French

[osprey_archer]

You can tell I’ve been studying French for too long, because I’ve started having ~feelings~ about the parts of speech. My favorite is nouns, because they tend to be like English, except pronounced with extra fervor and drama. Or - let's get the genealogy right here - English nouns tend to be like French, because they are the remains of our erstwhile Norman chains.

I am also fond of verbs, also they tend to be cognate with Spanish rather than English, which makes things trickier. HOWEVER, conjugation, which bedeviled my soul in Spanish, is basically a non-issue here because this is a readings class, and therefore I only need to be able to recognize conjugations, not produce them, which makes it one hundred times easier. Except when you have words that conjugate into things that look nothing like their original selves, but there aren’t very many of those.

Not a big fan of prepositions. Because it turns out that, at least in Indo-European languages, there are a lot of prepositions that are attached to verbs, which seems perfectly reasonable in one’s own language but becomes absolutely maddening when you start to learn other languages, because there is no logic behind it.

But my least favorite part of speech EVER? Conjunctions. I hate conjunctions with a fiery burning passion because they are completely impossible to memorize. And moreover, the French looooove conjunctions. It is like they think that no sentence is complete unless it is festooned with a “nevertheless” and an “in order that” and also a couple of particles that don’t, as far as I can tell, actually mean anything, but are only there to sound pretty.

Which, let's be real, they totally do. It is a lot easier to study languages when you aren't expected to be able to produce or pronounce anything - but it also means that I can't pronounce anything, and I totally want to. Everything just sounds so much more dramatic and exciting in French!

Comments

[silverusagi]

I completely suck at languages, lol. I took Spanish and French and never managed to do well in either. But I wasn't really passionate about it, either, lol. But it definitely wasn't one of those things that I just had a knack for. Though I think part of it is that in entry level classes, they'll sometimes start off with phrases and short sentences to tell you how to say a certain thing, and I just want to know WHY it's like that. I wanted to know how the language worked, and not just how to say something.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

A readings course might be right up your alley, then, because we've been swooping through all the language structures as fast as can be. I could see this working for a more normal French class: teach everyone all the tenses etc. and letting them get a handle on how the language works by translation, and then going back and focusing on the nitty-gritty of pronunciation and spelling and so forth.

[sineala.livejournal.com]

My favorite is "ainsi." No, wait, "néanmoins."

I just like saying them so much.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

It's hard to go wrong with "néanmoins." It has an accent thing on the e, clearly that makes it extra French!

[seascribe.livejournal.com]

French! It is the best language. I like auparavant. :D

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

I hadn't even heard that word before! It is a good word.

[lyredenfers.livejournal.com]

I have always been fond of "donc" and "lorsque".

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

We learned "lorsque" on about the third day of class, and it wasn't until this week that I could consistently remember that it meant "when." When! That's not even a complicated meaning.

Still working on donc...

In other news, your icon is adorable.