Tuesday 2 February 2010

French

This week I'm a trying to learn French.

I'm joining the ranks of Waves in Warsaw (Neil Milton), Emma J Lannie and I'm sure many others in using 100 days to improve our language skills. I'm not learning anything as complex or exotic as Polish (Neil) or Icelandic (Emma). But I'm hoping that 15 minutes of French a day will make me a better person.

All of this is because I'm going to Paris on Thursday! I know I've just got back from Spain but I promise my life is not normally a European city every two weeks. But I have a friend I can stay with and cheap eurostar tickets and I am taking full advantage!

I have GCSE French but since learning Spanish any French has been pushed right out. Last time I was in France I confused everyone by looking extremely English and babbling in Spanish. It's almost as if I only have one section of my brain labelled 'foreign' and there isn't much space in there for more than one language. However I managed to carve out a little space for Catalan and I'm hoping I can now do the same for French.

As I will actually be in France my challenge for this week is to learn phrases and try them out on real people. I am preparing for the next couple of days by reading my phrase book on the tube. As my book was published in 2004 I now know useful phrases such as 'I'd like a video cassette (Je voudrais une casstette de video) and I will understand phrases such as 'fumeur ou non-fumeur?' (smoking or non-smoking?) which I may hear when booking my seat on a flight. It's scary how much the world has changed in 5 years.

I will let you know how I get on with my language adventures- if anyone has any good French phrases I should try and use, please let me know.

3 comments:

  1. "J'aime beaucoup la cuisine francaise" is a good thing to announce loudly any time that anyone serves you any food.

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  2. "Parlez plus lentement s'il vous plait" - Speak more slowly please.

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  3. Thanks for sharing your experience with us. I have been studying to learn French language. I have gathered many useful recourse as well as taken various French courses such as French for dummies courses , Pimsleur comprehensive French Level 1, Level 2 , Level 3 etc to learn French language. If you want to know more information then you can take some advantage from this resources .

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