Remember when I said I was going to Blog Every DAY in June (BEDJ)? And then I only posted about 7 or 8 times? Good, I don’t remember that, either.
Let’s move on then. I’m currently writing more drabbles, but in the meantime, let’s talk languages.
My brother just returned home from spending six weeks in Quebec taking an intensive French immersion program in order to improve his French. He had an awesome time and he’s come back speaking pretty decent French.
It’s given me the opportunity to try to practice my own French. And I hate to admit this, but my French has all but disappeared over the years.
What’s worse is I attended a French immersion school from the time I was 4 until the time I was 11. My mum spoke French to me at home when I was little to encourage it. I always did well in French classes when I moved back to an English school. But now? I have trouble stringing coherent French sentences together beyond “Bonjour, comment ca va?” Or my brothers and I will just string ridiculous French words together to make silly phrases, cuz that’s all we remember. (La chat mange ma tête. L’ananas et le bonhomme est dans ma poche.)
There’s been a few reasons why my French has become so horrible over the years. In high school, I went back to French basics. I know that seems like a lame excuse, but I went from being fluent in French to spending class time filling in basic translation forms. Then in grade ten, I started to take Italian classes. And Latin classes. I wanted to learn Italian because a lot of the opera pieces I was learning in my vocal music class were in Italian and it sounded like such a neat language. So I started to take Italian. And soon, parlo italiano. Amo parlare l’italiano.
My love for Italian caused me to stick French on the backburner… And it wasn’t long before I was confusing the two languages.
Then I stopped all together.
So. That is my long winded way of saying that I want to refresh my French and regain my confidence speaking it. I still am quick to understand French, I just need to work on being able to speak it and string coherant sentences together. Let’s hope I’m better at this than I was at BEDJ.