je voudrais de la limonade

i find my french accent is better in the mornings when i am only semi-conscious. the accent used to worry me a lot: try as i may, try as i might, my voice refuses to pinch itself into the corset of spoken french: it peeps, bulges and droops from all sorts of places it shouldn’t. it’s unavoidable, though, and we will all, all, just have to live with it. at least i’m not english.

i see france has a new president. if i’m thrilled that i will no longer be confronted with carla bruni’s fertility, i can only imagine the relief of the french themselves. congratulations! why is his surname a country?

i’m writing exams so the french learning has slowed to a standstill. but i did read about the curious little phrase il y a (there is, there are) and i came up with l’entrée de narnia est dans le caveau coca cola. which is probably wrong but how you determine the gender of non-french nouns, like so much else, escapes me entirely.

these aren’t my onions

as soon as i’ve throttled down the basics of french (i’m aquaplaning from a place where i remember that ‘ou’ means ‘where’ and that it’s pronounced ‘oo’) (this might be never because french is the language of insanity) i’m going to try my hand at german. because being baffled by gendered nouns in one language just isn’t enough for me. i’m insatiable.

from the little i’ve gleaned, i like german. the way it sounds is similar to afrikaans (the ‘ich’ bubbles from the back of my throat like early morning pleghm [i’m a charmer i know]). everything sounds mildly threatening in german: Der Bus kommt. Stimmt so. Ich habe Verstopfung (the bus arrives. keep the change. i have constipation.) the language that has given birth to words like ‘schadenfreude’ and ‘kummerspeck’ just can’t be wrong if it feels this right.

the french ‘r’ and its nasal vowels aren’t flowing. ich habe verstopfung. unless you’re from the cape flats this lewd frothing ‘r’ is foreign to afrikaans. our ‘r’s’ mean business. our ‘r’s’ are still angry about apartheid. pronouncing an ‘r’ in afrikaans is like spanking, but with more spit. in theory i think the german ‘ich’ and the french ‘r’ are probably necking first cousins, but in practice my throat refuses to acknowledge them when they’re together in the same room.

german seems to be about pronouncing all the letters. even the ones you don’t like. french loses half of what you’re saying between points a and b, like immigrants trekking through porous, drug-controlled borders. you’re never quite sure what happened to jesus but you’re certain it’s not good and you never talk about it.

anyway, ce ne sont pas mes oignons. c’est la fin des haricots.

getting by in french

salut! j’ai une chienne mignonne, mojo. elle est de deux.

mojo.

if you’re reading this and you actually understand french, don’t hesitate to point out any errors. my grammar safety net is google translate. be gentle.

i’m using various bbc products to broaden my linguistic horizons. if they are anything to go by, english people migrate in massive numbers to the shores of france purely to order coffee and ask for directions to local train or bus stations.

it’s rather boring. why order coffee when you can tell waiters, je ne sais pas où je suis. je suis une chemise. or ask a sexy stranger, pardon monsieur. où est votre maison?

what’s french for ‘but i don’t have bail money’?

incidentally

or not, depending on your personal view on google usage: the top ten blogs for francophiles. a lot of them seem to be about food, or people who have published books about their blogs and now devote columns and columns of blog space to advertising those books, or both, which is clearly diabolical.

this one seems rather good, though: french word-a-day. i found this picture on there and despite my not-a-francophile status this just looks as irresistable as christian bale in a suit-and-tie:

meanwhile, in france.

for comparison's sake: christian bale.

yet more referencing. the harvard referencing of hot men.

i could ‘reference’ ‘france’ all day, iykwim. ahem.

i could also stare longingly at french properties in provence all day long. oh, if only i had few million euro lying around. would you look at this?

you want to raise children in me.

imagine waking up in your restored provence farmhouse and going, i think i fancy a walk around my multi-acre estate today.

yes these are my own ruins.

non, luke. je suis ton père.

because if you’re not going to translate star wars lines into french, what are you doing here sir? just what exactly are you doing here?

the paint is barely dry on my gumption.

i have a confession to make (no, luke!). i’m not a francophile. a lot of people are driven to learn tongues other than their native because of an obsession with the country of origin. english, for example. but i’ve never really much been ‘into’ france and i don’t know much about it. i know its president is pretty whack. hey, ho, no judgment, our president recently wed his sixth wife (without divorcing any of the previous mrs zumas). it has a three-colour flag (one, two, three!). hollywood brought out a movie by one of its most famous authors this year, a movie so terrible as to be inexplicable. napoleon. marie antoinette. boobs. at least it wasn’t in eat, pray, love.

so the question remains, what am i doing here? and the answer remains, i have no idea except a vague tugging that i should and that i want to.

spoiler alert: j’exploser le death star.

Hello world!

as a south african who has never been overseas, it is clearly of the utmost importance that i learn to speak french. i started years ago but it fell through the floorboards of distinterest. now i am on fire.

this blog is going to chronicle my journey. by which i mean guilt me into not giving up, because french is hard. i know you’re riveted, so i’ll tell you why i want to learn french specifically.

because:

1. if you’re going to go to all the trouble of learning a third language, it might as well be searingly difficult. it ups the smug factor when you succeed.

2. if i learn french, i’ll be able to baffle, harass and inspire the people of france, belgium, cameroon, canada (eh!), the congo, etc etc.

3. i can only assume that i’ll be so busy speaking french i’ll forget to eat and become skinny, as if by magic.

4. one can never have enough languages to swear in i always say.

5. i’m going to author meaningful post-its in french if it’s the last thing i do dammit!

it’s a curious language, french. i think they were drunk when they invented it. so it follows i should be drunk when i learn it, non?

it’s only logical.