Practice Your Bilingual Skills: Mot de la semaine English + French, week 1

As a bilingual professional, it is important to actively use both languages in order to maintain proficiency. To do so, you can choose to practice these 4 language skills: listening, reading, writing, and speaking. Depending on your profession and where you live, there will be an ever-shifting imbalance between these skills and that’s OK! What matters is that you keep practicing to the best of your abilities.

Thus, I’m writing this series:
1) for myself, to maintain my own skills in French and English, and
2) for you, to read and thereby improve your own proficiency.

I invite you join me on a weekly exploration of new vocabulary when I will share one French and one English vocabulary word I learned that week. This will hold me accountable for reading in French (my second language) and for improving my grasp of my native language (which is surprisingly easy to neglect in adulthood). In addition, I hope it motivates you to continue your bilingual journey.

This Week's Words

This week’s words are capitulate and décupler.

Capitulate - I encountered this verb while listening to a podcast on Benito Mussolini Here is the Britannica definition:
​1 : to stop fighting an enemy or opponent : to admit that an enemy or opponent has won : surrender
2 : to stop trying to fight or resist something : to agree to do or accept something that you have been resisting or opposing

In French, it translates literally to capituler. Some synonyms are abandonner, céder, abdiquer.

French/English example: En se rendant compte que l’échec était inévitable, le général a capitulé à l’ennemi./Realizing defeat was inevitable, the general capitulated to the enemy.

Décupler - this is the verb form, but I ran into this word as an adjective - décuplé. According to Larousse, the verb as a transitive means “2. Augmenter considérablement quelque chose;” and as an intransitive verb, it means “Devenir plus important, s'accroître considérablement.”

The translation in English is to multiply, compound.

​French/English example: Le magicien a jeté un sort qui a décuplé ses pouvoirs par dix./The magician cast a spell that multiplied his powers tenfold.

So, if you’re bilingual in French and English and want to improve your vocabulary and even your ability to express yourself, meet me every week and I’ll introduce you to two new words. All you have to do is put away any distractions for 5 minutes and read my post, then apply the words during the week.

​I look forward to taking this journey with you.