Hein?! (posting writings from summer)

Today was only my second day of classes and holy shit, I’m learning so much. It’s basic stuff still, but evenso I'm excited. What’s really exciting, for me anyhow, is the experience of being at school again. Only now, I’m in school in Europe. Many of my friends got the chance to study abroad during their college years, but unfortunately I didn’t have that opportunity, being that I transferred schools. Chicago was my abroad. For my younger friends, still in school; If you don’t foresee yourself in my position, a year after graduation, taking classes in a foreign country, then I urge you to take that semester abroad. The classroom atmosphere is simply fascinating. For example, in my class this afternoon was a person from Hungary, Lithuania, Italy, Brazil, China, Australia, Canada, Chad, and Germany. Then, in the afternoon, England, New York, South Korea, and Poland joined the party. And miraculously, we’re all sitting around speaking to each other in French. Through some Taoistic series of events, we have come to share one small classroom in Paris—Amazing.

Mon professeur et trés gentil. He’s white haired and wears a Hawaiian shirt and he smiles so big when you say something correctly. It’s really encouraging. I just smile all morning long as others and myself try spitting our new phrases and battle with those wretched R’s. This week, during the last hour of class, we’re working on learning a song. It’s gotta be from the 60’s (In fact, I just checked the internet and it’s from 1968) and there’s this awesome jazz flute in the instrumentals. Besides that it’s a great song, my teacher adores it, and you can tell he’s earnest about sharing it with us. He was singing it all down the hall after we were dismissed. My homework tonight is to commit to memory the first verse and chorus. It’s really simple, mais c’est trés sympatique.

In the afternoon, I have a different teacher. She’s much younger and really Parisian. By which I mean her speech is very rapid, she’s very animated when she’s talks, and she’s a bit frank, vulgar, and inviting all at the same time. My afternoon class today was Phonetics. Now, I have never taken a phonetics class in my life, not in any language, and to begin in French was, well, hilarious. We began with les voyelles nasales (the nasal vowels)—Those troublesome sounds that use a lot of throat and tongue to say, and make French very intimidating to beginners. For example, when you say oui (yes), you’re using a nasal vowel. Congratulations. Anyway, our teacher also writes with the phonetic alphabet, you know that one you see in the dictionary in parenthesis, and we spent most of today’s class (4 hours) trying to discern between three phonetic letter that all sound exactly like the first E in ‘elephant’ but should not sound alike (apparently). Our session went something like this:

Mme (sounding the phonetic letters): [ɔ], [ẽ], [a]
England: ehh, eh, ohh?
Me: ah, ehh, eyh
S. Korea: ew, oh, ou.
New York: ehh, ehh, ehh? oh, eh? Ah ehh aeh?
(this goes on for 5 minutes in circles, including the whole class. Then Mme. decides to have us read a bit of text)
Me: dans les marais (in the marais)
New york (in French): Excuse me, what’s the meaning of the word “Marais”?

Then the fun begins

Mme goes on to explain the word Marée [which is not the same word but we do not know this yet-- Remember this is phonetics and the two words are pronounces (almost) exactly the same way]. So she’s describing this word to us as “the movement of the sea” and we’re all looking around at each other trying to decide if it means “waves”, or “tide”, and we confirm that it means “tide”. The phrase I read must mean "in the tide", that souds nice, right? And then fancy New York brings out his iPhone with a translator app that’s like über hip and modern because earlier it translated a word for "grumpy” into “grouchy” and a word for “imbecile” into “cunt”. But before New York can get us a translation, Mme is writing the word on the board for us and we see that the spelling is not the same. So what was she talking about?!

This is when the giggles hit me, AND a third of the class. We just went on for 10 minutes trying to figure out the word for tide and it’s not even the RIGHT word. On top of that, this is Phonetics, not like our morning classes. We've been captured by a huge tangent.

So everyone is laughing in confusion, including our spicy, non-English-speaking, Parisian professor and so she tarts drawing a map of France and pointing out a city on the West coast that none of us have heard of. This isn’t helping. “Marais exists in this town,” she is trying to tell us. By now, New York has typed it into his iPhone and he yells out “Marsh, it’s a marsh, marshlands!” And from our faces, Mme can see we’ve understood. My giggles have reached their peak and I’m trying to spit out an “I’m sorry,” but I can’t. We spent the good part of an hour deciphering two words that I guess are related somehow but have really nothing to do with Phonetics, besides that they are words. I just couldn’t help but be amused at the lot of us trying to make our own translations for things, all the while Mme is graciously trying to act out the work for "marshlands" (you try it) and on several occasions, not one of us was riding the same train of thought. It's such a fascinating process. I really hope I didn’t lose you there, or worse, that I didn’t make any sense whatsoever. Needless to say, I’m having fun in class. I don’t think I’ve ever laughed so hard with strangers before.

More good news, I’ve made a sort of friend from one of these strangers, England. She’s here for two weeks and I’m here for three. It’s nice to speak a little English between the breaks, but even better, she’s about on the same level as me and we can practice together.

Since I think I’ve gone on long enough after only two days in class, I will leave you with a word of the day:

Batterie - Which means “drums”.

.....Kind of brings a new perspective to the Energizer bunny, huh?

Au revoir mes amis. Amites!


PS- watch this if you want to get a better idea: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x346tj_les-nasales

PSS- for the song we're learning, click here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-7vv8F6XBE and get ready for jazz flute!