Parlez-vous français?

A few observations about learning a new language, since that's been one of my main goals of this year. First, one of the fun things about learning a new language is that you can often actually remember the specific moment during which you learned a specific word. For instance, I distinctly remember learning the word "pourri"(rotten) from Claire's mom during one of our visits to LaBaule during which the weather was completely rotten all week long. Also, every time I hear the word "cercueil"(coffin), I think of the Hellboy comic "Le cercueil enchanté", from which I learned the word. I learned the word "les menottes" (handcuffs) because there was an episode of Lost during which Jin was handcuffed a peice of the airplane wreck as a punishment. And I will always remember where I learned the phrase, "Tu es nul!" ("You suck!")--it was when I was playing darts with my Frenchie friends at a bar called Blueberry Hill. The list goes on and on. Obviously this doesn't occur with learning one's native language because you are two young to remember the specific insance, and probably also because the mechanism by which a new word is acquired is completely different.

Another observation comes from my French class. There's one person in the class, a Mexican woman named Maria, who is by far and away the best speaker in the class. She knows all this vocabulary, including a lot of slang, and is usually the one who volunteers to explain unfamiliar words to the rest of the class. And yet, her grammar and spelling is atrocious. She has a lot of trouble with deciding when to use specific verb tenses, and there are times when spelling even a simple word turns into a nearly comical exercise. As for me, I need to SEE how a word is spelled and how it is used before I can start using it appropriately, and although I have problems with communicating complex stories, I manage to do very well on homework assignments and tests in the class. Evidently, Maria's language acquisition process is completely different from my own. Would I switch my own skill set with hers? In a heartbeat. But for whatever reason, I don't think I can learn any other way.

Final observation: Did you know that the French and United States keyboard formation is slightly different? It's basically similar, but there are a few key differences--for example, where the "Q" appears on the US keyboard, there is an "A" on the French keyboard. I'm constantly having to change my typing depending on what computer I'm using: in the lab, there are all French keyboards, but at home (where I do my blogging) we have a standard American one. Anyways, somehow my brain "knows" to associate French words with the French keyboard, because often when I'm typing a French word at home on my US keyboard I will erroneously type using the French keyboard format. Isn't that weird?

At the bottom: a couple of pics from one of the rare days during my parents' visit during which there was blue sky. The first is from Bastille (and also features the more modern of Paris' two main opera houses) and the second is from Place de Vosges in the Marais. I like the way the sky turned out in each of them.