Montréal

[gallery ids="25826,25827,25828,25829,25830,25831,25832" type="rectangular" orderby="rand"]

Bienvenue à Montréal!

It's a great city and great to be back after a long absence. Above are a few selected photos after wandering around in the snow for a bit. A mix of French and English Canadian culture, not quite as hardcore as Quebec itself, per se. A fine place to practice my French speaking skills, where I can confidently fall back to English when I completely screw up.

The immersion approach still works best. Of course, as in France, I've switched my various devices to French language as the primary language. I find myself using a bit of memory as to where things are at in each menu and trying to parse the words and understand what I'm about to click. Another thought as to why immersion in a language works is because you're trying navigate the country and the people daily. And lessons and mistakes are reinforced and corrected, respectively, in real time, and frequently. I remember a TEDx talk from a while ago where the rules were basically:

Rule 1) Live the language, own the language

Rule 2) Make plenty of mistakes

Rule 3) Make it fun. Friendly competition is good

This appears to be my natural approach, along with learning vocabulary and learning to listen for the spoken subtleties. C'est la vie.

When I used to often travel to Sweden, I would switch everything to Swedish. It made for some hilarious moments when I thought I knew a word and clicked on something, and a completely different action occurred from what I expected.

In any case, learning languages is still fun, as is Montréal.