Tag Archives: French

it wasn’t so easy this time

Posted in French, learning tools by

Blythe Sleepy Eyes

Sleep-deprived two Speakeasies in a row. I guess my beginner’s luck had run out because this time the words did not magically flow from my uncooperative brain.

As I was expending copious amounts of energy trying to say anything like something an actual French person would say, I was simultaneously having an out of body experience in which I was hovering above myself taking great pride in every single word that came out of my mouth, because here I was speaking another language, which is just nuts considering I don’t speak another language.

At the same time, I realized with a jolt that the person across from me was opening his mouth and effortlessly releasing words that flowed intuitively one from the other. There was absolutely no struggle on his part because he had been speaking this language from infancy the same way that I had been speaking English. For him, French is neither fun, nor frustrating, nor anything other than utilitarian.

It struck me as utterly bizarre that his native language was my foreign language and vice versa – that what I experience in a French conversation is 100% different than what he does. It’s not as though I have never thought about this before, but at that moment it felt like when you repeat your own name over and over until it sounds completely unfamiliar.

I should really get more sleep before I go back to one of these things…

[Photo: Valeri Passon]

Speakeasy

Posted in French by

Christine @ Speakeasy

Early Monday morning I had been asleep for about four hours when my radiator came on making sounds like it was being beaten by an angry mob of hammers. It didn’t stop even after I closed the valve, and I couldn’t fall back to sleep.

Both drunkenness and sleep deprivation severely affect my ability to speak a foreign language – but not always in a bad way. They can sometimes render me mute and flailing, but they can also lower my inhibitions and inspire stream of consciousness-style gabbing far more advanced than my wide awake and sober self is capable of. It’s always a toss-up which extreme I’ll swing towards, so I didn’t know whether my Spanish class on Monday afternoon and French Speakeasy event that evening would be disastrous or miraculous.

Turns out it was a little of both. In Spanish I couldn’t put two words together and did more miming than talking, but in French I was transcendent. (Relative only to myself.)

One of my speaking partners was a woman, Christine (in the picture above), who is harboring remarkably similar dreams to mine right now. I think it was four years ago that she took a cargo ship from France to the United States in search of adventure and now she wants to travel the world, learning new things in each country and picking up jobs along the way taking photos for non-profits. We agreed it would be fun to conspire together, and in the meantime I signed up for the next Speakeasy in November…

speak dating!

Posted in French, learning tools by

Virginie at Speak Easy

On Tuesday night I went to a free session of Speak Easy during FIAF’s open house. Speak Easy is essentially speed dating, but instead of swapping potential romantic partners every ten minutes, you swap language partners and spend five minutes speaking French and five minutes speaking English with each one. Speak Easy started in Paris, I think, and came Stateside just recently. I have tried to sign up a few times but never jumped on it fast enough – tickets for native English speakers sell out in like five minutes (though that’s never the case for native French speakers. They practically have to give those tickets away, because English speakers are to French speakers in speak dating as women are to men in speed dating).

Well, I got lucky and heard about this special Speak Easy event early enough to nab a spot. And I got lucky again when two of the four people I was paired up with offered to have our conversation 100% in French because they speak English all day and don’t need to practice.

It was really fun. An MC gave us conversation prompts each time we switched languages, and sometimes we followed them and sometimes we didn’t. I met a photo editor, a French teacher, a techie and a woman who works in a bank (Virginie, above). All very nice people and all sparkling conversationalists.

The next Speak Easy in New York is on September 28th, and as per usual it’s already sold out for native English speakers (unless you’re under 30; I guess they are trying to skew younger). It’s co-hosted by French Morning and Fluent City so get on their lists and act fast if you want to try it out!

the best of words, the worst of words: foi and impossible

Posted in best words & worst words, French by

Asking native French speakers to tell me, in French, their favorite and least favorite words and to explain their choices is a good way for me to practice conversational French and also possibly learn some new words. Thus, the best of words, the worst of words. A couple of weeks ago, I targeted my colleague, Serge, for this delightful-to-me/bemusing-to-him exercise.

Serge is a soccer-playing, West African record-spinning, ethnic cuisine-sampling Burkinabè who also spent time growing up in Cote d’Ivoire and Senegal. I find it inspiring and awesome that nearly every day he does the rounds, visiting cubicles on two floors of our section for friendly little tête à têtes – and it was during one of these that he told me his best and worst words.

He wanted to start with his least favorite word:

Serge's least favorite word: impossible

Impossible = well, impossible. Because, “Rien est impossible. C’est une histoire d’energie. Si tu penses que tu peux faire quelque chose, tu peux le faire, mais ça demande une certaine discipline, l’obligation, courage. Donc le mot ‘impossible,’ je ne l’utilise jamais.” [Nothing is impossible. It’s about your energy. If you think that you can do something, you can do it, but it takes some discipline, commitment, courage. So I never use the word ‘impossible.’] I asked Serge if there’s ever been anything he’s wanted to do but not been able to manage, and with a confident shake of his head he replied, “No.” (I wish I could say the same.)

Serge’s favorite word is the other side of the coin:

Serge's favorite word: foi

Foi = faith. Because: “Croire en soi, peu importe la situation, tout ira bien.” [If you believe in yourself, no matter what the situation, everything will be okay.] For Serge it’s a question of both religious faith and confidence in himself, though he added, “La confiance en moi vient de Lui.” [My self-confidence comes from God.]

So, it appears that Serge and I are polar opposites: he’s an optimistic man of faith, and I’m an agnostic ball of anxiety. But we are in agreement when it comes to our love of West African music. So I will take this opportunity to publicly remind Serge that he still owes me a mix tape. 🙂

phishing in French

Posted in French by

weird baby doll head

I was honored recently to have received my first scam email in French. I like to tell myself that I ended up on the distribution list because the phishers have sophisticated hacking technology that determined my French proficiency to be high enough to warrant trying to rip me off in that language. (Why not?)

For your edification, I share the heartbreaking story and the dying last wishes of Baby Gagnon (aka Mr. Baby, a name I may steal for my nom de plume):

Bonsoir à vous,

Excusez moi de cette manière de vous contacter, je viens d’apercevoir votre profil qui après tant de jours de prières est le seul a retenir mon attention voilà pourquoi je vous fais part de ce qui m’arrive.

En effet, je me présente Gagnon Baby et je suis au États-Unis d’Amérique (Washington)pour mes soins, J’étais propriétaire d’une entreprise d’importation du Café et Cacao en Cote D’ivoire, et j’ai perdu mon épouse il y a de cela 3 ans, ce qui m’a beaucoup affecté et je n’ai pu me remarier jusqu’à ce qu’on me dise un jour que je souffre d’une maladie qui me condamne à une mort certaine,J’ai un cancer qui est en phase terminale, c’est un cancer de voie aéro-digestive supérieures qu’on appelle généralement cancer de la gorge ce qui se forme dans le larynx ou dans le pharynx. Ces 2 organes creux regroupent l’ensemble des organes de la déglutition, de la voie et de la respiration. Ils sont situés dans la zone qui commence derrière le nez et qui descend jusqu’au cou, mon médecin traitant vient de m’informer que mes jours sont comptés du fait de mon état de santé dégradé. Selon ce que le Docteur m’a justifié, une boule s’installe présentement dans ma cage cérébrale. Je me sens très mal et j’ai très peur, Je et je dispose d’une somme de 2.000.000 €uros dont je voudrais faire Don a une personne de confiance et honnête avant ma mort puisque mes jours sont comptés faute de cette maladie au quelle je n’ai eu de remède. J’aimerais donc que vous en fassiez un bon usage (Crée un orphelinat à mon nom afin de prendre soin des enfants démunis, Luttez contre les mauvaises maladies, aidez les familles pauvres etc.) voilà pourquoi je fais de cette somme un don,

Veuillez me contacter directement a mon adresse émail : gagnonbaby@gmail.com

Sur ce je vous laisse donc et j’espère que vous m’aiderez tout en bénéficiant de ce don afin de réaliser mon vœux le plus cher au monde j’ai plus d’autres options.

Je reste dans l’espoir de vous lire

Mr Baby

[Photo: Andy McLemore]

soy un fan de estoy

Posted in Spanish by

butterfly emerges from chrysalis

The neatest thing about beginner’s Spanish: as the third of three related languages that I know in full or in part, learning it has allowed me to triangulate between them all. I’ve started to connect things about one or two of the languages through its/their relation to the third.

For example, because there is only one verb for to be in both English and French (être), and because the concept of being is exactly the same in both languages, I expected Spanish to follow suit. It was really surprising and confusing to learn that Spanish uses ser for one way of being and estar for another.

Ser =

when talking about: identity / description / the time / an event or occasion (unless asking where an event is happening, for which estar is used)

Estar =

when talking about: health / location / condition / sentiments

In class, I asked whether I could think of ser as referring to constants and estar as referring to temporals. My teacher poo-pooed me and told me to forget that nonsense and just memorize the rules above.

But I like the idea too much to abandon it, even if it’s not entirely accurate. I love that Spanish differentiates between being something firmly and concretely and being something transiently. I’m sick now, but I won’t always be sick. I’m in a hovel now, but soon I’ll be somewhere else. The tacos are terrible today, but tomorrow they could be wonderful. Okay, so I’m romanticizing, but to me estar seems nothing short of leaving room for hope.

[Photo: Vicki DeLoach]

speaking of vous’ing and tu’ing

Posted in French, learning tools by

vous vivez vous apprendrez

I just found this cute and handy flowchart that breaks down exactly when to address people with the formal French vous and when the informal tu is more appropriate.

It all comes down to the little box in the bottom right corner, I think. And yet, tu is always what pops out of my mouth first, because I guess I’m just a little punk.

[Photo: Marco Nunes]

the little Fr-engine that could

Posted in French by

fr-engine says, "parle français à moi, bébé!"

Monday night, back at the French Meetup for the first time in quite awhile, I got into a conversation with a Parisian whose parents are from Côte d’Ivoire. It started with a discussion of the cultural and philosophical underpinnings of my embarrassment ‘vous‘ing strangers who are peers as opposed to elders or respected figures. Which led to a consideration of whether the United States or France has deeper ‘fractures sociales‘ between classes and races. Which led to him telling me the story of why and how his parents left Côte d’Ivoire for France. Which segued into a conversation about the weird rules of French colonialism. Which was followed by a summation (his) of the hundred-year social history running up to the Liberian civil war. Which brought us, in a roundabout way, to my Senegal dreams. And on and on…

When people ask me whether I speak French my answer is always no, because there’s so much French I don’t know, and so much I do know but muck up anyway. On nights like Monday, though, I marvel at all that I can say and understand, and I find myself thinking, “I do speak French.” No disclaimer or modifier necessary.

[Photo: Sputnick; terrible photoshopping: me]

three-fer

Posted in French, learning tools, Spanish by

jumping for awesome

This morning I read a couple of chapters of L’étranger on the subway. I’m about halfway through and I am a fan of how easy it is to read in French but not really a fan of the book per se. I said to my French colleague, “I’m not sure I get the premise. Is he behaving like that because he has Asperger’s or something?” He replied that it was just like an American to jump to a psychological diagnosis and that actually this is a novel about existential ennui or something like that. Not sure I’m convinced.

After work I went to a French conversation Meetup at which I spoke with grilled a woman who had just returned from taking a year off to study French in Strasbourg. It’s a good thing my French sounds so silly because otherwise she may have been intimidated by my rapid fire interrogation: how did she do it, why did she do it, why did she do it when she did it, and every other detail I could suck out of her to inform my own “study abroad” decision.

On the subway ride home I wiped my Duolingo slate clean and started fresh with Spanish, even though I already got through the whole thing last year. I am in a no man’s land at the moment as I’m between one Spanish class and the next, which starts in September. I figured I may as well re-do Duolingo so I don’t lose the past semester’s hard-won progress. I’m looking forward to experiencing once more the haphazard juxtapositions of words that pass for human utterances. (To wit: You drink my cat’s milk.)

Alors, adios y bonne nuit!

[Photo: THX0477]

back in action (?)

Posted in Spanish by

exhausted cat

So it turns out the longer you take a break from something, the harder it is to get back to doing it. I told myself I’d give myself a week off from blogging to focus on my work transition. One week turned into two and then three and now it’s been almost a month. Especially sad is that I didn’t post anything on April 21, my one year blogiversary. I had been planning to mark the occasion, but on that particular day and in the two weeks since I just felt too overwhelmed with job-related stuff. So my poor blog had to celebrate all on its own, silently and without fanfare. 😦

During my unintended hiatus, I neglected more than just the blog. I stopped doing my Spanish homework and quite frequently looked like this in class:

What is this I don't even

My last Spanish class was last night and now it’s up to me to carry on with it at home, after a month of slacking. Doesn’t bode well.

I also stopped going to my French conversation Meetups, ignored all emails and texts, and went for about one and a half runs total when in a good month I do two or three a week. In effect, all I’ve done is work, think about work, worry about work, semi-sleep, and over-eat.

Such is my way.

Luckily, my new place of employment’s foreign-ness – in every sense of the word – has been compensating for my lack of attention to all things foreign in my extracurricular life. It’s hands down the most international spot in all of New York – and really, anywhere. I’ve met people from about 20 different countries on six continents. I hear French constantly and I’ve spoken it nearly every day. I feel like I’m both at the world’s doorstep and on the world’s stage every time I walk through the doors.

Now in my third week on the job, I’m feeling a bit more acclimated and I’m starting to pick back up the other pieces of my life. Which, I hope, means I’ll be back to blogging regularly soon. We shall see…