Thursday...

[fajrdrako]

I got to leave work earlier than I expected, and so had extra time to return books to the library, pick up a rather large pile that were being held for me, and to come home to study French and prepare for the talk I was supposed to give in class. In French.

I spent most of that time reading Ultimate Spider-Man: Pouvoirs et Responsibilités. Love it. It has the most wonderful vocabulary, like having Harry Osborne say to Peter Parker, "Qu'est-ce que c'est? Tu vas pas faire sauter le bahut, hein?"

One other student, David, was also to give a talk this evening. The teacher asked him to go first and he gallantly said, "No, no, ladies first," so I had to start out. Coward! I talked about Wolverine, who in French is not carcajou but Le Goulon (originally), Serval (later on) and ultimately Wolverine. I talked about his history, his claws, his memory of childhood in British Columbia, his involvement with the X-Men... And all their questions were about comics and collecting comics: how many did I have? where did I buy them? did I ever go to conventions like the San Diego Comic Con? It was really rather fun. My worst problem was with verb tenses, which I screwed up a few times - it's so much easier to catch other people's mistakes than to catch one's own before they are made.

And I learned some great words, like facteur auto-guérisseur and squelette et griffes en adamantium.

Comments

[ceruleancat]

Never worry about your mistakes when you speak. The key is to focus on the communicative aspect. Successful communication breeds confidence, which breeds successful communication. The grammar will settle down with use and familiarity over time.

[fajrdrako]

Thanks for the encouragement! Yeah, the grammar will sort itself out, but it's still mortifying meanwhile to hear myself use the imparfait when I mean the présent, or vice versa - not so much because I don't know the correct form but because it makes me feel I'm not yet in control of what I say. Not quite. On the whole I'm feeling more confident - there's a woman at work who makes a point of only speaking to me in French. I like that.

[ceruleancat]

Tu veux essayer en francais? C'est pas facile pour moi non plus, et je fais des fautes tout le temps. En plus, je ne trouve pas les accents en ecrit.

[fajrdrako]

Les accents sont très difficile, même avec un clavier français. Surtout quand ils changent avec le même verbe - ils achetez/ils achètent, par exemple. C'est plus facile, ça, en parlant. Et le genre des mots! Toujours un mystère, et souvent difficile à memoriser.

[ceruleancat]

Souvent, j'utilise google translator pour mettre les accents. C'est plus facile aussi si on arrive a les distinguer a l'orale - et ca je ne peux pas faire. Je n'entends pas les differences.
Le genre, c'est toujours un mystere. C'est un trait abstrait dans tous les langues. Et c'est pire quand on vient d'un autre langue qui distingue le genre. La moitie des mots sont le meme genre qu'a l'hebreu et l'autre moitie sont l'envers.
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