This proud Canadian has been a prominent member of the music industry since his discovery and debut in 2007. Does this star speak French?
It’s thought that Justin Bieber does not fluently speak French. Bieber has some conversational French skills, which he learned in school and naturally picked up while traveling the world on tour.
Read more below to find out about where Bieber picked up some French, when he’s used it, and other celebrities who speak French.
Bieber’s French Skills
Justin Bieber is of French-Canadian, Irish, English, Scottish, and German descent. With his French heritage combined with the French language being one of the official languages of Canada, it’s natural to wonder if Bieber has some French knowledge of his own.
Bieber is only fluent in English, and while he is not fluent in French, he’s been speaking the language since he was very little. For all of elementary school, he attended the Jeanne Sauvé Catholic School in his hometown of Stratford, Ontario, which is a French-language immersion school.
French immersion is a type of bilingual education that includes students who do not speak French as their first language being taught completely in French. In elementary school, this type of instruction will begin very early.
They only begin to be taught in English in the fourth grade, and even then, many classes will still be completely in French. Through this type of learning, Bieber learned to speak and understand conversational French and was able to talk about different subjects in the language.
So Bieber picked up some French skills without being fully fluent, but as he was pulled out of school for high school after his entrance to the music industry, he used it less. With language, if the learner doesn’t use it or practice it often, they can forget or lose a lot of their knowledge.
Bieber, though, has kept a lot of conversational knowledge that he’s used both with fans and in interviews. Near the beginning of his career, when he was still a young teenager, he posted a video of himself singing one of his earliest hit singles, “One Less Lonely Girl,” in French.
Fans still love the video today, posting about it in Tweets like this one which reads “Blessing your TL with Justin Bieber singing one less lonely girl in French,” and featuring the original video. More recently, Bieber went on Instagram live with a fan and spoke French with them, which another fan posted on Twitter.
In the video, Justin says, “Comment ça va? Ça va bien,” which translates to “How are you? I’m good,” and “Je parle très bien français,” meaning, “I speak French very well.” He’s also showed off his conversational French skills in various interviews throughout the years.
Check out the YouTube video below to see Justin Bieber speaking conversational French with the help of a translator on a French radio station.
French-Speaking Celebrities
It’s common for celebrities like Bieber who travel the world to have some knowledge of the languages used in the places they go, even if they just use some basic phrases to pay tribute to their fans in that place.
Serena Williams decided she wanted to learn French while preparing for the French Open, and already knew some Spanish and Italian along with her native English. It was a great motivator for her, and as she said, “One of the reasons I learned French was I wanted to win the French Open, and I wanted to speak French when I won.”
Sandra Oh began learning French during her time at the National Theatre School of Canada, located in Montreal. Oh also speaks fluent English and Korean.
Another French-speaking actor is Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who studied some French in school. For his role in the biographical drama film The Walk, he worked at perfecting his French accent to play the French street performer Philippe Petit.