French lessons

John and I both took French in high school, but he actually retained some of it whereas I'm sure that knowledge is buried in my brain somewhere, but I'm having trouble accessing it from underneath all of the yeast cell biology. So, several weeks ago, I decided to buy a couple of "learn French" books. The one I've mostly been working in is called, Learn French in 10 minutes a Day. In 10 minutes, I get through about 1 page, if I actually practice the words out loud, and the book is about 120 pages long which means I should be ready about 3 months from now. Unfortunately, we'll have gone and come back again by that time, but at least I made an effort. Besides, I can take the workbook to some French cafe and amuse the other customers by practicing French.

Upon seeing this workbook, Ben Glick (my advisor) said, "French is a dying language, you know." John and I discussed how this conversation might go down among the natives of France.

Me: French is a dying language--you should just learn English.
John: It's your own fault, you know, if you had just whipped England's butt, this wouldn't be happening.

At which point we would either be roasted and served with a nice little white wine sauce, or run out of the country. So, we've been practicing.

The workbook includes stickers with the French words for various household items and with French phrases on them. The idea is to stick them around the apartment so whenever you see that item, you see the word and it gets engrained into your head. This has led to a sticker on the dining room door that says "la salle a manger" (or is that le? I can never get the articles right--this whole thing about inanimate objects having gender is confusing), and we also have le table, la chaise, la lampe, la tapis (rug--it's a miracle it sticks), la canape (the couch--I had to pin that one to it). Le chat (cat) was a little challenging since they only give you one sticker for that and I was pretty sure it wasn't going to remain on him for long. I settled for putting that one right above his food and water. Couldn't figure out where to put le chien (dog)--it's stayed in the workbook. The outside of the apt. door proclaims, "Salut! Comment allez-vous?" (Hi! How are you?) while the inside says, "au revoir." The mirror greets you with Bonjour, and the alarm clock says, "Bonne nuit," (good night) (as well as "la pendule"). Bon soir (good evening) was a little more complicated--I ended up sticking it on the tv remote since we only watch tv in the evenings. Things are labeled with their colors, too. The next set of stickers includes an entire dinner table setting--including things like wine glass (very important to know in France).

John has taken to telling me what he's going to do today in French. Basically, I understand, "Today, I'm going to..." and the rest sounds like gibberish to me. But I really don't think I need to learn things like "swimming." Maybe for the next trip.... Quite often we need to refer to a French-English dictionary. We have a tiny one to bring with us and Matt has a ginormous one (silly Canadians have to learn dying languages in school). That was particularly helpful when we were looking up French websites that didn't have an English version of the site.

I have gotten to the point that I have learned the numbers 1-100 (you know, I can understand why small children want to just count to you--I was pretty darn impressed with myself for being able to count to 100 in French and would stand around the apt. doing so, wishing I could show off to someone), and the weather (they had snowing, raining, sunny, and foggy, but not cloudy--I guess it doesn't get cloudy in France), and I'm trying to learn some directional words--on, under, over, in front, behind (I can remember that one--it's derrier), and in between. I'm having some trouble with them, and there are no stickers! Although, that would be kind of difficult to label, I suppose.....

Matt jumps in every so often, but usually John and I are conversing in the morning (I work on my workbook while sitting in front of my lightbox), and Matt's generally not in the mood to speak different languages at that time of day, though sometimes he joins in the vocab quizzes. He's been a great help with pronunciation (although, once I asked him if I had to try to roll the r in the middle of one word and he told me to do a "flip" but couldn't tell me what that was exactly, and he wasn't sure he could do it himself; I have enough trouble with the French r roll, I'm not adding flipping, too).

So, I'm sure the French won't be terribly impressed with our French-speaking abilities, but at least we tried. We can start off a conversation and when they hear how bad our French is, they'll speak English to us--if only to keep us from butchering their dying language.