The Magic of Learning a Language with Harry Potter
An insomnia-driven account of how I once sped up my French learning with the help of Harry Potter.
Cast your mind back to early summer 2019. Do you remember where you were, what you were doing, what your life was like? That sounds lovely. As for me, I was in a bit of a rut, going from job to job with no clear trajectory in my career. What I did have, however, was a love for the French language. And so, with this one guiding force—and an unfortunate breakup instiling in me an immense desire to leave the country—I decided to take the proverbial boeuf by the horns and up sticks to be an au pair on the French side of the Franco-Swiss border, in a house with a view on the snow-capped climes of the French Alps, and a mere stroll away from the shores of Lake Geneva, a lake so large it even had a tide.
For those not in the know, au pairs are typically adolescent or twenty-something Eastern-European girls who travel to an English-speaking country to learn the language while earning food, board, and a very modest wage in exchange for childcare services. Or at least, that’s what I was led to believe from my experience as a British child partially brought up by au pairs while my parents tried to keep the family restaurant afloat.
As it turns out, au pairs can actually be of any nationality and are not merely confined to English-speaking countries. This may be shocking information for some, as I know that I shocked a fair few people around me when I informed them that I, a British male, was jetting off to France to look after a newborn baby full time in exchange for 300 euros a month (200 euros of which had to go towards French lessons…), a small room, and at least two square meals a day (breakfast wasn’t really a thing in this French household, and I preferred a coffee and a cigarette in the morning anyway, always far from the little baby, of course). Okay, now I think about it, the shock was perhaps more to do with the conditions than my incompatibility with the typical au pair stereotype, but I digress… What was really important was that I WAS GOING TO FRANCE!
The draw of the land of Voltaire and the language of Molière had taken hold of me for a fair few years then, ever since my mother and I began to research our own French ancestry. Over time, through careful revision of my old French textbooks from school, and assiduous study of Duolingo’s sometimes bizarre French lessons, I began to catch up on my French until I finally thought I was good enough to try my hand at a few months in France. Surely, I’d be fluent in no time at all!
Oh, how I was wrong! At least at first…
Immediately upon my arrival into the home of my host family, I realised that my French was nowhere near as good as I would have liked it to be. I had to do something. And so it was that one evening, holed up in my room after a rather trying first French lesson over in the nearest town, my eyes landed on the one French book I had brought with me: Harry Potter à l’école des sorciers. (That’s "and the Philosopher’s Stone" for the correct amongst us, or "and the Sorcerer’s Stone" for the incorrect). I had put off trying to read it ever since my ex-boyfriend had gifted it to me. It was a rather well-meant gift, intended to help me improve my French, but back then it seemed such an insurmountable task compared to some Duolingo lessons.
Naturally, my ex-boyfriend was right, and I probably should’ve listened to him sooner. About reading it, not anything else. Ex-boyfriends can only ever be allowed to be correct about one single thing post-breakup, and you must carefully choose what that thing is or else you might end up accidentally accepting responsibility for something. A horrifying prospect, is it not?
So, I cracked open my copy of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone in French and began to read. It was… a slow experience. I had to stop every other sentence or so to look up what a word meant, check what certain verbs meant in different contexts, or find out why French wizards apparently have a penchant for waving baguettes about. Thank God for modern technology, Google, and the WordReference iPhone application, or else I would have had no hope of even finishing the book.
F.Y.I.: Baguette is the French word for wand. The bread just happens to be called the same because that is its shape.
So, alongside daily speaking practice with my host family, structured language lessons in town, the act of reading Harry Potter in French was slowly starting to improve my French. Or at least, improve my reading of French. I began to realise that more often than not, I had to Google sound clips of certain words to find out how they were pronounced. That’s when I thought, “Oh, wouldn’t it be nice if a French person could read this aloud to me?” Into the air goes the penny… It then took at least three days for the penny to finally drop when I came across an advert for Audible. I could listen to the audiobook at the same time!
And that’s how I finally found what I believe is the golden formula for learning languages:
Immersion + Reading + Listening = Fast and Fun French Learning!
I make a point to note "immersion", because I cannot say that Harry Potter did absolutely everything to improve my French. Actually being in France amongst French people definitely did a lot to help.
Anyway, I’ve waxed lyrical for too long. That’s what I get for trying to write at that magical time around 2 a.m. where the brain seems to fizzle with creativity yet dry up of any self-control.
Here’s my step-by-step guide to learning a language with Harry Potter
Get the basics covered first. You do need to be capable of at least attempting to read in your target language.
Read the first chapter with its audiobook narration playing at 0.5x speed.
Do not pause to search for definitions or translations. Instead, thumb your nose at anyone who abhors annotating books and simply underline or circle in pencil any parts you don’t understand.
At the end of the chapter, go back and research the bits you didn’t understand.
Take notes on what you have learned.
Go back to the beginning of the chapter and reread at 0.75x or even full speed, depending on how you feel.
Rinse and repeat for each chapter.
Over time, you should be able to increase your playback speed and eventually progress to only needing to read each chapter once.
This technique is not limited to Harry Potter. In my case, it worked perfectly, since I had already amply read the series in English, but you could use any book that you have previously enjoyed in your native language, so long as it has a translation and an audiobook version of that translation.
I hope this helps anyone wishing to undertake the seemingly insurmountable challenge of learning a new language. With time, help, great efforts, and hope, there is nothing to stop you from expanding your horizons.