Last Day of French Class!

                                                   Printemps

Voici donc les longs jours, lumière, amour, délire !

Voici le printemps ! mars, avril au doux sourire,

Mai fleuri, juin brûlant, tous les beaux mois amis !

Les peupliers, au bord des fleuves endormis,

Se courbent mollement comme de grandes palmes ;

L’oiseau palpite au fond des bois tièdes et calmes ;

Il semble que tout rit, et que les arbres verts

Sont joyeux d’être ensemble et se disent des vers.

Le jour naît couronné d’une aube fraîche et tendre ;

Le soir est plein d’amour ; la nuit, on croit entendre,

A travers l’ombre immense et sous le ciel béni,

Quelque chose d’heureux chanter dans l’infini.

Victor Hugo, Toute la lyre

For more French poetry, check out http://www.poetica.fr

Bonnes vacances, tout le monde!

Etymology Expeditions: That Doesn't Mean What You Think It Means

As I keep learning French, I'm noticing more and more French loanwords in English. The funny thing is that a lot of them don't mean the same thing as they do in French. Because I learned English first, this can get a bit confusing.

Here are a few examples:

Demander in French means "to ask." Originally it's from Latin demandare, de=completely + mandare= to order. The origins sound more like what "demand" means in English, but in French it usually doesn't have that connotation of pompous insisting.

Surnom, from sur=over and nom=name, means a nickname in French. Surprise, surprise, in English it means "last name."

Rendez-vous, from rendre=present + vous=you (present yourself), is just an innocent meeting or appointment in French; in English it has a clandestine nudge-nudge, wink-wink flavour to it.

Hôtel in French originally meant "private mansion, palace, large house," not hotel, as in a place where tourists stay. You can still see this in some place names, like the Hôtel des Invalides.  

 What about English loanwords in French, then? I just don't get most of them. It seems like the French picked the ugliest and most prosaic words in the English language to borrow. A lot of the time the original French term is much nicer. Le living, for living room, for example. In French we have la salle de sejour. Which one would you pick?

Well, au revoir, or see you soon.

At least that one works the same in both languages.

Sources:

http://www.etymonline.com/

Duolingo: Learn Another Language the Fun Way!

Image from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duolingo

My French class started again a couple of weeks ago, and I've been using this app to get some extra practice. It's very fun, and I feel it's helping me with my vocabulary. And the great thing is that it's free! I'd actually pay money for this, though.

I've been studying French for four years now, and I'm beginning my fifth. The courses at the community college aren't the same as in school, so it's slow going. We only do one one-and-a-half hour class per week, and the class runs from September to April, with a Christmas break of a few weeks.

I'm hoping to actually get good enough to actually communicate with a French person. Right now I can read French okay-ish, but the speaking part and the understanding-what-the-other-person-is-saying part is still hard, especially because the French speak so fast.

I'm not complaining, but French is the hardest language I've studied. With Swedish and German, everything made sense and felt logical. French, however, has less rigid rules and more exceptions, most of which are based on stuff like "it sounds prettier this way." Nothing is pronounced like you'd think it is, and if you figure out one grammar rule there's always a dozen others to baffle you. Studying French is 50% infuriating and 50% exhilarating.

Duolingo is a bit on the easy side for me, but on the other hand it's fun to finally see that I've made some progress. I can do this! Yay!

And it's way easier than the other stuff I've tried. I've been reading The Count of Monte Cristo in French for . . . well . . . a little over four years now. Maybe I'll actually finish it one day? At least I now know all the verb tenses now.

Here's a link to Duolingo. French is by no means the only language there, you can pick anything from Swedish to Esperanto.

Some of the examples are a bit weird, though. So far I've learned these gems:

Il vit dans une pomme. 

(He lives in an apple.)

Je bois votre eau.

(I drink your water.)

Ton cochon est énorme.

(Your pig is enormous.)

Parle-t-il?

(Does he talk?)

Ces sont des minutes difficiles.

(These are difficult minutes.)