Yahoo, encore

Someone tried to ask this to be translated into french on Yahoo! Answers:

"Them fools tried to blast me Saw the police and they rode right past me...me didn't even look in a niggas direction as I ran that intersection...what are chances?"


I love Yahoo! Answers.

Frenc penpals

I found someone on a site, looking for a penpal for a language exchange like this:

-------------------
My Native Language: French
My Target Language: English (High Intermediate)
I live in this Country: France
About me:
describe myself.... OMG -_- I live in northern of france. I have 20years! ^^ ( Sagittarius rulaiz! :p )
---------------------------

I laughed so hard when I read that. Ruliaz. LOL.

HA! IN YOUR FACE FLE!

I JUST WENT TO A PARTY WITH FRENCH EXCHANGE KIDS IN UNIVERSITY RESIDENCE AND SPOKE FRENCH COMPLETELY FOR 4 1/2 HOURS. IT WAS BEAUTIFUL AND EVERYONE UNDERSTOOD MOST OF WHAT I SAID AND I UNDERSTOOD THEM. (Uh, within reason.)

THEREFORE:

1) SCREW QUEBEC AND ITS ACCENT. NO ONE CAN UNDERSTAND THEM. I LOVE THE 'VRAIMENT' FRENCH.

2) I CAN PLAY DRINKING GAMES IN FRENCH. IN YOUR FACE, FLE.

3) I LOVE SPEAKING FRENCH. I HAD THE MOST FUN I'VE EVER HAD SINCE BEING HERE LAST NIGHT. IN FRENCH.

4) I AM VINDACATED. HENCEFORTH, I SHALL PROWL AND STALK FRENCH PEOPLE COMING TO QUEBEC IN RESIDENCE AND PERFORM DARK RITUALS AND MAKE THEM MY LANGUAGE SLAVES.

5) Uh, omit #4, especially about the whole "I'm into the necronomicon' kinda stuff.

6) I LEARNED AND FIXED SEVERAL PIECES OF MY F-LANGUAGE AT AN EXTREMELY LARGE PARTY. I HAD CONVERSATIONS THAT LASTED OVER 45 MINS IN FRENCH. I AM AWESOME AND SCREW THE GRAMMAR NAZIS IN THE FLE AND THEIR INABILITY TO PUT ME IN THE RIGHT LEVEL OR AT LEAST CHALLENGE ME AT THE LEVEL I'M IN. STILL. ANGRY. KILL. RAGE. FUME. VENT. RANT. MOB. TEDDY BEAR. YES!

7) I WILL HENCEFORTH MOVE TO FRANCE AND BE A REFUGEE AND LIVE IN A SLUM OF PARIS. I WILL OPEN A TABAGIE WHERE PEOPLE CAN WALK INTO MY STORE AT 3AM DRUNK AND HIGH AND BUY DORITOS AND AMERICAN CIGARETTES. THIS IS A GOOD IDEA. IT WILL WORK WELL. FRANCE LOVES ME. MORE THAN A PHD.

8) I MET A GERMAN GIRL IN PHILOSOPHY AT THE PARTY. I WILL MAKE HER MY FRIEND. SHE WILL HELP ME ENROLL IN A PHILOSOPHY COURSE. LIFE HAS MEANING AGAIN. I HOPE SHE E-MAILS ME.

In other news, I lost David when he left the party, my 'debutant' friend in my class who invited me . I meant to walk him or see him home, but I lost him. =/ I really hope he's not dead in a gutter somewhere. Eeek. More stress.

Seriously, people, I came here to speak french. I do not have good things to say about this program yet, and it continually goes downhill, so it's only good things about french people. (Which, when you think about it, means that I would have been better off just coming here and working and making money instead of spending money. Sigh.) And I feel much better that I talked to french people, and a lot of them admitted that they don't even understand the Quebeckers here. So, in my love affair with Quebec I have only one thing to say...it's not me, Quebec. Maybe it's a bit me, but maybe it's a lot of 'you.' Therefore, we might have to break up someday. Please don't let this happen. Make me love you again and all your 'oui's. Have me fall in love you with, like the snowflakes that ever so delicately cut into my face, because they're not snowflakes, they're freaky ice storm chunks shaped like daggers and the size of fleas. I can still take your abuse Quebec. I'll still say I fell down the stairs and hit my head when I have that black eye in my grammar and in my speech...people will believe me. So, make it so, Quebec, make it so.


*End rant*

I'm so WORRIED I'll be in crap.

Well, I have finally sent a letter to the director (female). So, hopefully she/my prof doesn't hate me, since I've talked with some of you about the problems I've had with my french course.

Here is the letter I wrote:

Bonjour XXXXX,

Je suis un étudiant dans le FLE (élémentaire), et je voudrais parler avec toi parce que les étudiants avancé dans cette niveau ont une problème avec la vitesse du cours du français, donc, après parler avec quelque les autres étudiants, je voudrais trouver une solution agréable pour nous. =)

S'il vous plaît m'écrire moi si vous pouvez trouver le temps pour moi.

Merci,

Brennan

(ENGLISH VERSION)


Hello XXXXX,

I am a student in the FLE (elementary level), and I would like to speak with you because the advanced students in this level have a problem with the speed of the course, therefore, after speaking with some other students, I would like to find a solution that is good for us.
Please write me if you can find the time for me.

Thanks,

Brennan


I just realized I made one mistake with it, though (stupid 'toi', geez) but other than that, it's alright? Do you think it sounded nice enough?? You think I don't sound like a terrible human being??? Oh crap, I hope I'm not stirring the pot. We'll have to see what happens, I guess. =/

I keep being told by people I speak really nice french, which is really disconcerting. I kinda hate that. =/ I want people to correct my terrible accent. REALLY. (Wait until Ralph comes here, and is like, "How is that french?" Sigh.

Well, today is phonetics, so that WILL happen, and I haven't slept because I've been up all night worrying, so I'll speak french with a bad accent, it's in the cards. I wish I wasn't up all night, but when you have really mixed feelings, it's hard to sleep. For me, anyways. And I have so much insomnia these days it's really not much of a change. So it's alright. =)

Anyways, it's all fun and games until you forget to buy a book for your course. Sigh. SIGH. Anyways, whatever. It happens. =) "It's the life," as my roomate Steve would say. Har har.

It's the life.

WOW!

SCORE!

I FIGURED OUT A WORD TODAY!

I'm just so excited because I knew the word approximately without having to know the infinitive.

I can't tell you how exciting that is...but it's really, really exciting for me. It's a good leap feeling.

The Cloud and its Silver Line

You know, a lot of bad stuff has been happening to me lately, ie.:

-The french is driving me mad
-The french course is partially driving me mad (although not in the same way)
-My laptop doesn't recognize DVDs anymore, making all my DVDs I brought with me useless (Why did I have to buy that Pilates work-out DVD and bring it?? WHY??? AND I SO WANTED TO WATCH THE B-VERSION OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT IN FRENCH)
-My pen for my wacom tablet (the thing I use to make cartoons, easily and happily) has kicked the bucket, and I have no idea how to fix it (this doesn't mean I didn't consult the user manual. I did. It told me I broke my pen.) so therefore cartoons may be nil in the near future. This was a MAJOR outlet for me. A major outlet, now dead. Like Heath Ledger style dead.
-The french is driving me mad
-I recently got swabbed of some of my money (really, really don't want to talk about it, but it could have been a lot worse, so it's alright) trying to buy something online that wasn't legit, which means I'm a dummy, and now I'm in the process of filing a complaint for fraud
-I am having serious problems sleeping. I know I am normally crazy with my sleep schedule and I usually love it, but I'm not kidding you when I say I am exhausted most days, and I get into bed, and I lay there, with my hands crossed over my chest, like a mummy, or maybe a vampire, and lay there with my eyes wide open. I just lay there. Not thinking. Eyes wide open. Highly unnerving.
-My connection to internet, through a router, is very bad, and I often disconnect from the internet daily, and I am starting to think that I may be living without internet on a regular basis if I'm not careful. I pray everyday that there are no mild vibrations, tremors, minor earthquakes, or nearby impacting missles which may upset the hanging-by-the-thread connection I have to the 'world unreal' which is my only means of entertainment, minus conjugating verbs (thanks to my dead DVD player). These prayers are usually unanswered, and it's not the kind of thing I want to bother my landlady about on a regular basis (ie. more than once every two days.) I do look on the bright side here, though, and she is going to get a router that allows me to connect wireless. While I wasn't looking for this in a place when I first moved here, I am now, especially that I cannot have easy access to the router to fix any problems I might have.
-My shoes are slowly dying. Thank you Quebec winter, where it can be minus thirty plus wind, and yet there still manages to be a sufficient amount of slush for me to nearly slip and kill myself everyday when I cross a major intersection with lots of buses that never seem to stop on time, and angry Quebeckers who drive like they speak french--fast and without a lot of concern for the details. (like me, for example.)
-the french is slowly driving me mad.



This week has just been a PEAK for frustrating things for me...and normally I'm not so upset, but I swear, I'm turning into a rage-a-holic. Everything seems to spur me a little. I don't know where I would be without all the correspondence I've been receiving from various people in my family, friends, etc. Probably utilizing a lot more french swears (since they're all meaningless to me, anyways, except when my friend David in my class says "tabarnak" in class as an answer to the question "What word starts with 't', everyone?" Even I can feel the social context seething on that one, and he just does it to be funny. Great guy, that Dave.)

One thing (although there are a few other private things, but that's for those people) that really made my day was seeing all the pictures of my friend Jim's new baby. Normally I destest baby pictures, (I think just because I love children, but not babies...not sure why. Huh.) but, if anybody would be good parents, the kind of people to really love their kid, and not just have kids because they are kids, then it would be this married couple. I really was able to have a happy moment for someone else this week, even amongst my own daily going-ons. It is something that gives me pause, which is really good for me.


So, it's been a lot of lows, not a lot of highs, but you know, it's all alright. I have been stressing about lots of things, but in the big picture, it's not a big deal. At least there is happiness somewhere in the world, maybe a little far away from me, but it's somewhere, and it's real. And that makes me happiest of all, seeing other people happy. It sometimes reminds me about the big things in life, and what the big picture is, since my life is currenly a mosiac of little things, which currently are stringed together, a messy blanket of many things, all which have little meaning, but I have to give them some meaning....since it's my little mess of a life maintenant.

Anyways, I hope everybody else is well. I've finally picked up some stamps so I can send things to people now.

That makes me happy.

E-mail?

Well this is interesting. While doing a french writing exercise, I had to stop for a minute and think about how to spell the french term for e-mail. (I usually use courrier electronique, I think.) I knew that the french had several different words for e-mail, and that the french people also used the word 'e-mail' a lot even though it's english, but I didn't know that they had banned the word e-mail back in 2003. Interesting. I'm sure no one will read the link (who does stuff like that?) but the most popular word in french according to the linguistics minstry is 'courriel,' which seems to be hotly disputed as to the fame of its usage. I think my favourite comment on the whole situation is made by, of all people, a French Canadian:

"Hmmm. For years I have been following this "defense" of the language by the french in France and Quebec.It is understandable that they would want this. As a native french-speaker, I take that to heart. But I do think at some point it goes to far. I am not sure this is one of them.I also think it is a sign of the reflectivity that the the French have for their language, that Americans do not have for theirs. I would not want us to have an "academy" like the French, although we did so many years ( notice how many American english words are decidely different than English every elsewhere, including Canada). But I do wish we would consider where our language is going in terms of usage, etmology, slang encroachment and grammar among many others- ( god, if I here another split infinitive, or "hot water heater" or "ATM machine" I will "allez postal".) "


I laughed so hard at that. Go split infinitives! Anyways, I think I'll start using the term courriel, maybe? It's simple to spell, which is basically all I need to know, and it's short for, as per usual some really long french phrase. More short words in french would make me happy. Seriously, and what's with everything being 'of' something? Honestly!

Je suis tres OCP

I found a really neat site on about.com with a lot of french MSN style slang. Awesome!

I now have to learn all this stuff...b1sur.

This is way too much fun.

My Life as a French Student

Well,


It's been three days since class started, and already things are a little strange. I am very frustrated right now because they put the people who are right on the edge of the intermediate group, maybe 10-45 class hours away (ie. people who can speak and use some forms of other tenses, albiet badly, and speak pretty much without a problem in present tense, people whom they call 'advanced beginner') in with the people who absolutely. cannot. speak. a single. not a single. word of french.

I would be lying to you if I said there weren't times in the last two days I wanted to put a gun to my head or even just scream. Ack. Thing is, there were many 'advanced speakers' in the class before, and they could speak a higher level, and make things easier (ie. harder). However, two of them just left this morning for the next level (one that I really liked) and only other two of them took a test to see if they can go up to the next level this afternoon. If they leave, I will literally have no one to talk to in french, at least for the first three to possibly five weeks. This will be like my grade nine nightmare of core french all over again. (Seriously, it was bad. VERY BAD. Tres-bad-avec-le-bleu-cheese-bad.)

So, to 'quell' the adolescent rage, and the feeling stupid, (As in, "I'm so stupid at french they put me with the people who can't speak any french, so I'm really bad at everything' feeling) I went to talk to my teacher because I thought, you know, maybe if I talked about it, I would feel better, and I did, a little. And, also, because I know that I was partially frustrated because I couldn't speak french at the level I wanted, I was probably just mad at myself, especially over the last few days of 'language shock.' The teacher and I talked, and I told her I was worried it was always going to be really slow in this course, and that I understood everything she said in class (which, in my opinion, is usually not great in a language course, and definitely a bad sign in beginner's class) and I think it was clear I was really sad I was over the whole thing.

Tres Bizzare, she then she asked me if 'I' could (not if I wanted to, but if I could just do it for herm if I had the time) to write the little mini test to see if I should be at a higher level. I was like, "what??" and I did it anyways, (I mean hey, if they're going to give me even more than what I want and make me work so hard I cry, I definitely won't complain since this is what I came here for.) and made up a bunch of endings for the past tense, and wrote a short compisition for her, but it was really bad, (seriously, I totally made up words, and I didn't know what to write most of the time) and I told her that it was too hard for me, and that made me feel better, so that's alright, and she said it wasn't a problem, and was really nice to me. I kinda feel like the bigger man because I swallowed my pride and admitted that.

I suppose I should be a little more forgiving and realistic, since everyone will catch up, I guess. But for me, it's not about waiting for people to catch up; my time is just as valuable as the people who paid for the course and are complete beginners. I just feel kinda sad because I feel like I did something wrong because I know too much french for where everyone else is starting and not enough french for where I want to be starting.

I think what my fear is, is that everyone else is of a slightly different mentality. There are people that want to learn french, and then there are people that want and need to learn french. And I really, really want to learn french. I want to learn so bad I could cry. But I don't want to have to do it all myself after sitting through days of "Bonjour, Comment tu t'appelle?" because there isn't anyone (minus the very nice Australian couple in the back of the class, maybe) who can even speak in a full phrase, by themselves. And it's been three days. I need french for myself, I really do, but I am not sure I am going to learn more in this course than I did in my two week course in Belgium, and if that happens, I'm going to be so sad. =( =( =(

I think I would be more ok if I could have some sort of realistic promise that we were going to cover more than the present tense in 15 weeks. I should suppose we are, but I'm worried how long it will take to get there, is all. Do you think my fear is in earnest, or maybe I'm just freaking out because it's the first couple days? Maybe there's something else I could do? I'll have to think about it.

Whew, well, it's been a long day, and one good thing about being here in Quebec are all the people I can speak french with, so maybe I should focus on that, and less on the classroom experience. I think I will rest a bit, kinda chill and have an early night. Tomorrow is a big day, student pictures.

Learning French

Well, I met my land-lady today, and she is SUPER nice. I am very happy, and I met my other roommate, apparently only one other, which is a bit of a relief, to be honest, and he seems really nice, although Julian's accent is a little harder to understand than Steve's, although I think he de-Quebec'd it for me when he was talking in french to me for the 2nd time. (Because the first time I had to tell him I didn't understand a thing he said because of his accent...wow, tres poli, Brennan) so now that the 'logistical things' are taken care of, I can begin my foray into the super french, where I will cram before I go to the school, so that I can hopefully be placed in a higher class (although I highly doubt this will happen, I can still hope, eh?)

My land-lady speaks very easy french to me, making me VERY happy, and even if I don't understand a lot of what she says, I understand enough to give very small replies, which makes me feel less stupid. I will try doing a french-side blog, maybe, but first I have to figure out an easy way to write accents on my blog, since I have no idea as of yet, minus using a number pad with the ALT key, which is just too much memorization for me.