Coming from a country where there are more than 100 languages spoken, learning to read, write and speak more than three languages was not uncommon to me. Hence, growing up, I wasn’t surprised when I chose to learn a foreign language instead of picking a hobby class in school. I was about 12 years old when I was introduced to the French language and in a way, the French culture. After learning the language to score decent grades in high school, I completely lost touch with it for five years until I had my own Netflix account. That’s right, Netflix plays an important role in my journey of language learning and brings back the joy I first experienced in school!

French

Recently, I started the show ‘Emily in Paris’ on Netflix and as per habit, I did not change my language settings to English. Many parts are filmed in English because the protagonist of the show is an American woman that moves to Paris for work and is not familiar with the local dialect at first. They have shown her journey in the city from someone who did not know French at all, to falling in love with the language, place and people so much that she did not move back to Chicago when she had the chance to and made Paris her home permanently.

While I have an on-and-off relationship with the language myself, I have never given up on it much like Emily (the protagonist). Even though I struggle to keep up with my daily lessons on Duo Lingo, I am proud of the fact that I am on my 154th day of the streak on the App, which essentially means that I have been learning the language every day for the past 154 days.

Spanish

During the covid lockdown, like most people in the world, I consumed A LOT of content. I finished all seasons of ‘Narcos’ and ‘Money Heist‘ (both in Spanish) and this reignited the spark of joy in me again. I began my short journey of learning Spanish for a brief period of three months during the lockdown. Today, I might mix up many phrases in both French and Spanish, but I am also someone who can fluently speak, read and write four Indian languages and figure my way through two foreign languages (with Netflix and Duo Lingo’s help, of course!)

I hope I can add plenty more to this list in the coming years because the journey of language learning through Netflix has by far been extremely rewarding!