But he and my mom are going to Paris tomorrow, and we already know how I feel about
my parents,
or my possessions, taking trips to places that I want to go.
And so, without further ado, or permission from my dad, I give you...the email he sent to my sisters and me entitled "Resurrecting my French." (I should mention that he was fluent in both French and Spanish as a young person, and continues to be fluent in Spanish also as an older person, but not as fluent in French. Hence the need to "resurrect" the French.)
And now, ladies and gentlemen, my father:
For the last couple of weeks I've been immersing myself in French for
almost 2 hours per day.
I remember how we heartless children used
to make fun of my father, listening to his Berlitz records late at night, and
never getting
anywhere.
"Un."
"Un!"
"Deux."
"Deux!"
So ashamed. As busy as he was - coming home at night and working on
that. We were wretched.
If you cast your bitter herbs on the
water, they return to you. Or verbs.
I got some intermediate/advanced CDs and work on them walking to and
from the train and on the train. The guy says something in
English. Pause. Girl says it in French. Pause. In French
again. Pause. Then the guy on a new phrase. So I use the
pauses to try to figure out how to say it, then correct myself, and work on
pronunciation.
Two hours a day of this is pretty
intense. I'll look for them. Cram some of this down their charming
oh-so-competent "sur le pont d´Avignon" throats.
Ruining
Spanish - sometimes a French word or pronounciation intrudes. And French
phrases and conjugations keep flitting through the brood-o-sphere. And
dreams.
The verbs are the worst. Je suis. Tu est.
Il est. Elle est.
The whole language nothing but
insane labyrinth of verbs. Doing things to or by a few innocent
nouns. Subjunctive. Passe compose. Conditional. Darn
it all.
Thank heaven for the occasional cognate.
[My mom] woke up Sunday absolutely bushed after Saturday's
excesses. "Je vois que tu est tres poupée." Yes! I can do
this!
The nightmares. In my dreams it still doth haunt
me. The prehistoric jungle with gigantic insane reptilian birds verbing
their way through the dense miasma of eons-old wreckage and decay.
Purple. Greenish orange. Brownish blue. That's just the
birds. Snatching out your liver. Ma fois!
Marie
Antoinette. "Qu'ils mangeant du brioche." A precursor to the
tumbrils, the guillotine. Charles, a peasant, hauled to the scaffold for
disobeying her. "Je n'aurai pas du ne pas y en avoir mangé du
brioche. Avoir. Chouette." "I shouldn´t have not eaten
the cake." J'ai. Tu as. Il a. Elle
a.
me te se nous vous
le la les
lui leur
y
en
Accents!
Darnit darnit
darnit.
Gloria en excelsis les neuf
inmortels.
Halleluja!
Amen!
And to that I say also - amen! :) And also - bon voyage! :)
