Learning French

French class is an interesting counterpoint to the heavy science classes that I'm taking. I get to use a different part of my brain. While I know that the brain isn't a muscle, it appears to be the case that using more of your brain allows you to use more of your brain.

The instructor has us regularly engage in small-group conversations, submit original creative writing assignments, and read texts and watch videos and song. There are some pretty sharp young people in the class, but it's painfully obvious that to use the vocabulary of a foreign language, you need to have a reasonable vocabulary in your own language. For example, I wanted to use "poor people" in one of my writing assignments but in the same sentence I had already described an individual as "neither rich nor poor". Even if I was writing in English, I wouldn't use "poor" twice. But I happen to know other words to describe "poor people": needy, destitute, and so forth. And French has a wonderful word for the destitute: misereux. It's frustrating that some of the students don't seem to have much of a vocabulary at all, in any language. It's hard to have conversations with them.

Our writing assignments have been a small source of stress to me. You might find this surprising since I write here fairly often. But there's a process, you see. I don't write here until I have something to say (it might be stupid or boring, but that's not the point). The blog doesn't have due dates so I can mull over ideas until one appeals to me. And I wouldn't really characterize the blog as creative writing, which I define as mostly fiction. I embellish and combine true events for effect, and I try to use language creatively, but what I write here is not created out of whole cloth. Turns out that's pretty difficult to do on command! I've managed the first three assignments okay, writing about a yeti chasing a boy and his dog off a mountain, a "fairy tale" about a widow selecting someone to marry using the moral "il veut mieux du pain sec avec amour que des poulets avec cris" (translated exactly, it means "it is better to have dry bread with love than chickens with drama/crisis") which I found on the internet, and a greatly abbreviated recounting of our grand trip to Burgundy a couple of years ago.

The instructor has also arranged for us to Skype with French students at an engineering university outside of Paris. We have to have at least two one-hour conversations with our partner then write up our experience and what we learned as another writing assignment (thankfully, not another creative writing effort). Half of each conversation is to be in French and half in English since the French students want to improve their proficiency. I've had one conversation with my partner so far--it was interesting and rather challenging. His English is much better than my French.

I was asking him about the sports he liked to play (rugby, an oddly British choice) and the job he expected to have when he finished university. One of his first questions to me (in French), was how Americans viewed the French people. I had to laugh. Not only was that so typically French, a complete and honest answer was far beyond my ability to provide in French. I gave it my best shot though.

Even though these activities take time nearly every day to prepare and complete, they are fun and help me clear my mind for the rest of my studies.