Pinot, Bretzels, and Cathedrals

 

In the recesses of my mind, there is a rule of fairly random nature that I am often forced to remember these days: When speaking French, you do not verbalise the last letter of any word. A classic example would be ‘filet mignon’, as you and I both know it’s pronounced “fil-ay min-yoh” with the last N disappearing into the back of your throat.

 

My world has seen a relative flood of rules in the last three weeks, since starting French, and it reminds me more than ever of my days at school.

 

But this is not the beginning of the story.  To begin with, let me say that despite my claims last year that I do not speak any French whatsoever, I was mistaken.  In 1996 when I studied at Christina Martins’, we did a culinary French language course, and I find myself surprised fairly often now that I am studying it again a)how much more than just culinary French we were taught,  and b)how much I remember!

Also, thanks to being able to speak Afrikaans, my pronunciation and accent is not as bad as the poor Slavic and Arabian students in my class.

 

Thank you to my in-laws, who have been so forgiving of my poor spoken Afrikaans, because without that gutteral ‘g’ (say it like you know it should be said), and the rolling ‘r’, my accent is alot easier to understand than the guy from Ghana.

 

Speaking of the plethora of nationalities in the class reminds me of a text message my Dad sent me last week.  He reminded me of a television programme called “Mind Your Language” that used to be broadcast on the SABC.  I have vague memories of it, but not enough to make any comparisons to.

What it does have in common with my language course,  is the wide variety of nationalities.  We range from Iceland, across Slavic Asia, Arabian Asia, western Europe, Franco-Africa (plus Johannesburg *) and South America.  I am one of two real English speakers, so although I get frustrated that our lecturers refuse to explain anything in English, I do realise that it would not serve the purpose of the rest of the class, and there is no expectation for the lecturers to be fluent in the many languages of the rest of the world.

 

The rules:

 

I look to my native tongue and wonder if we have as many rules (and exceptions to) in English as in French, and I have come to a conclusion that we do, but that when we grow up, the rules simply are part of our tongue, rather than a being a concious effort to learn.  

Being South African, we are not strangers to actually having to learn a second language, and though I don’t think Afrikaans is as difficult to learn as French, it too has rules- Afrikaans sentence structure and past tense was my downfall in high school.

To be honest, I can’t tell you what the English rules are, at this moment in my life, with the exception of the use of the apostrophe, because my very clever Editor cousin, Kirst, has been helpful about my blog writing, and has gently reminded me.  As for the rest, I am lucky that they flow off my tongue with relative ease.

 

Unfortunately, being a French student, I am starting out with the bare basics, and let me say, there is no being able to translate word for word.

Here are the bare basics that throw me off track:

 

1. The French have two manners in which people speak to eachother: formally, and informally.  There are different pronouns and verbs for the two catergories- the verbs are different depending on if you don’t know, but have to respect the addressee, or if he is a friend, someone younger than you, and so on.

 Added to this, is the fact that these conjugated verbs all sound the same ANYWAY, due to the fact that they don’t articulate the last letter(s) of a word.

 

2.  The French are sexist as all hell.  French words are considered to be either masculine or feminine, and if this pertained to just nouns, I might get by, but the sexism stretches as far as adjectives, and nouns that are intangible, like a nationality.  

 The French nouns are ‘prefixed’ by the term ‘la’ or ‘le’ (or in the case of multiple nouns, ‘les’).  This proceeds to change to ‘de’ and ‘du’ as sentences develope, and there are multiple other changes pertaining to the masculine and feminine of the French language.

 Sadly, there is no rule to determining whether an article is masculine or feminine, and I guess that growing up and speaking the language allows you to just know, like I have done with spelling, I guess.  I have decided to refer to everything as masculine- le- and if I keep the word in my mouth, as opposed to articulating it, I will get by without the Pronounciation Grammar Police knocking on my door.

 

3.  The exception to the ‘drop the last letter of your word’ rule has an exception.  In the event the following word begins with a vowel, you HAVE to anunciate the last letter of your word, although its sound changes.  Basic example:  “Vous allez”.  You do not say “voo allay”, but “vooz-allay”, and thus the “s” becomes a “z”, and it becomes one word.

 

4.  Numbers.  This will blow your mind.  There are NO French words for the numbering beyond 69.  

 The number 70 is in fact 60 plus 10, or 60 + 11. Etc.  

 For 80, it is 4 x 20, and then plus 1, 2 etc.  

 90 is 4 x 20 (80) plus 10, 11, 12 etc

 

 At least there are words for 100 and 1000, but the scary thing is the year of my birth: I was born in the 1000’th + 9 x 100, + 60 + 17 year of our Lord.  SERIOUSLY.

 Telephone numbers were difficult for me- our 10 digit numbers are broken up into 5 x 2 digit numbers, and you cannot provide your number in single digits (which is easy- even Beth can count to 10 in French). Nope, my number becomes zero six, eighty seven, seventy four, sixty, zero six.  Try say that one in French.

 

5.  Verb conjugation.  I don’t get verb conjugation.  It is a vital part of the French language, so instead of trying to understand WHY, I have decided to just learn them.  All 50 000 verbs there might be in the language.

 

The last statement I made is one of the reasons I say that my French classes remind me of school.  

Back in Standard 6 High School Maths, under the rather painful eye of Mr H, we were taught the most basic rule to equations.  And the rule regarding positives + negatives equalling a negative.  Well, I wanted to know WHY the rules were as such, and for the life of me, I couldn’t understand it, until he told me not to question the rules, to accept it and learn it as if it was my name.  

Why I had such a problem accepting those Maths rules when I found all the rest of lifes’ rules have been easy to accept, I will never know, and although I did write those rules all over my ghastly Maths notebooks, I never did succeed at the subject.

 

But that does not matter.  Pas de tout. 

 

The other school memory that has surfaced takes me back to Standard 2 Afrikaans classes with Mrs B, and we were encouraged to broaden our vocabulary by verbally guessing what she had in her basket.  I was clueless. Seriously clueless.  She didn’t even have a basket with her, so my imagination was stumped.  But the  thought of actually verbalising an Afrikaans word filled me with terror, so I kept my mouth shut.  To my detriment, because she realised I wasn’t participating, and would then return to me over and over again.

Well, last week I felt like that in my French class, and I was cold with fear.  Happily I realised that I am 36, and not scared of being judged, so I now write sentences down and read them off when asked to.

 

My understanding of French is getting a little bit better, but ideally I need to socialise in a group of French ladies (or men), so that I am forced to listen and try to reply, so that will be my next goal, after the school holidays.

 

I have got 39 lessons left of this course, but I suspect this is the beginning.  Several Mums around school have attended  classes for more than two years, and I willnhave to do the same, I am sure.  One thing is for sure, once Alex starts in CP1- the equivalent of Grade 1, I will have to be pretty clued up to assist with homework.  

I have 6 months until then.

 

Au revoir mes amis.  Bisous, xxx

 

* I had a quiet chuckle after my first lesson, when the guy from Ghana asked me where I was from.  Telling him I was from South Africa, he looked confused.  He asked me if I was from Zimbabwe, as if South Africa was merely the tip on the continent, and not a tually a country, so I told him I was from Johannesburg, and I suspect the penny only dropped at that point.