So we are both taking french lessons this year - together. This means of course that we can keep tabs on each other and also practice at home with our limited vocabulary. Our class of 12 includes people from 10 countries, but only two outside europe; Most of them can speak reasonable english.
Learning a language is exhausting. Our french teacher talks to us in french for the WHOLE lesson. That is 1. 5 hours of serious concentration levels (two evenings a week), because if you tune out for just a minute then you have missed what she said entirely and you wonder why everyone is flicking through their books and you are not. Fortunately Mme Massy is good at repeating instructions slowly! She is also very good at pantomine because she has to act out the words we don't understand! I would definitely choose her for my team in charades. We also get homework, which we attempt to do because we are serious about wanting to learn, but it does take a chunk of our weekends.
The concerted effort is paying off, as already I am distinguishing more words in french instead of the stream of sound that I usually associate with the language. We are currently watching the french version of 'Master Chef' for the food and the language! It is obvious to us how much we rely on body language for understanding when we can't translate the words. Then there is always google translate....
French certainly has its peculiarities such as the need to create their own words for things which most of the world is happy to share a word for. ie. computer. Even in spanish it is just a computador. But in french we say ordinateur. Camera is 'appareil photo'. Apparently there is a government department dedicated to french language and they are tasked with coming up with new words when required. I think this is peculiar for a language that likes to condense itself as much as possible and in spoken form doesn't even pronounce half its letters (no you do not pronounce the e on the end of Porsche).
One of our strangest discoveries here (to our slight embarrassment) is that the french word 'pate' refers to pasta. It has absolutely nothing to do with pureed chicken livers, which is foie gras (pronounced 'fwah grah'). How could we get that sooo wrong in NZ? So far my favourite french words are 'mot' (word) because you say it how it looks unlike most french words, and choisir (to choose) simply because it sounds nice : 'shwazeer'.
Finally it wouldn't be a blog post without a photo. So here is the prettiest castle in Luxembourg, Vianden, on a very pretty day.
