All day I'm looking up little bits of vocabulary (canicule= heat wave), checking a verb tense I'm unused to, checking my feminin masculine nouns, checking that I've got a turn of phrase just right. I'm googling away all shift. It's good! I look forward to my French in one year's time. Lots of Anglos leave for Quebec because the language holds them back professionally; but I've always wished I could simply be fluent enough to Make It. And now I've got the chance.
My friends who grew up in French school don't have this problem. Their French isn't perfect, but it doesn't worry them anymore it would in English. I only learned in grade six--early enough to learn fast, but too late to achieve supa child fluency.
A few years ago I started purposely watching French tv series--mainlining, like one does nowadays. And saw my fluency leap forward. I suddenly remembered that I really enjoyed learning French. I was good at it. I'm fairly good at languages. That gave me the confidence to dip into Arabic while I decided whether to do a PhD or not. And that was fun too!
So I've got some anxiety, but I'm having fun. The other day a woman with a Spanish accent pronounced rendezvous so strangely, she had to define the word before I understood her! It was sooo different, her prounciation, and her French somewhat broken--it was comical. Both of us, i mean. Like a comedy routine, the Anglo and the Spanish Lady.
2 comments:
In Scotland you might recall, I had to get France to help me understand the Scottish version of English! For some reason her French ears picked it up better than my "Englishy" ears...
I remember. I think the same thing happened in Trinidad.
I've noticed that North African French accents aren't hard to understand--about the same as French-France accents. Cause I think they learn European French. They really enunciate. But other countries soften the words a lot, and then I have trouble understanding. Or they speak more of a patois--and of course, even a Quebec patois is challenging.
It's all quite interesting.
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