I do this from time to time. By "this" I mean take on projects that are completely useless to me. When am I ever going to need to speak French? I live in the Chicago area, for crying out loud - it is more likely that I will need to know how to say "please put me down - I don't like you that way" in Klingon. However, with drive times that reach into the 2 hour mark on some days due to my multiple teaching jobs, I have some free time in the car that needs filling, so why not learn a new language? I already speak spanish well enough to hold parent teacher conferences in that language if necessary, although I do have to refrain from throwing the words "pinche" ("fucking", as in "la pinche burro me golpeó con el pie en mi pinche cabeza" - "the fucking donkey kicked me in my fucking head") and "guey" (which translates into many things, depending on who is saying it and to whom it is being said, but most of them are not polite) into the conversation. (I learned much of what I know from students and players on my soccer teams.) I want a new language.
So I downloaded some podcasts from "Coffee Break French" to start the process. These podcasts are about 20 minutes in length - the length of a coffee break, hence the name - and are hosted by Mark (the teacher) and Anna (the student). In each podcast they pick a topic, like "greetings", and teach you words and phrases that fall under that heading. Obviously, the "greetings" podcast covered things like "Good morning", "How are you?", and "I'm fine, thanks," along with a variety of other things including "good-bye". There are two things I love about this podcast. First, Mark spends quite a bit of time making sure Anna is pronouncing words correctly, which is very helpful to a newbie like me. Second, they both are from Scotland, so I get to brush up on my Scottish accent while I learn French. I have been pleasantly surprised by how much I have been able to pick up in the 2 weeks since I started listening. I can now have the following conversation:
"Bonjour. ça va?"
"Je suis en forme. Et tu?"
"Ca va bien, merci. Je m'appelle Jed. Comment
t'appelle-tu?
"Je m'appelle Bob. Qu'est-ce que tu faites dans la vie?"
"Je suis professeur de biology."
I can keep going from there, asking where they are from, where they live now, etc., but after a few more sentences I have to throw in something like "Le singe est sur la branche. C'est tout que je sais," which translates to " The monkey is on the branch. That is all I know." I suppose I could also follow it up with the French equivalent of "Well, see ya later!", but I don't think lines from the movie "Dumb and Dumber" translate properly.
Anyway, I have found myself totally digging the process of learning a language again. I forgot how much fun it can be to go from having no clue what is going on to suddenly having a tiny clue. A REALLY tiny clue. I don't claim to be able to speak, read, or write with anything near that of a first year french student, much less fluency, but I am starting the process. Perhaps I'll keep going, or perhaps I'll drop this new hobby like it was something that gets dropped quickly - a bag of flaming dog poo, for example, or an angry cat that hasn't been declawed. If the next podcasts continue to be as entertaining and helpful as the first 10, I'm sure I'll have no problem continuing.
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