Sunday, January 24, 2010

Pas parfait? That’s okay!


It’s been a week of mistakes chez mon tête et ma bouche.

I wish I could open my mouth and emit a stream of perfect French, wowing my friends and confusing my family.

What I find, though, is the more chances I take, the more mistakes I make.

One day I realized I’d made a ridiculous mistake in a Facebook post en francais—and it took me three tries to correct it properly.

Then, for the 20th time yesterday I told my friend I was on my way to get my horses cut, even though on paper I know the difference entre les cheveux et les chevaux* (but I still mix up my socks and mes chaussures in my head).

Sometimes, French amis offer me gentle correction, apologetically, assuring me that they can easily understand what I mean to say despite mes grosses erreurs.

I am so grateful for the aid, and I know that taking chances and making mistakes is important in learning anything new.

Sometimes, however, I feel certain my friends must be laughing inside. A couple of times this week I felt the dreaded "Mon dieu! I must sound so stupid to these people."

But like so many self-doubts, it’s self-talk that we brave learners must stamp out to continue making the brain connections that will lead us on a path to fluency—the logical goal to learning a language, in my estimation.

Every francophone I’ve encountered has been only too happy to help others learn and never made me feel bad about being less than perfect…cool, n’est-ce pas?

When I begin to worry about it, I try to remember that waiting for perfection never got anyone any closer to it.

Then, I remind myself of the motto of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which was first comprised of French engineers, and it’s my advice to my friends who are debutants, like myself:

Essayons!
(Let us try!)


*Image Clip art courtesy of DailyClipArt.net

Sunday, January 17, 2010

Language of the last word

French, j’ai pensé, is the language of the last word. At conversation groups, when French natives speak, I always seem to hear the tail end of each response, and in les paroles of French music I always seem to comprehend le dernier mot of a line.

This is, of course, because the syllabic stress is on the final sound of a rhythmic grouping—not, I swear, because I’m only listening to the last sound that’s uttered.

For those of us new to French, it sounds a little like lalalalalalalalalalavais, lalalalalalalalalanez, lalalalalalalalaouais, when we hear the French banter with each other.

If I can pick out a word mid-sentence, I sometimes think for a moment j’ai gagné, until I realize there was a pause that elicited an emphasized syllable.

Ainsi, I would like to suggest that French speakers, when addressing the great untrained such as moi, try to contain the gist of the sentence in the final word.

An example of how a debutante can get the wrong idea:
Cute francophone #1: Ne vois pas maintenant, mais le femme etrange viens—son nom est Jeanne, ouais?
(in this case, the final word is my name followed by the French “yeah,” so I know I’m the subject of the sentence)
Cute francophone #2: J’ai achete une nouvelle chienne qui aboye beaucoup mais ses poils sont si très jolies.
(now I’m liking what I hear)
#1: Si j’aurais le chance, je vais inviter la princesse de Monaco pour un diner romantique.
(wow, I never realized how much he liked me!)
#2: Alors, c’est plus tard et j’ai sommeil. Je pense que je pars de coucher.
(Ouah, je rougis!)
I’m just getting ready to pull an Amelie and don my zorro costume, when…
(Donc, ils partent. Le fin, mais moi, je suis en seule avec mes joues rouges.)

So, well, you can see how misunderstandings could arrive.

But emphasizing the final sound also leads one de trouver les gens françaises plus passionant, ouais? Et qui n’aime pas ça? And maybe, just maybe, sometime the last word will be mine!

Tuesday, January 5, 2010

La musique plays “hard to get”

Because it’s hard to simulate French immersion in Spokane, Washington; because it’s sometimes trop difficile to understand lightening-fast spoken French; and, bien sûr, because I love music, I thought finding a French radio station to listen to and buy some music from on the Internet would be a fun and easy way to surround myself with French more often.

The quest has been anything but easy.

I spent several days listening briefly to some 100 stations listed on compendiums of French radio stations. Some I skipped because they were news only (I'm all about news, trust me, but I was looking for music), and most that I thought seemed like they would play the kind of music I want to listen to in general play mostly the music I already listen to—en anglais! It was d'abord maddening, et puis a little disheartening, and then a friend told me that stations in France are required only to play 40 per cent French music.

I did find one station, Rire 100% nouveaux talents, that has cute comedy sketches (good for me, since I’m a comedian in my own mind)—I don’t understand much but it’s good to listen to a little bit.

However, once the laugh track started to grate on my nerves, and I realized I’m often too distracted to listen carefully enough to understand anything but the last word of a sentence (more on that another day!), I resumed my search. I tried stations from Belgium and Canada, but still, I would endure five minutes of commercials en français only to discover that much of the music was English.

Finally, I came across NRJ French, which has a Web radio that plays only French language pop music. Enfin, de rester au courant, I thought! And it has no commercials, save for station identifications.

And I do like it, except for the fact that it seems always to cut off Vanessa Paradis’ song, Il y a, directly in the middle, leaving me hanging for the ending. Add to that the frequent lag between identification of a song, and the actual song being played a ce moment, and it’s proven to be an okay, if not parfait, solution.

Soon, of course, a Francophile music junkie like myself wanted more than to listen to NRJ online. I wanted to buy the music I hear, and play it in my car on my four-hour drives to the city I love, and pretend that the alfalfa fields near Moses Lake are Provincial Lavender fields and the Columbia Gorge at Vantage is vraiment the red cliffs of Rousillon.

Alas, the bubble burst when I went to iTunes. After dutifully noting the names of artists and song titles I managed to glean from NRJ, and searching out and printing the lyrics to some of my favorites, I wanted to buy some albums—or at least favorite singles—to play in my car. Nearly everything current, and my favorite artists, is unavailable via U.S. iTunes, and since I’m in the U.S., I’m not permitted to buy things from the French iTunes site. Even le petit cadeau de Nöel from Gerard de Palmas’ Facebook postings is unavailable to me.

I do understand there are other ways to get music on the Internet, I just prefer to travel the most direct (and least time-consuming) route when possible, and to pay the artists for their work through the normal channels. And, there are, of course, some French-language pop and rock cds for sale on iTunes U.S., just frustratingly not the most current songs, like those I’m listening to on NRJ French.

I will not give up, but the search for good music is never easy, I guess! As Christophe Maê would sing (his music is also unavailable sur U.S. iTunes) Dingue, dingue, dingue, dingue!

Fortunately, I do have at least four fun hours of French music, a la Louise Attaque, Sanseverino, and de Palmas, to transport me from Washington to France dans la voiture this weekend.