"Est-ce que tu vas continuer?" my French teacher, Corinne, asked me when I arrived to class tonight, indicating that it's the last week of the early-bird special for current students to re-up and sign up for their next course.
"Non," I replied, "parce que je n'ai pas d'argent," bemoaning my impending doom of my job ending this week and no other subsequent work lined up.
Qualifying my answer, I said, "Mais...Je crois que je dois étudier le Basic." After all, at some point, when I do have more money, I do want to continue to learn French, but I feel foolish for having placed into too advanced of a course for my ability level.
"Le Basic?!" Corinne laughed, and told me I was ridiculous, that I could speak French very well.
"Oui, je peut parler," - I can speak it, and I can read it aloud - "mais je n'ai pas le vocabulaire! J'ai oublié tout!" I've lamented since the beginning of class that I seem to have forgotten everything from my five years of studying French, over 20 years ago.
"Tu as le vocabulaire!" Corinne protested.
"Je crois que je suis stupide." I confessed my suspected stupidity to her, and to the couple of students who'd also arrived early to class.
Corinne then said something to me in French that I didn't understand, and, upon my quizzical look, translated it into English:
"It's always the best students who have the most doubt."
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Making up for lost time and missed opportunities, one adventure at a time.
Showing posts with label French. Show all posts
Showing posts with label French. Show all posts
June 26, 2012
June 24, 2012
The Lightning Strike
French class has been depressing me - not only because I'm not very good at it, but also because the lesson plan takes concepts like "love at first sight" to teach grammar lessons like the difference between the imparfait and passé composé tenses.
In French, "love at first sight" is communicated through the colloquial phrase coup de foudre, which literally translates into "lightning strike."
When it was my turn in class to describe my experience with a coup de foudre, I had no choice but to tell the painful story of my LA guy who I was seeing before I moved here, who I first met when I spotted him across a crowded room during a visit to LA.
I had to retell the story, in French, of him suddenly disappearing, and not admitting he'd found a girlfriend until I asked him point blank.
And all my classmates pitied me, in French, for both my story and for my difficulty in recounting it.
Thankfully, that's not my only experience being electrified by the sight of another. Who knows if it's really love, but it's certainly more than lust. In coup de foudre encounters, rarely is the other person the best-looking person you've ever seen. There's just something about them - how they appear, how they act, how they enter the room - that you just love, immediately. In the story I told in French class, what attracted me most to him was his desire for me. But in the other cases I can think of - both within the last two years - what struck me most was an overwhelming desire to answer the question, "Who is that?" I didn't want to kiss them, take them to bed, or give myself freely to them. I wanted to know who they were, inside and out.
In the case of the one that got away, the one I left behind in NYC, I only got four dates with him before he dumped me and I moved to LA, before I ever got to answer that question. But he remains in the back of my mind as someone I could love, if only he would give me the chance. If only he didn't live so far away.
And now - as I've gotten better at moving on, at forgetting - lightning has struck again here in LA. I never saw him coming, but once he arrived, I could not take my eyes off of him. The night we met, I refused to leave his side. And now I find myself drinking the coffee he left behind in my apartment - now cold and bitter - just to feel close to him.
It's not love - no, not yet - but I am électrisée. I can't explain it. I don't know who he is yet. But I am finding out.
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In French, "love at first sight" is communicated through the colloquial phrase coup de foudre, which literally translates into "lightning strike."
When it was my turn in class to describe my experience with a coup de foudre, I had no choice but to tell the painful story of my LA guy who I was seeing before I moved here, who I first met when I spotted him across a crowded room during a visit to LA.
I had to retell the story, in French, of him suddenly disappearing, and not admitting he'd found a girlfriend until I asked him point blank.
And all my classmates pitied me, in French, for both my story and for my difficulty in recounting it.
Thankfully, that's not my only experience being electrified by the sight of another. Who knows if it's really love, but it's certainly more than lust. In coup de foudre encounters, rarely is the other person the best-looking person you've ever seen. There's just something about them - how they appear, how they act, how they enter the room - that you just love, immediately. In the story I told in French class, what attracted me most to him was his desire for me. But in the other cases I can think of - both within the last two years - what struck me most was an overwhelming desire to answer the question, "Who is that?" I didn't want to kiss them, take them to bed, or give myself freely to them. I wanted to know who they were, inside and out.
In the case of the one that got away, the one I left behind in NYC, I only got four dates with him before he dumped me and I moved to LA, before I ever got to answer that question. But he remains in the back of my mind as someone I could love, if only he would give me the chance. If only he didn't live so far away.
And now - as I've gotten better at moving on, at forgetting - lightning has struck again here in LA. I never saw him coming, but once he arrived, I could not take my eyes off of him. The night we met, I refused to leave his side. And now I find myself drinking the coffee he left behind in my apartment - now cold and bitter - just to feel close to him.
It's not love - no, not yet - but I am électrisée. I can't explain it. I don't know who he is yet. But I am finding out.
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June 21, 2012
Out of My Comfort Zone: The Malaise of Learning Français
I have two weeks left of my eight-week French course I've been taking at the Alliance Française, something I've wanted to do for years now.
I studied French for five years between seventh grade and tenth grade and loved it. In truth, I was ready to take a language in fifth grade, having completed all of the lessons required through the end of eighth grade English, but the school system didn't have a track for a student like me (who also completed eighth grade level spelling and math before the end of fifth grade, yet not allowed by my parents to skip a grade).
While my sister embarked on her studies of Spanish because it was practical, and Italian because it was similar to Spanish, I opted for French because it was the pretty girl language equivalent of playing the flute, something else I wasn't allowed to do as an awkward child (instead being forced to lug around a giant French horn that instilled a permanent metallic smell into the inside of my nose). I dreamed of the Champs Élysées and champagne and salade niçoise. I wrote stories in French. I read stories in French, preferring those written in it (Le Petit Prince, par example) rather than their English translations. I had a French penpal. I thought in French (albeit rather simple thoughts of amour, la famille and les amis).
Five years was the maximum course available in our school system for any one language, so during my last two years of high school, I let French go. When I got to college, I never took it up again, and to this day, I cannot explain why. I suppose there were too many other studies to tackle - philosophy, psychology, embryology - that I didn't want to retread old ground. After all, I'd already studied French for five years, which at the time felt like an eternity. What else was there to do there? Why eat the same meal twice? Why jump off the same cliff when there are so many others that stand ripe for conquering?
So aside from a weekend trip to Montréal in which I was the sole French-speaker in a pack of American college students, I didn't really use it for years.
But French has never let me go. Not entirely. At my first job in the music industry, I was responsible for distributing a variety of classical music albums released by a French label in the United States, putting me on the phone and in email correspondences with Francophone colleagues (as well as those who spoke German and, oddly, Finnish). I dabbled in replying to them in French. I'd maintained my good pronunciation and some of my vocabulary, but most of all, I'd retained my love for it.
In 2008, when I was trying to strengthen the thread by which I hung (at work, and in life in general), I escaped to Morocco for a short trip, feeling drawn to the French-influenced culture but wanting an adventure a bit more dangerous and less European than France itself. Michelle was impressed with my French, but I knew I was getting by on bad grammar by looking cute, somehow convincing the locals I could be française or moroccaine, when in truth I was a-mér-i-caine. Vraiment!
Two years later, I again escaped to another former French protectorate, this time Tunisia, where my French linguistics were not as up to par since French is compulsory in their school system, and therefore the Tunisians' mastery of the language far exceeds that of the Moroccans - or mine. I could understand most of what was going on around me - reading signs and menus, eavesdropping on conversations, receiving instructions from hotel staff - but I'd lost a lot of my ability to actually communicate in the language. It was a palpable loss in my life, and one I couldn't entirely explain.
But this was a loss that I could do something about. French lessons are expensive but they're possible. And even though I shouldn't leave work at 5:30 twice a week for eight weeks, I took the placement test anyway and signed up for an Intermediate I class excitedly, with coupon in hand.
Unfortunately, I'm such a good test-taker that I fooled them into thinking I remembered anything from 1987. Upon my first class, it became very clear to me that I would be very remedial in the course, surrounded by classmates who could conjugate in various tenses, and who could conjure vocabulary on demand, both of which I could not do.
I'm not good at not being good at something.
It makes me very uncomfortable.
It has been a stressful six weeks.
But if nothing else, I am learning parts of grammar in French that I never learned before, understanding the construction of the language conceptually even if I can't execute it perfectly myself without the aid of a dictionary.
And when these eight weeks are over, I think I'd like to find a way to go back to the beginning, and start again with the Basic study of French. I know how to count to 60, but past that, I struggle. I know the alphabet. I know pronouns. And I can say them all perfectly.
I'll be the star of the class, which I'm much better at than being the dunce.
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I studied French for five years between seventh grade and tenth grade and loved it. In truth, I was ready to take a language in fifth grade, having completed all of the lessons required through the end of eighth grade English, but the school system didn't have a track for a student like me (who also completed eighth grade level spelling and math before the end of fifth grade, yet not allowed by my parents to skip a grade).
While my sister embarked on her studies of Spanish because it was practical, and Italian because it was similar to Spanish, I opted for French because it was the pretty girl language equivalent of playing the flute, something else I wasn't allowed to do as an awkward child (instead being forced to lug around a giant French horn that instilled a permanent metallic smell into the inside of my nose). I dreamed of the Champs Élysées and champagne and salade niçoise. I wrote stories in French. I read stories in French, preferring those written in it (Le Petit Prince, par example) rather than their English translations. I had a French penpal. I thought in French (albeit rather simple thoughts of amour, la famille and les amis).
Five years was the maximum course available in our school system for any one language, so during my last two years of high school, I let French go. When I got to college, I never took it up again, and to this day, I cannot explain why. I suppose there were too many other studies to tackle - philosophy, psychology, embryology - that I didn't want to retread old ground. After all, I'd already studied French for five years, which at the time felt like an eternity. What else was there to do there? Why eat the same meal twice? Why jump off the same cliff when there are so many others that stand ripe for conquering?
So aside from a weekend trip to Montréal in which I was the sole French-speaker in a pack of American college students, I didn't really use it for years.
But French has never let me go. Not entirely. At my first job in the music industry, I was responsible for distributing a variety of classical music albums released by a French label in the United States, putting me on the phone and in email correspondences with Francophone colleagues (as well as those who spoke German and, oddly, Finnish). I dabbled in replying to them in French. I'd maintained my good pronunciation and some of my vocabulary, but most of all, I'd retained my love for it.
In 2008, when I was trying to strengthen the thread by which I hung (at work, and in life in general), I escaped to Morocco for a short trip, feeling drawn to the French-influenced culture but wanting an adventure a bit more dangerous and less European than France itself. Michelle was impressed with my French, but I knew I was getting by on bad grammar by looking cute, somehow convincing the locals I could be française or moroccaine, when in truth I was a-mér-i-caine. Vraiment!
Two years later, I again escaped to another former French protectorate, this time Tunisia, where my French linguistics were not as up to par since French is compulsory in their school system, and therefore the Tunisians' mastery of the language far exceeds that of the Moroccans - or mine. I could understand most of what was going on around me - reading signs and menus, eavesdropping on conversations, receiving instructions from hotel staff - but I'd lost a lot of my ability to actually communicate in the language. It was a palpable loss in my life, and one I couldn't entirely explain.
But this was a loss that I could do something about. French lessons are expensive but they're possible. And even though I shouldn't leave work at 5:30 twice a week for eight weeks, I took the placement test anyway and signed up for an Intermediate I class excitedly, with coupon in hand.
Unfortunately, I'm such a good test-taker that I fooled them into thinking I remembered anything from 1987. Upon my first class, it became very clear to me that I would be very remedial in the course, surrounded by classmates who could conjugate in various tenses, and who could conjure vocabulary on demand, both of which I could not do.
I'm not good at not being good at something.
It makes me very uncomfortable.
It has been a stressful six weeks.
But if nothing else, I am learning parts of grammar in French that I never learned before, understanding the construction of the language conceptually even if I can't execute it perfectly myself without the aid of a dictionary.
And when these eight weeks are over, I think I'd like to find a way to go back to the beginning, and start again with the Basic study of French. I know how to count to 60, but past that, I struggle. I know the alphabet. I know pronouns. And I can say them all perfectly.
I'll be the star of the class, which I'm much better at than being the dunce.
To become a fan on Facebook, click here.
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