Fossilisation is a well-known peril when learning a foreign language.
It’s what happens when we get into a bad habit that we can’t get rid of. You’ll recognise that you’ve caught the bug if, when someone corrects your French, five minutes later you’re making exactly the same mistake again.
What’s amusing, in an unfunny kind of way, is that fossilisation is stronger than our own rational willpower. We can know something is wrong, understand why it is wrong and yet still get it wrong.
Luckily it’s solvable, but it requires a healthy dose of mental application.
Peut-être que…
As an example, here’s one that got me: peut-être que at the start of a sentence.
We usually learn the word peut-être quite early on when we learn French. It slips nicely into the middle of a sentence. It’s easy to pronounce and satisfyingly close to English:
Je vais peut-être prendre mes vacances en France cet été.
Consider it banked!
But it’s that closeness to English which contains the seeds of our misfortune. Because at the beginning of a sentence Peut-être needs to be followed by que:
Peut-être que je me suis trompé.
Peut-être qu’il va appeler cet après-midi.
Whereas in English there is no that in the equivalent sentences:
Maybe that I made a mistake.
Maybe that he will call this afternoon.
Because we’ve already learnt that Peut-être = Maybe, there’s no way we’re going to spontaneously think it’s a good idea to put the word que in the sentence Peut-être que je me suis trompé.
So we are hardwired to fail.
Being aware of the problem
In a fast-moving or stressful environment – such as holding a conversation in a foreign language – we don’t have time to think. We blurt out what comes naturally and if what comes naturally is wrong we’ll just keep on doing it, even though we know that it is wrong.
The first part of the cure is simply to know that this is a problem. There are two levels of awareness that are needed. Firstly, there’s the specific awareness that we have got something wrong – peut-être que, for example. That alert will typically come from a French native speaker.
But there’s a more general awareness that’s needed too: knowing that knowledge is not enough. We need to get past the thought that making the same mistake over and over again is a sign of exceptional stupidity or senility. Only then will we be in the right frame of mind to correct the errors of our ways.
Mental scouring powder
To begin with, we can notice that Peut-être que at the beginning of a sentence doesn’t have the same value as peut-être in the middle of a sentence. In the middle of a sentence we are simply throwing out an idea whose truth is still uncertain:
Je vais peut-être prendre mes vacances en France cet été.
Peut-être que at the beginning of the sentence on the other hand is used to launch a hypothesis that needs testing, to float an idea, to fly a kite… It is, if you like, an abbreviation of Peut-être il est vrai que…
Peut-être [il est vrai] que je me suis trompé.
Cling on to that different notion of floating an idea and you’ll already start dissolving the problem.
But that may not prove enough. To really scour your mind out, you need to automate the good habit.
To do this, it’s good to get your practice in early, rather than hoping you’ll remember to get things right while in a stressful environment. Reading out loud is a simple way of achieving this. You can search for examples of correct usage in the excellent online dictinary reverso. Note down a dozen or so, or print them out, or import them into a flashcard application such as anki or quizlet. Read them out once a day for a week. You’ll gradually find the correct way of saying things becomes the natural one.
Making it stick
Will the good habits last?
P’têt ben qu’oui, p’têt ben qu’non
as the French expression goes. Recidivism does happen; the first cut is the deepest, as Cat Stevens pointed out. But even if you do still slip up, you should find you’ve done enough to set alarm bells ringing in your mind.
Conclusion
Fossilization is a problem for language learners – and their long-suffering teachers. But knowing that it’s not “your fault” is a first step towards tackling it.
More generally, the issue casts light on the best approach to learning a language. The native foreign way of saying things is almost never a straight word by word translation of English.
So if we quit trying to translate our own language and instead stay very tightly focused on the target language itself, we’ll not pick up so many bad habits that then need unlearning.
