Michelle:
So welcome. I'm very happy to have you here. Very excited to chat with you. I think that I could say a bunch of things, but I would rather have you say who you are, kind of the whole big spiel about yourself.

Felly:
Yeah, yeah. I'm like, what's my spiel?

My name is Felly. I am from just outside of Vancouver in Canada, and I basically knew my entire life I didn't want to live in Canada. A good thing about Canada is that the country is bilingual, and so I went to school in French. My mom was a French teacher, so it was not an option despite me fighting my entire life saying, I will never use this language, I will never go to France. I don't like it. I now fast forward, am married to a Frenchman and live in France and speak French every day, so on me. But I wanted to travel my whole life, and I took my first solo trip at 17. I went to Germany and I said to my parents, I got money from working. I'm going to go spend Christmas with my friends in Germany. And I left for three weeks, and then I did three months in backpacking Europe. I did a working holiday visa in Australia. I backpacked Southeast Asia. I lived in Mexico. Now I live in France. So traveling was always where I wanted to end up. And part of that is speaking other languages. I tried to learn German, which is very difficult, not a Latin language, but I spent two, three years trying to learn German. I think I've lost it all. Yeah.

Felly
I'll leave it there. We can continue.

Michelle
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, I think it's fascinating and more fascinating that you happen to be, not currently, but when I'm in France, you're not too far from me. And as someone who was also, I didn't have the same background, but I did say like, oh my goodness, if there's one language I'm never going to learn and I'm never going to a country I'm never going to live in, it's probably France. Okay. Yeah. So same situation now, married to a French man now needing, it's beyond just speaking it every day. It's totally inside of French, personal life, family, life, all that stuff. And I'm like, look at me. You know what I mean? My ancestors did not think I would be doing this, and so I was just like,

Felly
I think my mom knew I did not.

Michelle
Yeah. Yeah. Well, so tell me a little bit about her, and I guess we can kind of go into early experiences with the language, with the culture or language overall. She was a teacher for French language in schools, for adults, for kids?

Felly
Primary schools. So she got her teaching degree and she did one semester in Quebec. I think she did her final semester in Quebec, and then she ended up doing a year as an au pair in France. She didn't like Quebec anymore. Basically she told me her boyfriend left her for the girl she didn't like. So she was like, I'm going to go to France. Oh, I was like, yeah, I understand that. That sounds like something I would do. And so then she came back and because of her level of French language, and they're always looking for French teachers in BC where I'm from, because we're the farthest part from Quebec as a country, it's mandatory for there to be a level of French in school. And so if you have French, you basically can always get a job as a teacher in BC at least. I don't know about the other half of Canada, but yeah, so she was a music teacher, but that was less in demand than being a French teacher. And when I was a kid, she actually taught at my school from kindergarten until grade three as the music teacher. We did French class, we did music in French with her. And then of course with the English classes, she did music in English and she would substitute for English teachers who didn't have a level of French. And then she went and became a principal in a French immersion school. So she still is very proud of speaking French. Loves the language, loves the culture, loves it all.

Michelle
Yeah. Well, how do you feel about it? How do you feel? I guess it was, you said you didn't have a choice. It kind of seems that way. So it was kind of just like this exposure. Yeah. What are your feelings on this?

Felly
I'm like, I don't have kids, but I can say as someone who was a teenager, I don't think we appreciate what's in front of us. So me as a teenager, basically from age 15, the level of French that we have as immersion kids is the same level as someone graduating. So someone who's 18 if not higher. So you can actually challenge, what's the word? The fluency test. You take a test at the end of school to say, I'm fluent in French. When you're 15 grade nine, you can take a test. That challenges that because our level's already so much higher than what they learn as non immersion kids.

And so from 15, I was like, I don't want to do immersion anymore. I don't want to be in immersion anymore. I've done harder. It's a higher level. The people who are taking regular French classes are beginners where we've been speaking French since age five, so we're doing 10 minute long speeches. We're doing social studies in French. Some schools have science in French. It's just like, I don't want to write essays in French. I don't even want to write essays in English. You're like, I'm done with this. This is, thank you. We're done. I got the level that the government requires you to have to work a job in French. Let me be done.

And by grade 11, I did grade 11, and then I stopped. I didn't do my final year because my mom kept being like, no, you need it. Thank me. You'll go to France and you'll be an au pair and it'll be the best time of your life. And I was like, I don't like kids. I'm not going to go be an au pair. I'm not going to take care of someone's kids when I don't like having kids around me. Anyways, so I did actually get to stop taking French before my final year, and I did challenge the test and I got 95% because we had a level higher than the people who are learning French when you're immersion. And then I proceeded to not speak French. I don't know, when did I go to Australia? 2017. So five years. Five years. I didn't speak French after leaving school until I ended up in Australia doing farm work with a bunch of French people who didn't speak English. I'm like, okay, let me pull this out of a hat.

Michelle
Yeah, you can't write this. The universe is just like, all right, you want to escape this? Too late! Gonna just like drop some French people!

Felly
If you're traveling, you're going to run into French people. And I find it's almost like the three Western Mediterranean countries of Italians, Spanish and French, that they will, especially in Australia, stick in groups and speak their language. And I know obviously if you've traveled a lot, you'll see northern European countries have way high levels of English…Southern France, Spain, Italy, their English levels are nothing compared to what we see from Germans and from Scandinavians. And so I'd always end up pulling out my French because you just can't get anywhere.

Michelle
And I think a lot of people are surprised because Germany is right next to France, Switzerland's also next to France. I do think it's a little different in Switzerland because they are so just multilingual as a society. But people are like, wait, I thought Germany was way up and we're way over on the other side of the continent. I'm like, no, it's right next door. Yeah, you cross the border.

Felly
It's pretty big for a European country.

Michelle
Yeah, story for, yeah, I think a discussion for a different time how country sizes were drawn on maps, but it's a whole other thing. Yeah. So tell me about Australia. Where were you?

Felly
So I flew into Brisbane and I backpacked up the east coast to Cairns, and then I flew to Sydney, lived outside of Sydney for five months and then, I don't know, road tripped I guess to do my farm work. So in Australia, if you do a working holiday visa and you want a second year, you have to do 88 days of farm work to be able to renew for a second year. I knew I wanted a second year, so I had found a dairy farm in the middle of nowhere in New South Wales, which is the state that Sydney is in. It was inland, I don't know, seven, eight hours from the coast. It was awful. I lasted eight days. I would also like to point out that I was a vegetarian for 10 years, so working on a dairy farm was not it.

Michelle
Yeah, that's intense. That's like you threw yourself completely in.

Felly
Yeah, there was no cell service. The grocery store was an hour away. It was like me and this South African guy in this sketchy house. My room had an infestation of white backs, which is this or not white backs, white tips. I think it's like a poisonous spider that if it bites you, it's like flesh eating. And so I'd wake up in the night and have spiders on me and I was just like, I can't do this.
So I left on another road trip. I actually went and spent Christmas with a friend because I had a lot of friends in Australia from doing ski seasons in Vancouver and in Banff in Alberta. So I went and spent Christmas with this girl that we worked together four years before in Vancouver in the middle of Victoria, which is the state that Melbourne's in. And then I went from there to the west coast to Margaret River, which is about three hours south of Perth in Western Australia. And I did the grape season way better, way better. I got to drink wine. It was a lot of people. There was teams and there were three companies. So there was a lot of us that were 20 somethings all in the same town just to do our farm work. And it was a great community.

Michelle
I was about to say, that's where you had to pull out your language skills.

Felly
That's where there was the French people, who were living in converted sprinter vans and just hanging out with other French people. My first house was with a bunch of Italians and it was 10 Italians. They didn't speak English. They only spoke Italian. I could not keep up. My Italian is terrible.

Michelle
But you tried learning Italian as well, or how many? No. Okay. Just you tried to maneuver with your other languages?

Felly
Well, yeah. And it's like with Italian and then with what I ended up doing when I lived in Mexico is you can kind of follow what they're saying. I can't repeat it. I cannot do the Italian accent, especially because I lived with a guy who was from, I think he was from Sicily, but at least he was from South Italy. And it's like they have the rhythm, they do the singing. I was like, I can't repeat anything you say. I will never have that rhythm and musicality that you naturally have. So yeah, Italian, I never tried… Spanish. I tried so hard and it's like you're speaking good and you just throw in a French word. It's like my brain doesn't know the Spanish word, so it uses a French word and I'll be like, that was wrong.

Michelle
But I think that's normal… they’re like siblings or cousins, however we want to put it in the family. And I think it's normal also. And it's why a lot of French people try to use French words in English. We do have a lot, not just cognates, we have a fair amount. We just say them differently. We do have a lot. Just sometimes, for instance, the word cliché, this is used differently in French than it is in English. And so I had to explain it to my husband the other day because he's like, but why can't I use it? He's not challenging me, he's just not understanding because for him, it's like a French word that we're now repurposing a little. And so I'm like, cliché is more generic and stereotype is what we use to say what you want to say in French for cliché. So he's making all these mental notes and I think his brain is just not sure. Sometimes do I do the French one? Do I do the French and English one? But I have to do the same. You have to do the same. Oh yeah.

Felly
Yeah. What was the word that I said the other day? Mandatory. Because we have mandatory and obligatory. And so I said “Mandatoire” and they're like not a word. Only “obligatoire”. Exactly.

Michelle
I have coined “confusant” because I think it should be a word. Tell your husband, we're going to work on this. It's going to be a group. What is it called? What do they call it? The working group to create new words that should make sense in French because there is no word to say that things are confusing (in a single-word adjective form). And it drives me, I think really crazy because I've never realized I want to say this word so much and I have to express it differently. So between my husband and I, we actually use this word a real word, and I just literally, just say, “C’est tellement confusant”... I have used it and it works. And he's like, I don't see, we should petition the academy. We should make it.

Felly
Well, considering that most words and the end in -ION were Latin based words, it's weird that French wouldn't have (this).

Michelle
Yeah, yeah. There are holes that I have found that just don't, will never be filled by almost the academy chooses. And I do think that's the interesting thing with French. There is an academy that oversees how the language, how do we want to say this is allowed to be spoken every year versus English does not have this. English can't have this, right? There's no way. We can't even, exactly. Even between Canada and the US, when I speak with Canadians, which you're a part of this group, I really feel like, wow, you guys are, we are so similar. But I will, I was speaking with a Canadian couple the other day and I forgot that they were, I'm sorry, in my head, I forgot accents the same, everything was the same until we started talking about healthcare. And they were just like, yeah, so we went to the hospital for this and I was like, wait, I'm sorry, I forgot you weren't American. I can't just go to the hospital for whatever. I had gone to the hospital one time. I was paying for my medical bill for 10 years after. So it's just social things, right? Not language things. Yeah, really interesting.

Felly
Yeah. And I feel like here, living in France, I have to explain the weirdness that is Canada is that half our cultural things are American, and the other half of our cultural things are British because we are a commonwealth. I use measuring cups to bake, and I actually for last year on my Christmas list, said I want measuring cups because I hate using the scale. And my friend who's married to a Moroccan, she was like, ah, where did you get these cups? I find these nice recipes and they use cups and I don't know what to do with it. And I'm like, well, there's always conversion apps and stuff. And then my husband's like, oh, they use ounces. And I'm like, no, we don't use ounces, we use milliliters. And he’s like, what? Who uses ounces? And I'm like, well, we use Fahrenheit for ovens, but we use Celsius for weather.

Michelle
That is amazing to me. By the way. I think that there is a war, we can be honest about this. It's not exactly a war I created, right? I've been asked quite literally, why does your country use this system? Why don't you just change? I'm like, do you think I have the power to change? Do you think this…

Felly
You… could get a couple million people to change…this?

Michelle
Do you think this is a national priority?! We have a lot of other things going on. So I love that Canada… and I often have to fly through my layover is in Canada in order to get back to France. It just makes the most sense. And it's so amazing to me. You guys are the hybrid country. You guys are the one that… it’s kind of like how your language experience, I guess you didn't have a choice between one only, so you were just like, okay, we got to learn it all. And I dunno, you guys have my vote for best. I dunno, most well adapted, most open-minded in some ways society, because the logic of America versus, or I should say the US versus Europe, all this breaks down once you look at Canada, right? Fahrenheit, Celsius, kilometers, miles. You guys use, someone made a chart online. You use everything actually in different ways.

Felly
Yeah. It's not like, okay, we follow the American way or we follow the British way. We drive on the same road as the Americans, but we use kilometers like the British. And it's like, who made this up? We measure ourselves in feet and pounds and we don't use, obviously not stones, but not kilos or centimeters either. It's confusing when people are like, what's the rhyme to, so you follow the American system? Well, no. So you follow the British system. Well, no.

Michelle
No, well, you follow both. You just don't follow all of one…

Felly
We pick and choose.

Michelle
Which is why, again, Canada, wonderful, love the maple leaf, love the simplicity of the flag. A lot of things to love!

Felly
Can contest that it's a flag I can draw.

Michelle
Yeah, that helps! To totally switch us off the topic because I didn't want to lose it. I mean I think we can continue, but Mexico, okay, so this came after Australia or was it?

Felly
Yeah.

Michelle
Okay. Yeah.

Felly
So Australia and Asia were… (20)17, (20)18.
I did the work for my second year visa, and I had two friends' weddings a week apart that I was like, I'm going to go to Asia, hang out for a bit, backpack around, go back to Canada for these weddings and I'm going to come back to Australia for my second year. And then I got back to Canada and I was like, you know what? Literally arrived in the airport crying and I was like, I don't want to have to repeat this where in a year when my visa's done in Australia, it'll be like, now what? And so I had already discovered virtual assistant work working remotely, and I was like, I'm going to figure something out. I don't get to leave until I have my own source of income, which is how I ended up a year and a half, a year and a half back in Vancouver before I bought a one-way ticket to Mexico and I bought my one way ticket to Mexico. I bought it actually on Christmas Eve, and I landed the first week of February, 2020.

Michelle
Oh my god. Okay.

Felly
Yeah. You already know where this is going. Yeah.

Michelle
Mention 2020 anywhere.

Felly
Yeah. My plan was to travel from Mexico City to Columbia. I wanted to go to Meine and spend six months there working because I see so many people talk about being digital nomads there and how beautiful it is, how great life is, blah, blah, blah. Anyways, land in Mexico City, I think I made it through four cities before the borders all closed and I decided to hang out. I thought it wouldn't last very long. And yeah, that's how my life was in Mexico.

Michelle
So if this was around February, 2020, you spent, I mean, how long were you locked down for? I imagine a while.

Felly
So I landed in the first week of February in Mexico City. I spent about a month traveling from Mexico City to Puerto Escondido, which is on the Pacific coast, basically straight down in Mexico, in Oaxaca. And I got to Puerto Escondido and absolutely fell in love and was like, I want to spend at least a month here and get an apartment, hang out, catch up on work, because I'd been traveling quite a bit and staying in hostels and meeting people and socializing and visiting different places in Mexico that I was just like, okay, I'm just going to take a month to breathe, catch up. Literally as soon as I decided that, I think it was March 15th, all the borders closed. So I was like, cool. All the more reason to stay here because I was going to go to Chiapas and then cross the border to Guatemala, but that border's now closed, so I'll just hang out here for a month… And go when the borders open.
The reason Mexico was so great was because where I lived in Mexico, I know Mexico City was very different, but where I lived in Mexico, there was no lockdown where I was, most of the tourists left. So it was like the people who stayed… we were it. But it was kind of like being in college, I guess I never went to college, but being in a college town maybe where it's like we all knew each other. We were all kind of in our bubble together if nobody was coming and nobody was going. But we'd go to the beach, we'd go to the bar, we'd go to restaurants, we'd go to the market. Nothing in that sense changed. We were still able to live freely in our town. You just couldn't leave the town. It's freedom within these limits. Yeah, yeah. It's like, oh, you wanted to, we had a friend who was German who wanted to go back to Germany. His flight got canceled three times and he was like, I can't leave.

Michelle
Fun fact, I was actually locked down in France during this time on, I happened to go for a weekend and long backstory with all this, we're not going to talk about one now, but basically I really do think that played a role in me deciding to move later because I did not like the city. I did not like the country. I did not like how as a tourist, and so I had no desire to stay. I was just there to see someone, et cetera. And then it was like, okay, not only is everything locked down, but what was it called? The travel ban at that time from all travelers, all directions, et cetera, countries just imposing this on each other. And I just was there for a while. It was a few months, and I actually ended up having to request a special permission because on your passport you only get 90 days. So I overstate that, but I got a special extension from the government and I actually realized, okay, I could do this so long as I find my own way. And I do think it actually played a pretty huge role.

Felly
What city were you in?

Michelle
I was in Toulouse. Yeah. So that's what made me later on move there because it was like, okay, this, at least I'll accept this at least. I've scouted it all out, this whole area. I get how things work, I get the local culture also. I see what the known unpleasant variables are. Okay, got it. We'll work my way around it. Right? But yeah. Okay. Sorry to go back again. Australia, you said Asia also. Where? In Asia, I forgot.

Felly
I spent five days in Thailand. I was visiting a friend and then I went to Malaysia for a month and Indonesia for two months. I loved Malaysia. I spent most of my time diving in Georgetown and Malaysia. It was so good. The food, again, I would go to Asia just to eat, and then Indonesia, I kind of had a love hate with it. I didn't love Bali. I found Bali to be very overrated, very touristic, just way too much.

Michelle
It's very expaty. Yeah.

Felly
Yeah. And so then I went to the Gili Islands, but I went to Gili Meno, the quiet one in the middle, and I volunteered for three weeks. And then I went to Lombok, the island Gili Meno was in between them. So then I went to Lombok and I renewed my passport. I had you get a 30 day passport, but you have the option to renew it if you get the paper at the office before you leave the airport. I don't know if it's still that rule, so don't quote me!

Michelle
Yeah this is only valid as of the time that you experienced five years ago after Covid, who knows?

Felly
But yeah, so I went to the main island, renewed my passport. It was so much easier than what I'd read because if you do it in Bali, it can take a whole month for them to get back to you where I just think I waited four days for them to, you had to leave your passport with them. And then it was like four days later, I had my passport back with the stamped visa in it. And while I was there, I was visiting a bunch of waterfalls. There were just waterfalls everywhere and I loved that. And then I took a four day boat. I wouldn't call it a cruise to, oh, what's that island? I want to say Flores. Flores, yes, because it's the Portuguese name where the Komodo dragons are… Komodo National Park.
And I went there again because I fell in love with diving in Malaysia. So I went there to go diving and then I flew back to Bali and I went to the north of Bali to go diving again. And I literally got to my last stop in Bali and I was supposed to take a ferry to Java and cross Java before my flight back to Canada. And I met a boy. I literally had a eat, pray, love, mad love story. I had one week left before my flight, and so I decided not to go to Java and spent my last week in Bali with him before I got a flight to Java to catch my flight to Thailand, to Taiwan, to go back to Vancouver. I had a 40 hour travel day because of this boy. I was like, that was not a good idea.

Michelle
Yeah, this is not the boy that you're with.

Felly
No, it's not the boy I married.

Michelle
Yeah, just going to close that part of the history. Okay, so then Mexico trying to, I always battle between language, communication, culture, you know what I mean? Traveling, it's all related. So I'm trying to also bring back the language part. Right. Did you speak Spanish before you arrived? Okay. So tell me about life in Mexico during a pandemic as well, which could be good or bad.

Felly
I feel dumb for saying this, but I was shocked when I got to Mexico City and nobody spoke English. I was like, major city, I'm not in the countryside. Why doesn’t anyone speak English? It of course comes down to poverty levels. Mexico City is a massive city with massive disproportion between wealth. And so the people that you're coming in contact with, the workers in the airport, the workers in the hostels, the people selling food on the street, they're not the ones that went to the fancy American schools and learned English. So I actually got detained when I landed in Mexico my first time getting detained because my person at the desk didn't speak a word of English and I didn't have an onward ticket. I was like, yeah, I'm going to travel from Mexico City to Guatemala, I'm going to take buses. And she just didn't understand. And she was like, what do you mean, where are you going? And I kept repeating like Guatemala, I'm going to Guatemala bus. And so then I got put in detainment, sat there for two hours, had the same conversation with three different people. Nobody spoke English before. They finally just let me out and were like, whatever. And then I got to the hostel and the people working at the front desk at the hostel didn't speak English. And I was like, you're a hostel,

Why don't you speak English? And I felt like it was one of those, wow, I'm being so privileged being like, why don't you speak my language? When I came to a country without speaking their language. But it was really shocking to me, I guess because in Asia everybody speaks English or at least some level. And other places I'd traveled, I went to Slovenia, I went to Austria, I've been to Germany, I've been to Denmark, I've been to Sweden. All these countries, they speak English. They have really good to if not fluent levels of English, especially if you're in a tourist place. So someone working in a hostel, I was like, shouldn't it be a requirement?

But also it's like they're working in a hostel in Mexico City. They shouldn't. I learn basic, hello, my name is…

Michelle
And just a note on that, I do think, I dunno for Canada, but you guys are right next door so we can consider North America this part. I do think that media and movies and something, it has given us the impression that in major cities that language is a countryside problem.

Michelle
And when you go to major cities and you're right, in the hotels, at the desk, whatever, that you're supposed to be able to interact and they're supposed to be able to interact back with you. That's not only not true, that is not true. I think that can't be a baseline expectation everywhere because the world is so massive and people come from all sorts of backgrounds. And so I dunno, my personal experiences I think are definitely a little different with this because I did grow up with family on the other side of the world, so I did have to travel just to go see family, therefore realized nobody speaks this language. But I also thought it was a nineties thing.
I thought it was just like, and this is from before and now after technology, we are good. And I lived in Malaysia actually for work and for life and was introduced to the concept of English as an official language of the country, and so therefore people speak even though they don't necessarily have the same relationship with it as I do, they do speak because they had to learn it. And what you're describing going to other countries in this part of the world, you're like, well, we really need to update how we're seeing English language in an international way because it is not just in the countryside that people, and it's not only not fair to say that, but it's completely the wrong approach I think, to look at the topic. How can you expect other people to know this language if they've never, this is their country, this is their language. They work in tourism, but they also serve a massive Spanish speaking population. We’re the exception when we travel.

Felly
Yeah, exactly. And that's the humbling experience I had with Mexico was it's like, no, I'm the problem. And I had a really good friend, actually a roommate when I lived in Australia who was in Belgium and he had traveled South America and he had said to me, you cannot travel South America without learning Spanish. He's like, it's not like Asia that they have hundreds of thousands of tourists every day that they all speak English. South America, everybody learns Spanish to be able to travel there if they want to backpack it. I had it in my head that Mexico would be fine because of the level of tourism from Americans and Canadians. I wasn't going to the tourist places, I wasn't going to the resorts, I wasn't going to the all-inclusives. I was in Mexico City. It's not where tourists go even unless you want to eat. And then you also get that a lot of Americans, or even just travelers, a lot of people in the hostel with me, they had decent levels of Spanish. I was one of the only ones that had no Spanish because a lot of people that were in the hostel with me were finishing. They'd traveled up Central America, so they'd already even been speaking Spanish for months. Not so many people were starting.
And there was one other girl with me who… She was Polish but had lived in London and she had just arrived as well as me, but she was traveling down, but it wasn't her first time. She'd already traveled South America. And so now she was doing central. And so it was, again, I was one of the only people who didn't have any Spanish and I could fumble through it. I had some basic sentences from movies from Duolingo, but it was really my pronunciation. And to this day, my pronunciation is so bad because I pronounce things like it's French. And also as someone from a west coast, like a west coast, north American, I speak pretty monotone.

Michelle
And French as a language is totally, totally flat.

Felly
I end all my sentences going down and falling. You can't do that (with intonation in a) language because if you go down, it changes the word. And so it's like people would say things to me and I would repeat and they'd be like, no, and repeat it to me 10 times. I'm like, I'm saying the same thing as you. I don't hear a difference.

Michelle
The interesting thing for me as a Mandarin speaker as well is that, so we do have the hardcore tonal language, is where it's going to mean totally something else. Yeah, Spanish, I think it's more about stress and about where you're placing emphasis. So those as concepts. And I took Spanish in school, so never spoke it right? Because that's what we do with our languages. We learned them, we pass tests and then we don't speak it. But when I went to France, it's just so flat to me, but I really feel like it's the hardest adjustment for me coming from English, Spanish, Chinese. These are languages where the dynamic aspects of the language make the language what it is. English has so much variety and I find it one of the most beautiful parts of the language. I'm not used to needing to constrain my output to match this precise template
And it's I think one of my largest frustrations because people, I've had philosophical conversations with locals about this and other expats and whatnot, and people are like, yeah, but maybe it's just because people aren't used to expanding their ears and their comprehension to other variations. Recently did an ancestry test for my husband. I don't know where my ancestors are actually from because nobody talks about this. He found out they are all from the same little village region that his family still currently lives in. And he's like, he went back five generations and he's like, they actually cannot understand people not from that region because you know what I mean? They didn't travel, they didn't leave, they fought the war, but that was a few years and then they came back. So he's like literally, they don't know how to listen to different types of voices. And I do think that's what magnifies the accents and other types of vocal variation in the French language because people are like, oh my God, I see it when we go to Paris or when he's up in the north. They're like, oh, you have an accent from the south. And I'm like, I swear all of you people, you have no idea if you considered this a huge accent. What do we say in English? I can't.

Felly
Oh, I totally hear what you're saying. So I don't live in a city. I live in the middle of nowhere in the Lot Valley. I don't know if you are familiar with it but on what you were talking about before with the regulations of the French language and that company or association that basically controls the French language. I saw an article that they were coming for the Lot department because they use a lot of “Englishisms,” which obviously the French Association is not okay with, but the tourism department here is called “Oh My Lot”. And the French Association is like, that's an English system. It's not French. You need to change it to “Lot Tourisme”, or whatever. Anyways, I know what you're saying about not understanding different accents, different regions, even where we are, it's really small. When we were in Mexico, we met a lot of French people, but every time someone would meet my husband, my now husband, and he would say, hi, my name is blah, blah, blah. And they would be like, oh, you're French. And they'd say something in French and they'd instantly go, you're from the south, you're from the south. And they're like, it's his accent. And I was like, I don't hear anything.

Michelle
Don't really hear it, but it's not something to judge someone for. Right?

Felly
Yeah. But it is never negative people. I think a lot of the times northern people would almost be jealous that he's from the south, but it would be that they could instantly tell he had the southern accent and everyone would be like to me like, oh, can't you hear it? It's such a beautiful accent. You're so lucky you're going to the south. It's so much better. And I was like, I don't hear the accent. But since I've been here, I will have people say to me, I can't understand anything you say, and I'm fluent in the language.
Open your ears a little bit. But I've had multiple people be like, oh, I can't understand you. I can't understand your accent. And I'm just like, I don't know what to say to you because I'm literally speaking your language. Should I switch to English? I know you don't speak that. And I can see it obviously with my husband who is learning English, learned Spanish. It's different for Spanish because he lived all over South America and then in Mexico, and he went to school speaking Spanish, then he lived in Columbia, then he lived in Mexico. He spent a lot of time with Argentinians. They're everywhere. And so it's like he knows all those different variations of the accent, but when it comes to English speakers speaking with their different accents, like Australian accent, Scottish accent, Irish accent, or even a non-English speaker speaking English or non-native English speaking English is, he struggles so much more. And I remember when we were in the airport to leave Vancouver and someone speaking had an accent and he was like, how can that person have that job? I think it was a flight attendant. He's like, how can the flight attendant, how can she be hired if she speaks like that? And I'm just like, because you can't not hire someone. They have an accent. It's called discrimination.
And he is like, yeah, but their job is to communicate. And I was like, yeah, and she's speaking perfect English. She just has an accent.

Michelle
And we all have accents. It's just some are going to be within a range of, I don't know, more optimal probability of clarity. I don't know how to Yeah, you, yeah, some will be a little bit within the decibel range of what we can associate with the others will be a little more challenging for sure. My husband right now is… being just in the Washington DC area, there are so many different accents and dialects, and even I code switch a lot. I go into different kinds of personalities depending on who I'm with because that makes sense that I was born into an immigrant family. I speak English in a certain way for professional life, but when I'm with my friends, that will totally change. And it's not just about sling. It's my literal voice that will change. And he can't understand me sometimes. And he's like, honey, please, please, I'm not from here. What are you saying? What are you? Slow down. Break it down for me.

Felly
When we went to Canada and I was with my friends, he was like… “too fast. Everything's too fast.” And I was like, yeah, of course, if I'm speaking with other native English speakers from my city, our slang comes, my slang comes out way heavier than I would use it naturally. In Mexico, we had a lot of friends that were English speakers, but from all over Britain, we had a Romanian friend, an American friend, a friend from Ontario. And so it's like our slang changes between all of us. And so then I won't use the heavy Canadian slang or the Vancouver terminology for things because they don't get it either. And so then when we were in Vancouver, he was like, I can't follow your conversations. You talk too fast, you talk different. But I say, I don't know about your husband, but mine, when he speaks French, his voice drops…

Michelle
Compared to other languages. Let me think. Yes!

Felly
Yeah. The first time I heard in French, I was like, whoa, your voice up so much deeper.

Michelle
The first time. So we met online and basically we had a week. I had a friend visiting and then we couldn't find time to meet up, and so we were exchanging messages, and then we went into voice messages. And I remember the first time I heard his voice in French, I was like, okay, so this could be okay. We might find something nice at the end of this when we meet. It's interesting, right? Different. And mine does too. My voice. Yours changes when you speak different languages, or do you feel like you have no idea… like your register?

Felly
I dunno if I've ever thought about it, but I've noticed it with him and I know it with my mom because my mom puts on a Quebecois accent because she learned in Quebec. And I'm always like, why do you speak like that? Yeah, yeah. We had that conversation. We got married in the summer, so my parents were here and we were talking about how as a French immersion kid, I don't speak with a Quebecois accent, but it's like we were looking at the different teachers that I had, and I think it was less than 50% that I actually had Quebecois teachers. Some learned French, some were from different… one was Acadian, one was from Manitoba. There's different French communities all across Canada, so it's only in that one part that they speak in that one way. But then when my mom gave his speech at the wedding and she did her speech, half English, half French, and my one friend was just like, that's the French I know! That's the French teacher voice that I know! The sounds, she was really struggling with the French accent, and she knows French. She did French immersion with me, but she was like, I can't keep up. And I was like, look, you haven't spoken French in 10 years. I understand not being able to keep up.

Michelle
Yeah, I mean, remind your husband that there are so many different French accents and we're not just talking native accents. We're talking former colonies that were forced to integrate the French language as part of their official languages, and it does not invalidate the fact that they speak the language because they were also forced to learn the language. It's like English. If we were to say, oh, English, which is Malaysian English or English, Singaporean English, which family in Singapore? It's like, I'm like, oh man, we are not the same in this whole identity. I don't know what you guys are. You guys are using words, but wow, not in the same way, but we can't seriously be like, oh, no, it's not real English. These what? It was forced into these places. Sorry. It's a different podcast now.

Felly
In that sense. I think where in Canada companies would be literally sued if they didn't hire you, you had an accent or they didn't like your accent, your way of speaking. In France, they actually won't hire you if you have an accent, and so that's where his mentality was, was like, how can they hire you? And I'm like, we don't discriminate because we don't discriminate because it's illegal.

Michelle
The amount of contradiction I see between literal French society hiring practices like social interaction, whatnot, and what I'm told, but it's the law, it's legal. We don't discriminate. There is no racism because it's illegal. I'm like, do you guys not know that what's in the law and what happens in real life are just two separate things and that you actually, what is going on here? Do I have to explain this concept? Yeah, we can have a separate follow up podcast on all. You know what I mean? Yeah. It's a whole separate topic.
Okay. I'm going to just round this out. I'm going to bring us home with this.

Michelle
Can you think of times… so you're someone who’s been exposed to multiple languages, cultures, countries, you've traveled so many different places. Can you think of things that you think in terms of, I don't know how much language learning you're doing right now or you did in the past few years, because do you think for you it's kind of been like, all right, it's coming back and it's leaving and it's coming back and it's a personal journey. Can you think of things that are, I suppose, not ideal about the way the industry is right now? The dialogue on language, on communication, things you would pinpoint in those areas?

Felly
I wish I could remember the name, but there's some, I don't know the word influencer or course creator, pretty sure it's a guy who has this system for learning languages, and his system is don't try and be perfect with the grammar with all of that, and just consume the words and learn the words, and who cares if you use the wrong tense or if you use the wrong masculine feminine, because words shouldn't have genders, in my opinion as an English speaker. Yeah, seriously. Yeah. I found that at some point when I was in Mexico and I was like, this is so good because I learned present tense verb conjugations, and I probably took over a year to learn one type of past tense, and I never learned future tense. I was not on my Spanish learning, so I would speak to people in Spanish and I would speak only in present tense, and people would be like, I would say yesterday, I am going to, and it's like, it's weird, it's wrong, but you know what I'm saying.
And that's my thing. I am totally okay with being unprofessional and not being a perfectionist. I'm the opposite of a perfectionist, but when it comes to languages, I really, really don't like the stress of getting the grammar perfect. I would rather you fumble your words. I would rather you called me he over she, but you said your sentence over, not speak at all. Right, and it's like with French I, it's masculine and feminine. I could guess if you ask me what it is, I'm not sure if I'm speaking. It's just there in memory.

Felly
Sometimes I still get them backwards and sometimes people will correct me and I'll be like, does it matter? Does it matter? You knew what I said, and that's me as a language learner, and that's my beef with the language learning industry is I feel like it's so rigid, and I think a lot of people would get farther if they let go of the is it and they just said whatever, because it's like you need to get in the practice of speaking and so many people learning languages, their fear is the speaking, and once you can speak it and you feel comfortable speaking it, that's where you'll pass that level to the next stages.

Michelle
Yeah, I totally hear that. And also if I'm totally honest, when I dropped the idea of gendered nouns, I got so much farther with my, I almost said Spanish. My French… I don't speak Spanish. What's funny is I did actually learn them because I did so many years of Spanish in school, just memorizing nouns, memorizing the gender, and so weirdly you're saying I do have them in the back of my mind for Spanish. They're not the same in French. They're also all, some of them are not all of them, and also the pronunciation, so I learned how to make a sound between “Le” and “La” that actually works in the majority of cases. I already have a foreign accent. On my French, I posted a whole thing about how I don't have an American accent nor a Chinese accent. I just have a Michelle accent when I speak French, and so when you're listening to me, you actually cannot tell. It's like a weird psychological thing. You can't tell what I'm actually saying except that I said something that started with an L and you fill it in with the right gender in your head, and it's like the biggest hack, and my husband finds it so funny because nobody notices at all. He's watching me speak, he's watching me interact, and he's like, this is so smart. You just got your way around.

Felly
Well, I'm pretty sure the people who are fighting language being gendered would love to learn your system, because I know when I was in Mexico, I know there's a lot of movement with the Spanish language of people trying to make it not masculine and feminine words and changing. If it ends in an O or an A, instead, it ends in an E or it ends. We see it with, it ends in an X, but I never know how to pronounce that, but I know instead of Amiga or Amigo, some people will say, “Amiges” and that's supposed to be a neutral “friend.”

Michelle
I see. It's like, yeah, people are trying to do it in French. I don't think the academy will ever accept it, but people are trying.

Felly
No, no, no, no, no. They'd have to redo their entire language.

Michelle
We're a few centuries away…Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. This has been a wonderfully enlightening and enriching discussion. I actually do think that your experiences are just so, they're so cool. Of course, they're so varied. They're so diverse. They're so expansive in a way that I hope more people will understand that what you said about not being perfect, it goes, I think beyond language, it goes beyond just everyday communication. I think it's also a little bit your philosophy on life. When you think about going out and trying something new, it doesn't have to be as drastic as moving countries. It doesn't have to be like, and I'm going to book a one way ticket and get detained in Mexico because I had this wonderful plan to trek Guatemala, but I do think it's that mentality of… just do it. Just start. Just continue. Just keep going. I don't know. That's what I get from everything that you've said today. I just think it's super admirable and I'm excited to get to know you better as we continue talking.

Felly
Yeah definitely. I know I'm going to be in your DMs.