How The French Foreign Legion Learns Languages Fast

the french foreign legion is an elite part of the french army made up almost entirely of foreigners and when new recruits join the legion they need to learn the french language fast problem financial proportion and if you complete your service you get some pretty serious perks a new french identity a new french birthday whatever that is and even a french passport but you can't have any of this stuff if you don't learn to speak french for me going to the french foreign legion um the the biggest step i wasn't even scared about like being in the military or going through basic training or you know being sent to a war zone or anything i was just scared about having to learn a second language i mean in south africa no one speaks french i don't think i've ever met a french person before that was luciano who will be hearing more from later he was trained in french when he joined the foreign legion using their special kippy blanc method infamous for its speed and effectiveness and we'll be exploring that method in this video but first a question you might be asking the foreign legion is a part of the french army legendary for its brutal discipline men between the ages of 17 and 40 come from all over the world for the adventure and a new start in life not to mention the salary they are trained as elite french-speaking soldiers or legionnaires however it ain't easy not to get in and not to stay in you say they don't have to convince you to join you have to convince them with a very interesting language test more on that in a moment now earlier we met luciano who is south african and served in the parachute regiment in the foreign legion he was legitimately terrified about learning french and that fear was justified but not for the reasons that he thought your first clue is this the foreign legion is the only part of the french military that does not swear allegiance to france but rather to the legion itself it is a serious business although they are on instagram so how scary can they be so anyway how do you get in there is only one way to enroll you simply turn up in person at one of the recruiting centers in france you can't send an email you can't make an appointment you just turn up and they're waiting for you you knock on the door they open the door and you you're in for five years basically now when you join you don't need to know any french in fact most men arrive not understanding a single word of french so how on earth do they know if you'll be good enough to learn the language well there is a test but it's not what you think are your school dropout nobody cares got five phds still no one cares to get into the french foreign legion all you have to do is pass a language proficiency test in your own native language more on that in just a moment but that's not all that you have to pass there will be pull-ups a run the swim medical tests interviews and iq tests psychological and personality tests and you might want to check your teeth in the mirror most of them still need to be in your mouth now all this vetting by french intelligence can take up to a month and a half and you are at the center the whole time and then well it's pass or fail only one in 10 candidates will make it through selection only one in 12 will make it through the five-year contract so luciano how did you hear that you've made it in to be honest i never knew i was accepted until i actually arrived at my regiment and i was like okay i'm actually here and i'm staying so this is not for the faint-hearted after signing your contract you were on probation for six months and as long as you didn't do anything crazy well you're good to go get ready to live work and breathe in french training begins at the fourth foreign infantry regiment near castillo day a country town in southern france to legionaires it is known as the farm in 2021 1400 men trained at this legendary boot camp and those who survived will be joining the other 8 000 legionnaires out there representing 147 nationalities for the five years that they are in the legion the men will go through training that is not only physically challenging but also very stressful psychologically the perks though well after three years they can apply for french citizenship the french language is taught on a daily basis as part of basic training but unlike at dli in the us there is no luxury of sitting at a desk all day studying nope that is not tough enough for the foreign legion i will let your journal explain in just a minute now the initial boot camp is 17 weeks long and the linguistic goal during that time is to become conversational in french [Music] while also acquiring hundreds of military specific words that you'll need to do your job it's a great example of language learning that's targeted to a specific purpose now after 10 days you'll be able to say things like your blood group your id number and how your weapon works after a year you'll be good enough to be the radio operator of your unit and then just like at the mtc in utah there is no tv phone radio or anything else like that allowed during the boot camp after all the legion has to keep up that legendary discipline now what is the deal with the classrooms with jenna so i guess there's two different classroom environments there's a formal classroom environment and then there's the informal classroom environment and the informal classroom environment starts from day one the day that you knock on the door um as soon as you are left through the door you are no longer allowed to speak your native language you have to speak french which is absolutely hilarious because 99 of everybody that shows up doesn't speak any french whatsoever yes and there will be 40 to 50 of these foreigners in the class at least before some of them quit and as you'll figure out the classroom sessions seem to be more of a formality just to get through the theory because in the foreign legion classroom is a very loose term as far as the actual like setting of the classroom itself it kind of varies um sometimes you have a very standard traditional classroom where there's desks there's a whiteboard in front and the teacher like not the teacher the tenant's gonna write on the whiteboard um sometimes um it's just an improvised class where you're standing out in the field and he's going to you know give a french lesson in fact you don't even get to the first formal french lesson until about the third or fourth month of already being in the legion so wait just a minute you're expected to speak french before the french lessons well that's right because you've been doing this the whole time and don't forget the new name that you get given if it gets called out and you fail to respond well that is more push-ups for you and whatever your mistake was you'll be counting the push-ups in phonetic french and if you forget a number well tough luck you have to start all over from the beginning so by the time classes commence you've already acquired a small vocabulary and can understand basic orders right yeah so i was going to say i think that's like actually the most important part of what they wanted to teach us is understanding orders and being able to report back and that's basically what we did all day every day so we would get orders we'd have to execute orders in the beginning nobody really knew what was happening um in each section there's probably like out of the 30 or 40 guys there's maybe 10 that are native french people native french speakers less but there's probably 10 that speaks some level of french so they understand more or less what they're getting asked to do and you just end up watching them so when they say go get a broom or go get a mop so you can clean you just watch somebody go and get it and you kind of like associate the word with what you need to get and that's kind of how you learn you learn on the fly now you're going to learn what those orders look like in writing but there is another surprise waiting so the french lesson just kind of just flows i mean the the instructor is not even a french teacher it's just a lieutenant who is a native french speaker and he has i don't think he's had any formal instruction on pedagogy like how to actually teach somebody a language he just kind of you know goes at it hold on a second you have to learn operational french in four months or you're out but the teachers they're not actually teachers this just keeps getting better and better here is another spin for you the language challenge is compounded by the fact that most of the drill instructors are foreigners too and yet somehow in the foreign legion this is a tried and proven method right lutono i remember especially in the beginning when you're a young legionnaire the method that's tried and proven in the french foreign legion is they force you to speak french all the time and that's honestly what works in the beginning when you're a young legionnaire and so you have like about two years of service if you get caught speaking your own language you're gonna get hazed you're gonna get physically punished it's not a lot even in the evenings even if you're standing outside at like 10 o'clock at night and you just want to speak to somebody while you're having a cigarette and somebody that's like higher ranked than you walks by and they hear you not speaking french you're going to get hazed like you're going to get lit up there's there's no doubt about it i think we definitely need to come back to that hazing in a bit but there is a twist to all of this it is about a special language partner who could make your french easier if you get along with him and if not well you're in trouble but first let's find out exactly what a french lesson might entail and i remember one of our first lessons was probably either the first or second lesson and we jumped straight into conjugating french verbs and most of the verbs that they were using the guys had like no idea what they were i mean like the definition of the words most people had no idea like how to find it if it was translated to english most of the guys don't even speak english so it doesn't really help if you use any like instructions in english not really well there seems to be very few formal classes but when they do happen the main focus of those classes is to learn the actual meanings of the words and phrases that you've been regurgitating like parrots out there in training so the lieutenant will write something on the board and you will repeat after him over and over until you get it and they certainly know how to make it a visual experience the lieutenant orders a recruit to jump on the table and you all say he's on the table and he tells another one to crawl underneath it and you say he's under the table like we said earlier on top of this basic functional french here they also throw in a lot of military vocabulary related to military command and equipment so it's a fairly direct even simplistic method but it is clear and unambiguous and you can see why that's a smart approach when you remember that these guys come from all walks of life with diverse levels of literacy and education a lot of them have no clue what's even going on the the method of the legion is repetition so you just basically get drilled the same thing over and over again until everybody has the same minimum base and once everybody has the same minimum base it's only then that they actually started advancing i didn't feel that there was much progression in the lessons and i don't feel it was structured in a way to progress i think the base of the lessons was just to get every legionnaire to the same base level it's very interesting that fast track to getting them all on the same level and you're going to see how the language partner fits in here in just a minute what's interesting here though is that unlike the dli the defense language institute where everyone in the class speaks english in the foreign legion you've got people with all different mother tongues all learning one language french so it's definitely not a level playing field and the instruction has to cater to that and that's why it's important to emphasize that in the foreign legion the classroom learning is mostly a formality the majority of the french learning happens on the ground while you're training which makes it really quite different from dli or the missionary training center for that matter where classroom learning is primary so given all of this what do the actual learning materials look like every legionnaire gets accounted which is like a it's like a basic instruction book all the different weapon systems that you use all your different tactics it has a little bit about like the french foreign legion history a lot of the french lessons are based on that because understanding that book is basically the whole reason why we have basic instruction because everybody that finishes basic instruction needs to have a pretty good grasp on everything in that book okay so we've seen that writing plays a role in this method you will see that the instructor writes a list of french words to be copied down then he leads you through verb conjugation step by step it's kind of like everything step by step that you need to learn and in all of this repetition is the method of the legion drill drill drill and whatever you do learn in french you will be repeating that every hour that you are awake exercises get more complex week after week with new words new verbs and new sentences and new situations to learn so there is a lot of repetition but i'm curious what do you think of this method so far let me know in the comments i just want to also throw this in a little disclaimer i guess like with all large-scale programs like this everyone has a slightly different experience and the training does change over time as well so if you happen to be in the legion and you had a different journey i'd love to read your stories in the comments but for now well you haven't heard the best part yet all of these classroom sessions what are you going to be doing them late at night yes that's right in the foreign legion formal french lessons come only after a hard day's work between 8 00 and 10 p.m so you're already completely naked and you will hear about that hard day's work in just a minute because it involves extremely long hours and sleep deprivation which is hardly an optimal language learning environment but let's first go back to the language partner or binoma that i mentioned earlier and this is going to be fun new recruits are teamed up with francophones that is with recruits who can already speak french whether from belgium to congo or wherever which can be good but also very bad so how it works you actually get designated a francophone not personally but it depends on what ratio there is within the section but generally there's probably one francophone which is somebody that can communicate and understand french to between five and ten recruits that don't speak any french whatsoever and it's their job to make sure that you understand because when you don't understand the recruit plus the francophone gets hazed so you're going to both be doing physical punishment so it's in the best interest of the french speaker to make sure that everybody understands what's going on seriously okay i don't know about you but i don't think i would want to be nom in the legion there's no common communication between us and the francophone i mean most of them only speak french and maybe a tiny bit of english if you're lucky or spanish but they don't speak russian they don't speak nepalese they don't speak the languages that all the other recruits are speaking so for them to communicate with the guys that don't understand anything in french is a challenge in itself i mean i give them a lot of respect because they had a hard time so there's that punishment again let's get the details we already know what happens if you forget you're french the way that the legion works is there's a lot of physical punishment for mistakes so as soon as you didn't understand something or you made a mistake you're going to do push-ups and we crawled around the building we're running around the building to add to all of that we were physically and mentally exhausted being immersed into another language where you hardly understand anything you're spending your entire day trying to like translate in your head calculate what you want to say i'm trying to express yourself correctly it's really really tiring yep and for those who succumb to the fatigue well your head goes straight into a bucket of water if you are late you'll be asked why in french and if you can't answer well it's push-ups for you again more push-ups these guys must be completely ripped but consider this if you've ever struggled with motivation in your language learning this seems like quite an effective method right and luciano talks about being highly motivated to learn french so that he could understand orders and avoid those punishments for example probably one of the best would be like if i got told that i needed to like i was responsible to clean the toilets in the morning and either i didn't do it or i didn't do it properly or like i ended up cleaning the hallway instead of the toilet so for that i would get called out like the toilets went clean it's my fault but the francophone was either meant to like kind of come and verify that i actually did what i was meant to be doing so he almost had the responsibility of somebody that's like high in grade but at the same time he was the same great as me which caused a lot of friction i know a lot of guys that fought like physically with their francophone because their francophone told them hey you need to go clean the toilets and the guy was like no like i'm not you know you can't tell me what to do see i told you that is one language partner who would make me extremely nervous and uh no doubt the feeling would be mutual if they tell you to go fetch something from the vehicle and you've got no idea what you're getting told to fetch i mean it happened to me that i went to the vehicle and i took out like a box which was kind of like the toolbox to change the tyre and i brought it to the guy and all he wanted was the fire extinguisher but i didn't understand that he wanted that so i brought something completely wrong and i ended up having to like hold the heavy toolbox like above my head and run around the building and we were doing like laps because i would do one nap and the francophone would do a lap and then i would do a lap and then he would do a lap so we kind of did like a relay intense motivation to stay friendly with your partner to be sure but for those who can't handle the pressure there is always this way out a lot of people quit a lot of people deserve i mean like this is after basic training when i actually went to my regimen but um i think we arrived and in my i went to the parachute regiment and in the airborne regiment uh we started as i think was maybe like 12 or 15 guys and when i finished my five-year contract there were only like four guys left me included quitting so soon could it be that some guys only signed up to learn french and skipping town was part of the plan all along that sounds like the kind of thing that me or you would do because i know how desperate you guys are to get access to this kind of intense military training based on comments on previous videos i would not be surprised if there was somebody that came and did basic construction and maybe stayed for like a couple of months and then just deserted because they wanted to learn like a small amount of french so i would never say no to that because there are some people that have joined the french foreign region for some very strange reasons and everybody's got their own stories i even heard that some guys just throw their bags over the fence and make a run for it prison break from your french course you've got to love that but not advisable guys because that is a three-year jail sentence right there which i believe comes with you guessed it push-ups although i did hear that you can avoid the push-ups by being subscribed to this youtube channel but don't quote me on that french is spoken in a lot of countries besides france so what about all those french dialects then do they teach any dialects along with standard french so to be honest the legion it's a dialect itself i mean the way that a lot of us speak is incomprehensible to native french speakers i know a lot of guys that had more trouble french speakers that came to the legion they had more trouble understanding what was going on than some of the non-native speakers the accents throws a lot of people off we use a lot of words in the french foreign legion that are from all different languages kind of just mixed together and you know used as phrases expressions that do not exist in france come on come on give us some examples we have french expressions that french people would use in a completely different sense like bulldozer which is like a ball of fire um french people don't really use that at all but i mean for us that's an expression of saying that something's really cool or we really like something or we had a great time yes which basically a french person would look at you like what are you saying this really is such a unique language learning situation where you don't share a common language but you're all in the process of creating a common language together it's no wonder that they end up with their own dialect in the legion but as for overall proficiency in french well that is really up to you but the legion has more in store and it has to do with french music so stay tuned music tuned you see what i did there now like any good language program there is of course homework and the aim of the homework in the foreign legion is basically to implement what you have already learned by using it in daily communication with the other recruits so after class is over students keep practicing the day's french lesson together at dinner before bed at breakfast luckily for luciano he had a really really helpful partner what my francophone did which i appreciated and i kind of replicated the same thing later on is at the end of each day i had to go to him and tell him what i had done throughout that day so i told him what i ate what activities we participated in throughout the day and that really helped me progress in french because i learned how to actually explain something and not just kind of give an order or you know just a report back i was actually explaining something with you know using adjectives um he helped me with my vocabulary because she spoke a bit of english that is an excellent idea guys and then luciano then implemented the same thing himself when he became a corporal helping out the young new recruits with questions like where do you want to go on vacation recruits also write things down in their notebooks to memorize and uh luckily for them the french grammar police are nowhere around what was quite frustrating i think is there was such a huge disparity between the level that we were speaking at and understanding versus what we could read and write and i say that quite generally because i think most people are in the same situation so what was frustrating is like we could have a conversation we could we could be understood we could understand what somebody was telling us but if we had to read a very simple sentence that had been written down i don't think most people would actually understand what sentence meant even if it was something that was said out loud there's also a huge disparity between how the french language is spoken and how it's written so when people see how it's written i think they they get thrown off quite quickly so i do understand why they take this speaking first approach in the military but it does have its obvious limitations and if you are someone who is learning languages from home then reading can be a much more practical way to reach proficiency in the language you're learning because you don't have people to speak to all day long and if you like the idea of learning french or any other language by reading then you should check out my story learning kit it's currently completely free to access and inside this kit is a selection of valuable training for learning a language by readings for example there is the six step process to follow when reading anything to learn quickly there's a technique to double your memory for new vocabulary from stories and a helpful planning worksheet as well you can print out to help you stay more consistent and all this is completely free so just click the link in the description to get access to that so with everything we've heard so far i wonder how many soldiers actually reach a decent level of french for me like as a combat medic i had to do multiple courses that required a certain level of french and obviously i stayed and now i'm at university in france so for me it was very important to learn the language and there is there's a lot of motivating factors in the legion to actually learn the language and progress you know with your proficiency in french the best example is if you don't have a decent proficiency in the language you will never go up in grade you will never be able to go on interesting courses you will always stay kind of at the bottom and have to do all the worst jobs in the region basically so it definitely works on merits in your capacity to speak and understand french keeping your eyes on the goal this is great advice now some legionnaires say that they are dreaming in french after only four months so at what point does that click happen when do you start to get it that click i think happens quite early on because most of the orders and our days are just quite repetitive so what we do in the beginning kind of follows through all the way to like the third and fourth month of our basic training so you really start to catch on within like the second or third month like you really understand what's going on which helps a lot because when you're getting shouted at least you know why you're getting shouted at well if you're gonna come away with only one language skill in the army then speaking is definitely the one to choose and if you're wondering whether or not you would be up to the job well have a listen to this i studied afrikaans for 10 years and i was never able to put the sentence together or have a conversation with somebody at the end of my four months of instruction i wouldn't say i was fluent but i could have a conversation i could understand and i could be understood so luciano what was the most difficult part for you in this whole process i think a lot of people would agree with this is that most of the people in the french foreign region aren't native french speakers so we're learning french from people that don't actually speak french if that makes sense so you i mean you get all the offices to our native french speakers and then you get like the few and far between you know people that are in higher ranks that are french speakers but other than that we are learning french from other people that have learned french from people that are not french and if you want to hear lutriano's personal advice for learning french well that is coming at the end but first let's get an overview of a typical day in the legion so zero 5 30 is wake up time and roll call is taken each soldier counts his number to make sure that nobody deserted in the night you would do a head count which was really funny because most people could only count to 10 but it's problematic when there's like 30 of us so you'd be like one two three four and then you get to like someone someone make a mistake and then everyone has to do push-ups so that's why you had to wake up so early luciano i get it now parade formation is at 0-600 and then a horrible breakfast not my words followed by a long run or other sport until zero nine hundred combat training goes on until 1200 midday and whatever it is you can be sure it will be done in french in fact even when you're not speaking french you are singing it see every time you walk from one place to another it is always in formation and it always singing you will sing french every day for five years every time you move you have to sing basically so before you eat you have to sing so you learn you have a repertoire of like i don't know maybe like 10 15 songs by the end of it you can see the guys that don't know the song because they just stand there and they just move their mouth and you know that what they say the the not even making the right noise let alone singing a song and then you can see it a mile away it's absolutely hilarious especially when you're a corporal and there's a legionnaire that's trying to convince you that he can sing i mean as a culprit you usually have engineers come up one by one and they actually have to sing the entire song in front of you to make sure that they know it then you will get a little study time after dinner unless you're doing night combat exercises that is and then finally bedtime if you remember from this video dli has a special iso immersion experience for language students i wonder does the french foreign legion do anything like that well i mean i don't think there's more of an immersive experience than joining the french foreign region because from day one you have to think on your feed you have to speak french when you phone the bank the bank isn't going to speak to you in your native language you have to speak to the bank in french when you phone your insurance you have to you know speak to the insurance in french when you're out in town even i think you can go out to town like once or twice throughout the basic construction where you like your dress uniform and everything and when you go into the shops you have to speak french when you're going to the restaurant you have to speak french like you get thrown into the deep end and you're completely immersed in the culture in the language and you have to get on with it so so this is a deep end single swim authentic immersion experience guys and there is not much in the way of organized role play either although they do have practice radio protocol for eventual situations but after boot camp things get more interesting depending on which regiment you end up in you will be doing speciality training and this could be desert training snow training jungle training all very unique situations that require fast learning or specific french words that are specific to that environment and mission one of luciano's most memorable moments was finally being able to speak to a guy from belarus who had been bunking with throughout basic training they'd gone from using hand gestures to being able to string a few words together and speak about who they were and that really does seem like an amazing experience and not something i think i've been through in a language in the end the average legionnaire reaches about an intermediate conversational level in french after all this training a legionaire is finally deployed to a foreign country but unlike in the defense language institute in the us where there are students who learn the language of the country that they are going to the guys from the legion will drop in with only french so how do we communicate with the locals well the best part about the french foreign legion is that somebody that will speak one of the languages of the countries that you're in some guys from northern africa will even know very useful french dialects but see this isn't a spy mission the french they've learned is going to be critical for communication with each other not the locals so if you're french sucks you won't even be considered combat ready so they won't deploy you anywhere on the 14th of july every year the foreign legion marches down the champs-elysees in paris as part of the bastille day military parade their official march song is called march de la legion and if you're in town will you get to see them in action listen to them singing and maybe even hear some of that legion dialect to anybody that wants to learn another language i would suggest that they watch movies in that language with subtitles on in that language listen to radio shows in that language visit the country that speaks that language definitely helps and probably the most important thing would to never give up because it's inevitable that you will learn that language i think it's impossible to not learn a language if you're persistent and you keep trying and for that another thing that really helps is listening to podcasts like even now like when when i'm outside like at the pool at the gym or something i always put on a podcast that's kind of related to a topic that i find interesting um obviously in french just to just just so you keep it like going through your head you still have an ear for the language um it even helps with just your even though you're not saying something it still helps with like pronunciation and your accent hearing it and you know being exposed to how something's meant to be said correctly also when your brain's under certain amounts of stress i'm under the impression that you learn faster i mean the legion puts you under a huge amount of stress for all the courses and i was surprised that i was able to learn so quickly so many things i mean my combat medic course we were learning medical terminology and protocols in french and i was like this is impossible like like me like somebody that was never able to speak afrikaans like how am i doing this like this is impossible but with the stress and panic you just get on with it and your brain just turns into a sponge and it just kind of like all sticks into your brain be persistent don't give up and have fun doing it because if it becomes a chore and it's something that you don't enjoy doing it becomes difficult to learn but as long as you're having fun and you know you you never give up you'll definitely learn a language it's inevitable to summarize the keys to learning french then repetition tons of speaking practice with a specific purpose singing listening and total immersion with a francophone at your side all the way and push-ups for heaven's sake don't forget the push-ups but look is french actually a hard language to learn what do i think well i'll tell you what i think the answer is right over here in this video

Channel: Olly Richards

Views: 1,299,005

Keywords: language learning, how to learn a language, foreign languages, learn a language, learn languages, polyglot, learn a new language, languages, language, stories, storylearning, olly richards, french foreign legion, legion etrangere, foreign legion, kepi blanc, french foreign legion documentary, french foreign legion training, french foreign legion reaction, french foreign legion tribute, french foreign legion songs, french, french language, immersion, language immersion

Id: KBZxE_RUabM

Length: 29min 13sec (1753 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 07 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/Sea_Veterinarian_719]

There was a really cool post from a former french foreign legion dude basically if your native tongue is west european than you will come out of foreign legion speaking quite good fluentish french, with maybe a few gaps in grammar but you can converse , if your native tongue is more exotic youre gonna come out not being able to converse at all but just simply respond to commands you memorized and maybe point at stuff and say a french word to describe what you need

Which makes sense since foreign legion doesnt explain any theory behind the lang

[u/OutsideMeal]

One of his better videos, thanks for posting

[u/[deleted]]

Welp... time to join the French Foreign Legion

[u/feargus_rubisco]

I tried to watch some of Olly Richards’ videos last year - my harsh critique (Olly, if you are reading this): asinine content presented by a slimy salesman. Which is a shame really because he seems like an interesting and intelligent guy with a good sense of humour. I gave this video a chance last night, and it confirms my suspicions a bit,, I think he has a lot to contribute if he’d put more effort into researching his shit and less effort into selling his shit

edit, I spelt his name wrong, sorry Ozza

[u/[deleted]]

I’ve always though that non french speakers were paired with a french speaker. Then it’s learning through osmosis and complete immersion (in effect).

[u/jasonm82299]

This may be cool, but their hats are still pretty silly