up to the 2014 book by William Alexander, Flirting with French , in which Alexander sets out to learn French with relatively high expectations and a mildly discouraged but quasi-scientific outlook.  At 57, is Alexander too old to realize his dream of embodying French language and culture like a native? Alexander seeks out the advice of linguists, psychological researchers, native speakers, and a multitude of other anecdotal resources, completes all the levels of Rosetta Stone French, visits a Meetup group (!) and enrolls for two weeks in a luxury immersion school in France (Millefeuille Provence https://www.millefeuille-provence.com/home/)  in an effort to "BE French." Unlike most French speakers, whether native or second-language learners, he never goes to a traditional class or follows a textbook, however.  As Alexander details picking up a new project and facing the inherent struggles toward his targeted level of mastery –– much like ...

  Map  Credit:  The French Advocacy Resource Bank https://advocacy.frenchteachers.org/french-in-the-world-and-in-north-america/

I will continue to update this list regularly, so check back for more! Learning a language happens on many levels, and through diverse efforts. Reading, speaking, listening, and writing are all related skills, but we sometimes develop them at different rates. For some of us, the goal is simply to communicate and to connect with speakers from outside our culture or language. Being polite, reading a menu, getting around, and maybe making a few jokes can be a reachable goal. Some of us are writers and therefore need more polish and better grammar. Many of us are professionals and would like to develop clarity and good presentation skills. Others would like to watch a film or a TV show and understand without subtitles, or perhaps read novels or philosophy in the original language. Some of us find the weekly conversations easy, and others are hoping to practice and build their knowledge, vocabulary, and comprehension. While a level of fluency can be achieved more quickly, learning a languag...

Hi! I'm Julie, the current organiser of the Lexington Francophones. This Meetup group was started circa 2010. I joined in 2011 in order to build my skills in conversational French. I was already conversational in Italian, and pretty decent in French, if only in the kind of French you learn in academic settings.  In 2014, I began living abroad while working on my doctorate, a key component of which included research in French. This experience was made much easier by my time in the Lexington Francophones. I remained a regular attendee during my return trips home, and was able to join an Italian Meetup while away. I also had a small group of Francophones to practice with during weekly lunches at my college. At the end of 2019, I came home for a holiday break, and, like many others, I soon found that I could not travel back right away. From 2014-2019, on return trips to Lexington, I was always excited to see old friends and the many new faces at the table. I became the third organiser ...

I've been thinking about this post for a little while now, and what the "90-9-1 Rule" means for our small community of Francophones and Francophiles.  Recently, I came across this article from the Neilsen Norman Group:  https://www.nngroup.com/articles/participation-inequality/  which is summarized as follows:  "In most online communities, 90% of users are lurkers who never contribute, 9% of users contribute a little, and 1% of users account for almost all the action." Is this true? As sole organiser, I can attest, at least as far as the in-person meetings go, this is an accurate breakdown. Still, I would argue that the act of lurking is, in fact, just that, an action . And it is also a contribution, however intangible, as well as a declaration of intent and support - maybe remote, maybe imminent, maybe just hopeful.  I am a member of several Meetup groups - some in other cities, that I have attended a few times, some that I hope one day to attend, and others in...

 Bonjour! Welcome to my blog for all things Francophone and Francophile in Lexington, KY. As the organiser of the Lexington Francophones from 2021 to Spring 2025, I discovered lots of things about the effort of being or becoming bilingual, and likewise for the practice of conversation. This blog, which I created for use during my time as organiser of the language group, features topics related to foreign language skills, travel, and life in different cultures and countries. Now that I have resigned from this role,  I am maintaining the blog as an archive of some of the most useful articles I wrote over that period, and I will perhaps continue to add to it from time to time.