Zentrope

Le Français

Day 1. The learning begins.

A long introduction.

I decided to learn French, starting with the Pimsleur method. I really don’t have a good reason to learn and I did terribly at learning French in college (failing most of the courses and passing the last one so I could graduate).

My reasons, nothing more than a hodgepodge of distracted thoughts over the last few weeks, are:

• A challenge that’s not related to my job.

• A fantasy about moving to France because I once heard they’ve chosen a different path to modernity.

• A dream of being outside the increasingly dysfunctional US geopolitical world.

• The pleasure in the sounds of French, a sound unlike any other Romance language (I’ve ever heard, anyway).

• A memory of a moment in college in the old-fashioned cafeteria before it got turned into a corporate fast-food outlet when I heard these two guys talking passionately about something (or so it seemed to my ears) in French and I imagined that the world was far more interesting for them, that the French language encouraged articulate expression.

• The desire (new for me) to speak and comprehend another language, rather than being able to read and write it.

• A desire to test what I’ve always been convinced of, that I, uniquely in the world, can’t learn another language.

• Watched a video of a guy who learned to juggle over many days. He was terrible at first, described his frustration, but kept at it. From a distant point of view you could really see how he progressed at a reasonable pace, but to him, it seemed slow, arduous and pointless, until one day, he could juggle. Faith.

I expect that all of these musings are based on half-truths or outright falsehoods. But if it takes learning French to find that out, then I win.

I don’t know if it’s even possible for me to do this being on the western coast of America. No one speaks the language. I’d be better off with Spanish if I wanted to find a community somewhere around here to help me gain fluency. On top of that, going out and joining some group who speaks French (if they exist in Portland) or hiring a tutor is just not something I’d naturally do. So, this is a good thing if it forces me to do the opposite. Committing to learning the language is the first step (like joining the army), and then all subsequent decisions (as uncomfortable as they might be) are just steps down a pre-commited course. I could maybe might do that.

The first lesson covered sentences like:

• Do you understand English?

• Are you an American?

• No, sir, I don’t understand English.

• Yes, miss, I understand a little French.

I went through the lesson twice, and dipped in to it at other times. It’s fun. I’m having trouble with the back-of-the-throat R sound because sometimes its present to my ear, and sometimes it’s not. The subtleties seem to get dropped when the speakers speak quickly.

Because of this, the verb comprendre (to understand), is killing me.

Okay, so.

I don’t mean to over think it, but I wanted to get all this out of the way so I can move on and see how it goes.