You don’t have to pardon my French

I have long considered myself a Francophile, which is defined as someone who loves ballpark franks, because my son- in- law Guillaume is from France.

So it was only natural that I decided, during a recent car ( voiture) ride with Guillaume, who was on a handsfree phone call with his mother ( mère) and father ( père) while I ate a bag of French ( français) fries, to learn French ( ditto).

Guillaume has been teaching Chloe, his 7- year- old daughter ( fille) and my granddaughter ( petite fille), the beautiful language ( langue) of his homeland.

This is being done with an app called Duolingo. It features Duo, a little green owl ( chouette vert) who helps monolingual ( I am not even going to look it up) people such as me ( moi) learn French, Spanish and many other languages, including the most wonderful of all: Pig Latin.

Guillaume downloaded Duolingo on my cellphone, which also has apps for the weather ( météo), the news ( actualités), a calculator ( calculatrice), a camera ( caméra) and my bank account ( empty).

I started by answering several questions, the first being: “Why are you learning a language?”

The answers included: family and friends, culture, brain training, school, job opportunities and travel.

Because I get my culture from yogurt, I don’t have a brain, I don’t go to school, I don’t want a job and I can’t travel, I chose family and friends, even though, for what must be obvious reasons, I don’t have too many of the latter.

Then I had to pick one of four goals: casual ( five minutes a day), regular ( 10 minutes), serious ( 15) and intense ( 20).

“Pick casual,” Guillaume suggested. “You should start slow.”

“Merci,” I said, thanking him in French, before adding: “I’ve always been slow, even in English.”

But I got off to a fast ( rapide) start when I was given questions such as: “How do you say croissant?”

The choices were: le garçon, le homme, le chat and le croissant.

I hesitated a minute ( une minute), figuring it was a trick question, before answering: “Le croissant.”

A musical flourish — ta- da! ( French translation: ta- da!) — burst from the phone.

“Amazing!” it said under my correct answer.

After correctly answering several other easy ( facile) questions, I finished the day’s lesson with a perfect ( parfait) score.

“Great job!” it said on the screen. “You reached your daily goal! Lesson complete!”

Duo himself popped up and, with his tiny wings ( ailes), applauded me.

I felt like a million euros. I felt even better ( meilleur) the next day, when I breezed through Lesson 2 ( deux), translating such sentences as: “Je suis un chat.” (“I am a cat.”)

This meant, of course, that I was the chat’s meow.

On the third ( troisième) day, I was asked this question: “Tu es un cheval?” (“Are you a horse?”) I was glad that after horse, it didn’t say “derrière.”

The next day I was informed that “34 hours on Duolingo teaches you as much as one semester at a university.”

I hadn’t learned enough French to ask if I would go bankrupt paying tuition. Fortunately, the app is free ( gratuit).

The last day was so easy — at one point I was shown pictures of an orange, a croissant and a pizza and was asked to identify the pizza — that I would have tipped my hat to myself, except I don’t own a beret ( béret).

When I told Guillaume I did well in my first week, he said, “Yes.”

“You mean oui,” I corrected him.

When I spoke with Chloe, she was even more impressed.

“Très bien ( very good), Poppie!” she said.

In looking back on a memorable ( mémorable) week, I can truly say that, at least on my cellphone, I’ll always have Paris.