CSP: QU'EST CE QUE C'EST, 'OCCITAIN?'
so at art class friday the model was spanish, so of course all the frenchmen were throwing out their bits of broken spanish at the coffee break, which got them talking about catalan, becuase either she also spoke catalan or was from an area that spoke catalan, and they were asking if she spoke it, I can't remember ... anyway, then someone said something in basque, maybe accidentally, thinking it was spanish, or maybe just joking, and when the spanish woman looked baffled someone explained to her that it wasn't spanish and she comment that it actually sounded a lot like spanish, which got them talking about patois in general, and the roots of dialects like that, which sounded really interesting, though I didn't really understand most of it.
Incidentally, we also had dates with our coffee and gateau this week, 'fresh from turkey' M. lafue told me, which was also funny.
I talked to the spanish woman a bit more afterwards - she was en train de learning francais aussi and we comisserated about the difficulties of using telephones; she pointed out that its extremely difficult to find work if you're an immigrant who's still learning the language and isn't quite fluent yet becuase job hunting involves a lot of work with telephones, and when you have to ask people to repeat things for you they shut you out almost immediately ... she also commented that it was much easier to understand people when you can see their face and their hands and everything, which was definately something I'd discovered myself, but it was interesting hearing it from a differnt type of language learner.
also, I went to the life drawing class on saturday, too, whiwh was more or less the same thing as the friday one (we even had the same model as the first time I attended) but with a wider variety of people - everyone was still middle aged/ elderly but there were more woman, and, beleive it or not, a history of art professor from philidelphia who has been living in england for like 15 years (and who has started to pick up the accent) and is currently residing in toulouse because she loves it (I failed to get anything more specific than that) and, beleive it or not again, the president of the society, who I got to talk to a bit but that was weird, because he was basically just like hey, tell your freinds! No coffee and gateau at this class, though - fior and lafue still definately win.
Incidentally, we also had dates with our coffee and gateau this week, 'fresh from turkey' M. lafue told me, which was also funny.
I talked to the spanish woman a bit more afterwards - she was en train de learning francais aussi and we comisserated about the difficulties of using telephones; she pointed out that its extremely difficult to find work if you're an immigrant who's still learning the language and isn't quite fluent yet becuase job hunting involves a lot of work with telephones, and when you have to ask people to repeat things for you they shut you out almost immediately ... she also commented that it was much easier to understand people when you can see their face and their hands and everything, which was definately something I'd discovered myself, but it was interesting hearing it from a differnt type of language learner.
also, I went to the life drawing class on saturday, too, whiwh was more or less the same thing as the friday one (we even had the same model as the first time I attended) but with a wider variety of people - everyone was still middle aged/ elderly but there were more woman, and, beleive it or not, a history of art professor from philidelphia who has been living in england for like 15 years (and who has started to pick up the accent) and is currently residing in toulouse because she loves it (I failed to get anything more specific than that) and, beleive it or not again, the president of the society, who I got to talk to a bit but that was weird, because he was basically just like hey, tell your freinds! No coffee and gateau at this class, though - fior and lafue still definately win.