When I was 10, my mother told me she was sending me to French classes. I was perplexed as to why, considering French was my first language.

She didn’t have many French friends in Ireland, where we lived, so teaching me her mother tongue gave her a piece of home while also sharing her roots with me.

So I started attending weekly two-hour classes at a new school — L’Alliance Française Dublin. I was in a class with nine other bilingual students, and while we could all speak French decently, our parents wanted us to practice our written skills.

I didn’t love having extra work on top of what I already had in school, but my mother insisted it would help in the long run.

While I have only lived in English-speaking countries, my French roots have followed me everywhere. I didn’t expect them to extend to Wisconsin, where I was surprised to see so many towns with French names, along with the UW–Madison campus’ French House and the city’s French restaurants and bakeries.

The French were the first Europeans to settle in Wisconsin, starting in 1634 with the introduction of the fur trade, but many left for new places or returned home to a good life in France after the British took control of the state in 1763.

While the majority returned to Europe, they still left their mark on Wisconsin. Until 1820, the state was called Ouisconsin, which came about in 1674 when the explorer Rene Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle misread the previous state name that the Miami tribe used, Mescousin, as Ouisconsin. He then had Ouisconsin printed on to maps. Many towns and cities still have their original French names, like Eau Claire, Racine and La Crosse.

Even though the language and culture are not strongly felt, there are still people and places working hard to preserve this legacy. L’Alliance Française de Milwaukee, for example, is committed to keeping the French flame alive and sharing Wisconsin’s French past with future generations.

The only language school in Wisconsin dedicated to French may be situated in Milwaukee, but students come from all over to learn from the school’s 18 professors.

After COVID-19 forced L’Alliance to go virtual, it attracted students across the U.S. to take classes on Zoom.

While the world is back to in-person activities, the success of online classes has remained. Many Americans are choosing to learn French for various reasons, with the flexibility to do so either in a classroom setting or from the comfort of their own home.

“I would say most of our adult students are Americans who have some interest in French,” says Anne Leplae, the executive director of L’Alliance Française de Milwaukee. “Either they want to travel, or they’re interested in the wine or the literature.”

Leplae was born in the U.S. and even lived in Italy for a period of her childhood, but her mother came from France and father from Belgium. It was inevitable that she would learn French despite her family never living together in a French-speaking country.

“She kind of tutored us,” Leplae says, in reference to her mother.

In January 1998, Leplae joined L’Alliance Française de Milwaukee, becoming the school’s first permanent employee since its founding in 1918.

She heard of the position at L’Alliance after meeting a friend of her mother’s who was on the board. Leplae had just returned to Milwaukee from France in 1997 with her young daughter and didn’t have much of a plan.

Her mother’s friend informed her that L’Alliance needed full-time help that the volunteers could not do. In addition to being bilingual, she has experience working for nonprofits and serving as an English teacher in the Peace Corps. So, a few weeks later, she started with no interview needed.

Despite the board’s confidence, the job was daunting.

“I was a little bit freaked out at the beginning because it was outside of any kind of work I had done,” Leplae says. “I didn’t really have management experience.”

Twenty-six years later, L’Alliance has grown alongside Leplae. Today, more than 900 students attend classes at L’Alliance, ranging from Americans wanting to learn French to French expats wanting their children born in the U.S. to learn the language of their homeland.

Besides classes, the school also hosts many cultural events, all organized by event and marketing coordinator Annika de Vogel.

Originally from Wisconsin, de Vogel found a love for French when her family did a five-week house swap in Paris when she was 12 years old. The experience left a profound mark on her, especially the smell of the Parisian streets.

“A silly thing that I remember is I hadn’t really spent a whole lot of time in big cities anyway, so I do have a distinct memory of what it smelled like, which is weird because I now have a very positive association with city stink,” de Vogel says.

De Vogel went on to take French in high school and completed a French minor in college. After graduation in 2021, she moved to France for a year to be an English teaching assistant with the Teaching Assistant Program in France.

“I loved it,” de Vogel says. “There were a few other English-speaking language assistants that were there with me from the States, the U.K. and a couple other English-speaking countries that were also there as English assistants and just different schools. And so I had that community, which was really nice.”

Since December 2023, she has worked at L’Alliance, where she shares her love of French with the Milwaukee community through events L’Alliance hosts.

One of the most popular weekly events is “Casse-Croûte,” which is open to people speaking all levels of French.

“It’s a weekly lunch group that meets up three times in a month. They meet over Zoom, and then the first week of the month they meet in person at the Alliance, and it’s just sort of a chat in French over lunch,” de Vogel says.

De Vogel also leans into French holidays by having L’Alliance be a part of the Bastille Days festival, as well as hosting events for La Fête des Rois and La Fête du Beaujolais Nouveau, where French expats and Americans interested in French can come together and celebrate French traditions over food and wine.

“I think it’s great that it gives a lot to the French community in Milwaukee, like people who moved here from France that have an attachment to this holiday, they get to come celebrate it at a big party,” de Vogel says referring to La Fête des Rois, also known as the Epiphany.

Attendees enjoy the traditional Galette des Rois (a puff pastry cake filled with frangipane), served every January 6, as a celebration of the Three Kings visiting Jesus in Bethlehem.

L’Alliance Française de Milwaukee also works with the French department at UW–Milwaukee to organize events for their students.

The French government, through the French Consulate in Chicago, organizes and subsidizes tours for certain writers and academics across the midwest, says Nicolas Russell, an associate professor of French at UW–Milwaukee.

With the help of funds from the French Consulate in Chicago, writers and speakers are able to go to Milwaukee and speak to students from UW–Milwaukee and L’Alliance at a low cost.

UW–Milwaukee students also benefit from work opportunities at L’Alliance.

“Anne [Leplae] is great about that and she’s really good at hosting them and making it a meaningful internship,” Russell says.

Learning French and discovering the culture has never been more accessible to Wisconsinites, no matter what age you are.

Sage Goellner, an associate professor of French and continuing education at UW–Madison has seen the interest among students.

“It’s the power of the UW brand. People know Wisconsin and respect it as a learning institution of excellence. And then I think it’s also part of the Wisconsin idea, you know, the idea that the intellectual riches of the university should go out to the state and beyond,” says Goellner.

Goellner preaches to her students that French has its utility all over the world.

“It can take you to all the continents,” Goellner says.

France is also the most visited place in the world, and while French people learn English from a young age, it is still good to know some of the language before going.

French has also transcended popular culture.

“Learning a language now is so different than it was 10 and 20 years ago,” Goellner says. “You can listen to podcasts, you can listen to music. You can get hooked on a series. My students really like ‘Lupin’ on Netflix.”

Despite being halfway across the world from my French roots, I still have a piece of it here in Wisconsin, and I’m thankful my mother fostered what is now a large part of my identity.

Whether it’s socializing with students at the UW–Madison French House, buying pastries from Far Breton Bakery, watching French shows on Netflix, listening to French music or going to Milwaukee to attend Alliance events, France is not so far away.

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The French connection

Madisonians learn how to pronounce Wisconsin’s French names

Have you ever wondered how certain French Wisconsin town names are really pronounced? Curb staffers Amélie Mahony and Ava McNarney went out into the streets of Madison to test people’s knowledge on a few of the more complicated ones.

Cover Photo: Illustration by Ava McNarney.