All around goodness

I very recently started taking a French class. You might be wondering why I'd do this at all, considering what a hard time I had with speaking, nay, life in general when I was taking Spanish and Italian class. Do you know what it's like carrying around two "pocket sized" dictionaries the size and weight of bricks every day? It's really terrible. Malo. Cattivo. What would be worse, though, would be not being able to express just how terrible life is in 4 different language. Or asking where the bathroom is when you really really have to go in any country where these languages are spoken.

From my short time getting acquainted with French, I can already tell we're not going to be good friends. On speaking terms, if you will. You see, with Hungarian, Spanish, Italian, what they all have in common is that the speaker rolls his R's. In fact, I sometimes maintain that the only reason I passed Spanish and Italian was because if all else failed, I could sit there and roll my R through class, thereby tricking the teacher into believing that why yes, I AM a pro at the past subjunctive! I could also roll every r that showed up in a word for 3 minutes at a time if they liked, demonstrating to everyone how to do so.

In French, though, I can't even pronounce my name correctly. Whereas in the past I could purr my name, "Adrianna" starting out as a soft aria crescendoe-ing after the "r" into a loud fortissimo, leaving no doubt in the listeners mind that the speakers name IS Adrianna, and it DOES have at least one r somewhere in there, in French it sounds like I'm trying to hack something out of my throat when I try to pronounce my name the "right" way. And all the letters you don't even bother pronouncing! Where I come from every letter is enunciated, even if not clearly, usually not giving preference to a b over an f, the speaker realizing that every letter there is for a reason, and should be pronounced. (Okay, maybe in English this isn't supposed to be the case. I do bother saying "-ing"s for instance. Yes, when I say "ganging" you can here EVERY g) In French, I think half of the alphabet figures in every word, and you pronounce about 2 of the letters. And I stink at this. Every letter has a job and damnit, they are going to do it even if the word ends up being slaughtered by the time I reach the end of it!

The class is an assorted group of young, old, tolerable, intolerable people. But coming together in one room like this asking each other politely what nationality they are and where they are from really pulls everyone together. As I have experienced in the past, even if I suck at this French thing, I am looking forward to the class ditz and the old ladies role play as Cristophe and Florence at the bus stop who meet up with their old friend Brigitte on her way to the Louvre, struggling through expressions like "tres bien" and "je mapelle." And there is nothing more entertaining than talking about relationships and all the frommage you like in languages you haven't mastered yet. You know, I don't even know if I spelled any of those French words correctly right there.

So in closing, I think a lot of the world's problems would be solved if major political leaders just sat together and took a foreign language class. Maybe they wouldn't solve any problems, maybe they'd still hate each other at the end, but during the class they would both be humbled at one point, and recognize that one or the other can order a coffee or ask the butcher for 3 pounds of meat like a FIEND. And they would be forced to ask each other what they did that weekend.v