Learning to speak French

I read an interview with the woman who started VEF - I've forgotten her name, more about that later - and she said that she was 75% bilingual.  How does she quantify it?  Is it an average or is it across the board?  I figure she must be really good at "immobilier speak", maybe 98% but she may be weak on French pop culture, maybe 18%.  Does she do some kind of weighted average to arrive at 75%.  Way too complex for me.

The challenges and hurdles I face learning French

• I'm old
• I work in English
• I don't take lessons

I'm un certain âge

OK, so maybe not old but 54 is no spring chicken no matter how much we boomers want to believe in eternal youth. It takes me longer to learn things than it used to.

And to digress for a minute, I can't believe that 54 is middle-aged.  It suggests that I'll live to be 108.  My Oxford Hachette English French dictionary translates middle age as l'âge mûr.  Literally I'd translate that as 'you're ripe, you've hit the wall'. Late middle age is un certain âge.

Menopause isn't helping.  My daughter told me about reading or hearing something about loss of nouns being a recognized phenomenon of menopause.  I used to call it 'having a menopause word day'.  I just lose words and they are usually nouns.  That's why I can't remember the name of the woman who started VEF.

On Saturday I was in a shop in Carcassonne looking for a meat thermometer - thermomètre.  Didn't see one but thought there was no harm in asking if they carried them.  Except I couldn't think of the word! Not in English, not in French.  I had to resort to asking for "le truc pour mesuré la température de la viande". 

I learned this trick listening to someone on CBC Radio years ago.  He had written a book called You Already Know How to Speak French (it's out of print and not available!). His advice was when you don't know the French word say the English word with a French accent.  There's a good chance that it's right.  Don't worry about gender.  Pick le or la and use it, 50 % chance you'll be right.  Truc and chose are two really important words.  With them you can describe the word you don't know.  Advice to live by.  I do.

I work in English

I design web sites and optimize them for search engines.  In English.  From an office at home.  Home is a house on a domaine and there are only 4 of us living here.  The other couple is English.  My daily French is pretty superficial.  Chatting about the weather at the bakery.

I don't take lessons

Huh?  Why not?  I did try taking lessons but it took such a chunk out of my day that I stopped going.  Feeble but true

The things that help me with my French

• I'm Canadian
• I'm curious
• People are kind and helpful

Being Canadian

In Canada we're presented with French every day.  All labels and packaging are in English and French.  You absorb it without knowing it.  I know a lot of food words. 

Apparently in the US they don't.  I was in a upscale supermarket in Chicago years ago and there was a sign on the green beans, Harrys Corvair 1.50 lb.  Obviously someone misheard haricots vert. And someone else mis-pronounced it.

Curiousity

For years I was a researcher.  A perfect job for someone like me who is intensely curious.  I love the challenge of finding information.  I love the internet. 

When I start looking for something I usually know about two words.  I use then to get started, along with a lot of trucs and choses.  By my third of fourth phone call or web site I've figured out the vocabulary I need to get the information I'm looking for.

This morning I was trying to find someone local to deliver firewood.  Mark said to get chêne or huître.  At least I heard huître. I thought it was strange that there was a wood called oyster.  There isn't.  It's hêtre, beech.  Chêne is oak.  I called the Mairie and got the number os someone selling firewood.  Called and ordered the wood.  I didn't have to ask for oyster wood because she asked if I wanted chêne or hêtre. 

People help me

Not many French people in the Aude speak English.  You have to speak French.  The nice thing is that people help.  They correct pronunciation and grammar and word choice in a very kind way.  They never make me feel stupid. 

So how bilingual am I?  I can cope in any given situation.  I can have basic social conversations.  I can't discuss nuclear psychics.  But I can't do that in English either.

If you're interested in French words you may want to visit the French Word a Day blog.  It's lovely.

Comments

[paddy]

You know I talk slow enough as it is, and I've seen what it's done to my mother's nouns. This menopause shit is not anyones friend.

Sorry I've soiled your blog with bad language...