The holiday season is here and that means gifts, les marchés de noël, and le temps libre (free time). A lot of people will be using le temps to catch up on les jeux vidéos (video games) they didn’t have the time to play earlier in the year. Other people will be excited receiving their favorite jeu as un cadeau (a gift)!

Personally, I’ve been sucked into my early cadeau of Final Fantasy VI (in French the title du jeu is also in English) and have been enjoying playing through the classic game for the first time. I am not playing the game in English though.

Un jeu vidéo can actually be a great opportunity to practice your French! Most games allow you to change the language of the entire game, giving you a new way to immerse yourself in the language even if you’re nowhere near la francophonie!

While some of le vocabulaire like la queue de phénix, l’éther, et la potion (phoenix down, ether, and potion), is not very useful, it still provides a great opportunity to both have fun and learn. D’ailleurs (in any case), those words aren’t very useful in English either!

Learning with les jeux vidéos works best with un jeu de rôle (a roleplaying game), or any jeu that has an intricate story and tons of dialogue. Cela dit (that said), it’s still useful even if you’re just rushing through le tutoriel (the tutorial) of un jeu more focused on l’action.

While you’re rushing to buy your favorite jeux during les soldes d’hiver sur Steam (the winter sales on Steam), pensez à (think about) changing the language to French to help you keep learning even while you’re having fun this holiday season!