I reinforce my limited knowledge of French in unremarkable ways. These include repetitive exposure to bilingual talking-elevators in our Nation’s Capital. After several weeks, I feel that I could call off the floors quite creditably if called upon to do so:
Deuxième étage
Troisième étage
I add to my limited knowledge of French in unexpected ways. These include intermittent exposure to bilingual-cute signs and products created, presumably, by fluently bilingual marketeers. This is how I learn something about the language as she is spoke. Maybe even something that is true.
This past week’s offering? A box of protein bars at Costco.
My six years of junior- and high-school French and my lone year of university French never got to the stage of slightly-profane-but-not-outrageous idioms. It seems a shame. Surely we would have picked up new vocabulary and conversational usage faster and cuter. And that’s rien d’absurde.
My only distinct memory from 3 years of high school French classes is a single event where a classmate misspoke a text reading and reduced our teacher to unstoppable laughter. Tears of laughter, she had to sit down, still laughing. We begged her to tell us what our classmate had said but the teacher refused to share that with us. A missed teaching opportunity, I figure.
Ralph – 🙂 Indeed. I startled my Spanish tutor once by casually throwing “penis” into a sentence – I think I’d meant to say “pain” and they vary only by one vowel or somesuch. Clearly a trap for unwary foreigners.
When travelling, I try to learn a few phrases in the country’s language as a minimum of politeness. In Vietnam, I learned how to say “thank you”, or I thought I did. Every time I left the bus, I thanked the driver. After several days, the guide and the driver could no longer contain themselves! The guide gently revealed that I was saying something to the effect of “eat more rice”. In my defense, Vietnamese is a tonal language. And they knew I was being polite.
Judith – That’s funny and lovely. It speaks well of your relationship with them that they told you.
Have you tried travelling in Scotland?
I’m still not sure what language I encountered when there, and no high school or University offered a course in Scottish brogue.
Tom
Tom – Yeah, some of the Scots were easy to understand (the ones in/from big cities, maybe) whereas the folks in smaller communities were a tad harder. I expect that’s true of many places.