Wednesday, June 23, 2010

Parlez-vous francais?

Confession: Four years or French in high school and a couple years in college and I can't string a sentence together. If you don't use it, you lose it. In the interest of full disclosure, I was never really an accomplished speaker of  the French language. I blame it on my french partner through out high school. I had a huge crush on him. You'd think I would of worked over time on pronunciation. Alas non, I worked on figuring out ways not to speak. So I could really only read and write but that was long ago. I even went to France and spoke almost zero French while there. I figured out that as along as I could ask for water, the bathroom, and where to pay for my purchases I was set.

After I moved to Atlanta, I thought it might be nice to learn Spanish and I took an continuing ed class but soon lost interest. While it certainly would be helpful in this day and age, Spanish just doesn't appeal to me. Lolly is learning it and loves it though.

So recently, I am tinkering with Italian. I would love to learn because it's a dream of mine to live in Italy for a few months. It's really the only thing I have on what you'd consider a "bucket list". What I've found is that while I have no real French skills, I have just enough pronunciation memory to keep tripping up on Italian pronunciation. Plus I haven't really overcome my fear of sounding like a dork.

So I am thinking about going back to my roots and taking a French continuing ed class to reacquaint myself with enough French to butcher my way through a conversation. I am thinking I may know and remember more than I expect once I get into it.

I always thought it would be cool to be able to speak several languages. In the spirit of it's never too late, I think I just might add that to my bucket list.

Do you speak more than one language?

photo credit

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Not fluently but I'm working on Spanish. I keep thinking about those roseta stone packages. I wonder if they really work?

Scientific Housewife said...

I always wanted to learn French but I didn't think it was practical considering I live in Florida, haha

Kim said...

Do Alliance Francais--in midtown with the Goethe Institute. KSU continuing ed is not even in the same league. Or go to immersion camp at Concordia Language Villages (but I would suggest some classes at Alliance Francais first).