French Lessons

Greetings, and my apologies for the long hiatus!  The past several weeks have been chocked full of visitors, three out-of-Paris excursions, and our continued efforts to settle into our apartment, just to name a few things.  As usual, it has been a whirlwind, but a lovely one.

The main thing to which I’ve been dedicating my time lately is a French class at La Sorbonne. I’m very proud to say it is an intermediate French class (that’s right… no beginner French for this girl!).  It is also an intensive class, though I’m not sure why they don’t just call it intense!  It’s three hours of grammar every day followed by one hour of a phonetics lab.  Between the class itself and the studying/homework, it has been a lot to handle.  However, it has helped immensely.  I’m learning new words, verb tenses, and (of course!) agreement rules every week.  Taking this class has made it much easier to communicate with people who do not speak English and given me a much greater appreciation of all the gender-neutral nouns and adjectives in English!  Paul and I are even trying to speak French to each other at home, though I think our record is only two hours without slipping into English, if that.

The class itself is very interesting.  There are about twenty students of all ages coming from all over the world.  We’ve got a few Americans (North and South), Europeans, Asians, and even one girl from Australia.  The age range is fairly wide as well, including some people who have just finished high school.  In fact, one of the American students was explaining to me how excited he is to be allowed in bars here!  (Sigh… that made me realize I’m a decade older than some classmates.  Wow).  A few other students are retired or nearing the end of their careers, and simply wanted the opportunity to live in France and learn a beautiful language.  I’m humbled by the fact that for most of the non-US citizens, French is their third language.  I can speak to almost anyone in the class in English without a problem.  Unfortunately, I discovered that learning French has overrun the part of my brain where I used to keep my Spanish and Italian skills.  I tried to speak to one of the girls from Columbia in Spanish and ended up saying, “Yo parlo español.”  Yikes.  Last weekend I did manage to speak one sentence of coherent Italian, though.  Maybe the wine I had been drinking awakened the Italian in me? 

Another fun fact about my French class:  It’s taught in French.  I thought perhaps that’s because we’re an intermediate class, and therefore very advanced learners (okay no, I guess those would be the people in advanced French), but I later learned that even beginner French classes are taught in French at La Sorbonne.  So… they teach you the language you don’t know in the language you don’t know.  I have to say that there have been quite a few instances, especially at the beginning of the course, when I really had no idea what the professor was talking about.  I’m happy to say those instances are few and far between now, but it definitely still happens. 

I’m not sure if I’m holding back my own progress (I hope not!), but after four hours of class in a different language, I sometimes return home desperately wanting English music, prose, TV… or sometimes wanting no words at all!  It’s daunting to consider my goal, which is to be completely bilingual, so I can live and work here as comfortably as I did in the States.  I know it’s a long shot… I sometimes imagine all those words in the English dictionary that I don’t know… and then I imagine the French dictionary right next to it.  Oy. 

Moral of the story here:  Find a native speaker and have them teach your toddlers another language – it will be way easier for them when they’re that young.  OR, give your own brain some exercise and learn a second language.  OR!!!  (This one is the greatest idea in my humble opinion) come to Paris to learn French and hang out with me! :)

Just as a side note – the tiny little pine tree I mentioned in my last post has been planted in our courtyard and is actually doing really well!  It’s grown and spread out its branches!  I can’t say that the French Oak is doing quite as well, but hey… it was supposed to lose its leaves around this time of the year anyways, right?