La langue Francais
Since getting back from my travels, and discovering that French isn’t actually all that hard, I’ve decided it’s time to improve my understanding of the language, so I’ve been reading Harry Potter a l’Ecole des Sorciers on the train (French dictionary close at hand).
I’m not doing too bad. I’ve read then first 19 pages without too much trouble, but at this rate it’s going to take a long time to get through the whole thing. Fortunately, I have to put the dictionary away when I’m reading on the tube and just trust myself to understand without any help, and it’s not all that bad.
No doubt that’s down to the fact that 60% of all English words are actually mispronounced French words, and that all words ending in -ant and -ent can be directly translated simply by pinching your nose and speaking with an air of superiority, so that’s 1600 words that anyone can understand already.
Any word I keep getting wrong, I’m writing on the top of every page so I know what to learn, and decided it wouldn’t be a bad idea to get hold of a GCSE wordlist so I can be a bit more proactive, which is why I ended up bumping into Kathryn and Ems by the escalators in Borders.
I didn’t recognise them because K had had her hair cut, and they didn’t recognise me because of the sun tan, but we ended up coffeeing together and I ended up coming out empty handed.
Looks like this book thing is going to be a long slog, then.
If you liked that post, then try these...
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Snaps of a journey on November 3rd, 2002
Simply Saturday on September 14th, 2002
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