[Multilingual Monday] Faux French
So, the catalysts for learning a language are interesting indeed. A cute bear from Paris started to chat me up -- in French. Now, I've stated this repeatedly, but outside of things I've learned from Eurovision ("Les Pays Bas, douze points!"), or remembering the words my mother would scream at me in French when I was a child (why DID she do that? She's not French, or from any country where French is spoken widely), I speak NO French. And yes, I've spoken Spanish for years, and that's certainly HELPED ... somewhat.
So what does a man do in a case? Rather than insist on English, I've tried to communicate in French -- let me just say, wordreference has been a life saver so far. While, grammatically, French and Spanish are SIMILAR, they're NOT similar enough to assume that one can just ease into the other with just a bit of vocab study. It doesn't help that French has opted, apparently, to use whatever words everyone else WASN'T using in their own language. Consider "remember", which in several languages is based on the Latin recordor, but French insists on se souvenir. Most languages these days use digital, but French is content being the odd man out with numerique. There are what I call "quasi-cognates", where you can see the similarities in meaning, but the two words do not mean the same thing anymore. "Se souvenir" is a good example -- a souvenir in English is specifically a noun for a keepsake on a trip, but the base idea of "memory" still remains in "souvenir" in both languages. The verb se battre is a cognate to the English "battery", but in English the idea of it being a simple fight is no longer true, and in true Match Game style, most people would associate "battery" with "assault," a good reason to call the police, and this isn't the case in French (see the title of France's Eurovision entry in 2002, "Il faut du temps (Je me battrai pour ça)", or "It takes time (I would fight for that)").
So how am I doing? M'eh. I'm getting my point across, and that's good, and all I CAN do is see how cute Parisian bear uses his French, and try to "mirror" that. That being said, there's no way in hell that I'm ever going to convince someone that I'm fluent in this language, because there's still so much I don't know. Cute Parisian bear shared a link to another cute Parisian Bear's profile, whose artwork is just breathtaking. So I tell Cute French Artist Bear that, in French, and he naturally responded in English.
... yeah, not fooling anyone. :: laugh :: Not that I'm expecting it, but still ...
So what does a man do in a case? Rather than insist on English, I've tried to communicate in French -- let me just say, wordreference has been a life saver so far. While, grammatically, French and Spanish are SIMILAR, they're NOT similar enough to assume that one can just ease into the other with just a bit of vocab study. It doesn't help that French has opted, apparently, to use whatever words everyone else WASN'T using in their own language. Consider "remember", which in several languages is based on the Latin recordor, but French insists on se souvenir. Most languages these days use digital, but French is content being the odd man out with numerique. There are what I call "quasi-cognates", where you can see the similarities in meaning, but the two words do not mean the same thing anymore. "Se souvenir" is a good example -- a souvenir in English is specifically a noun for a keepsake on a trip, but the base idea of "memory" still remains in "souvenir" in both languages. The verb se battre is a cognate to the English "battery", but in English the idea of it being a simple fight is no longer true, and in true Match Game style, most people would associate "battery" with "assault," a good reason to call the police, and this isn't the case in French (see the title of France's Eurovision entry in 2002, "Il faut du temps (Je me battrai pour ça)", or "It takes time (I would fight for that)").
So how am I doing? M'eh. I'm getting my point across, and that's good, and all I CAN do is see how cute Parisian bear uses his French, and try to "mirror" that. That being said, there's no way in hell that I'm ever going to convince someone that I'm fluent in this language, because there's still so much I don't know. Cute Parisian bear shared a link to another cute Parisian Bear's profile, whose artwork is just breathtaking. So I tell Cute French Artist Bear that, in French, and he naturally responded in English.
... yeah, not fooling anyone. :: laugh :: Not that I'm expecting it, but still ...