The one least likely to (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} chinesebomb) wrote,@ 2007-01-21 00:59:00 |
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French people
Today is the second all-French party (as in, everyone else was francophone and there was no English spoken except the occasional sentences for my sake - as in, "are you ok?") I've attended. The first one was last February/March-ish, sometime during the rigid winter before I started working. I don't know was it because we just ended up smoking pot and watching C.R.A.Z.Y. sans-sous-titre anyway, the memory I have of that party was positive. It was fun. We had cheese fondue at this Swiss guy's house, and the two Quebecois guys there told me that my French was good. I went because they were friends with my French language-exchange partner, this exchange student at McGill from France. She made an impromptu bong out of a water bottle and a pen, and there is pictures of me all bleary eyed and happy-looking somewhere on the internet (or, more precisely, facebook). (Good that it was un-tagged, I believe.) Later on we went to some ultra-lame chav club in the gay village, the sort that is populated by guys who wear baggy jeans hanging down their ass and skinny, tanned Asian girls wearing pretty much nothing. The club was lame and I left after 15 minutes, but it was still a fondly-remembered experience.
This time, everyone was nice and there were actually only two people who I've never seen. But jesus christ, Quebecois women are so much harder to understand than the men. [Note: all the guys in the previous party were 19-year-old McGill freshmen, so it's not like I'm biased here.] Is it because of the higher pitch of the voice? The more rapid speed at which one talks? Quebecois accent on women is also the most unsexy thing; it's like the English women on Coronation Street, all coarse and nasal (and your first reaction is you want to reach for the remote and turn the volume down). I understood maybe thirty percent. It's the most demoralizing thing; it just painfully demonstrates to me that no amount of expensive French courses would ever teach me how to understand party conversations. It'll only happen through speaking French all the time, at homee, at work, before I go to bed, in bed, in my dreams. And I'll have to immerse myself in reading material in French exclusively, because the daily reading of the hockey coverage on La Presse is just not gonna do it. I need a French version of the New York Times that I read back-to-back every day. At work, I thought I can usually understand at least 85-90% of what's going on, but that's because I have the context. It's the same when I'm having a one-on-one conversation with someone. I have control over the context, so I can have at least over 70% of comprehension. But when people start talking about what happened to their friend last week and it was hahaha so funny and oh do you remember that TV show this episode because it was the same thing hahaha, I got completely lost.
Basically, there's just so much joy in my life that I must give up so that my French would ever progress to the level that my English is at right now. That was how I improved my English; I forced myself to read exclusively in English, made only none-Chinese speaking friends and I was going to an English university. But I don't want to make all these sacrifices this time around. So far every Anglo I know who's almost-native-speaker-perfect in French either grew up in Montreal and went to French school, or has a French -speaking spouse. I just couldn't help thinking tonight, what would I have to do to understand all things Quebecois? The bizarre accent, the uber-earnest entertainment culture, the way people clap excitedly to folk songs about birds (which is what they did at this Quebecois concert that we later went and where I was definitely the only one in the room who didn't know the words of every song)?
It's daunting.
At least the Canadiens won tonight. Go Habs Go .
Today is the second all-French party (as in, everyone else was francophone and there was no English spoken except the occasional sentences for my sake - as in, "are you ok?") I've attended. The first one was last February/March-ish, sometime during the rigid winter before I started working. I don't know was it because we just ended up smoking pot and watching C.R.A.Z.Y. sans-sous-titre anyway, the memory I have of that party was positive. It was fun. We had cheese fondue at this Swiss guy's house, and the two Quebecois guys there told me that my French was good. I went because they were friends with my French language-exchange partner, this exchange student at McGill from France. She made an impromptu bong out of a water bottle and a pen, and there is pictures of me all bleary eyed and happy-looking somewhere on the internet (or, more precisely, facebook). (Good that it was un-tagged, I believe.) Later on we went to some ultra-lame chav club in the gay village, the sort that is populated by guys who wear baggy jeans hanging down their ass and skinny, tanned Asian girls wearing pretty much nothing. The club was lame and I left after 15 minutes, but it was still a fondly-remembered experience.
This time, everyone was nice and there were actually only two people who I've never seen. But jesus christ, Quebecois women are so much harder to understand than the men. [Note: all the guys in the previous party were 19-year-old McGill freshmen, so it's not like I'm biased here.] Is it because of the higher pitch of the voice? The more rapid speed at which one talks? Quebecois accent on women is also the most unsexy thing; it's like the English women on Coronation Street, all coarse and nasal (and your first reaction is you want to reach for the remote and turn the volume down). I understood maybe thirty percent. It's the most demoralizing thing; it just painfully demonstrates to me that no amount of expensive French courses would ever teach me how to understand party conversations. It'll only happen through speaking French all the time, at homee, at work, before I go to bed, in bed, in my dreams. And I'll have to immerse myself in reading material in French exclusively, because the daily reading of the hockey coverage on La Presse is just not gonna do it. I need a French version of the New York Times that I read back-to-back every day. At work, I thought I can usually understand at least 85-90% of what's going on, but that's because I have the context. It's the same when I'm having a one-on-one conversation with someone. I have control over the context, so I can have at least over 70% of comprehension. But when people start talking about what happened to their friend last week and it was hahaha so funny and oh do you remember that TV show this episode because it was the same thing hahaha, I got completely lost.
Basically, there's just so much joy in my life that I must give up so that my French would ever progress to the level that my English is at right now. That was how I improved my English; I forced myself to read exclusively in English, made only none-Chinese speaking friends and I was going to an English university. But I don't want to make all these sacrifices this time around. So far every Anglo I know who's almost-native-speaker-perfect in French either grew up in Montreal and went to French school, or has a French -speaking spouse. I just couldn't help thinking tonight, what would I have to do to understand all things Quebecois? The bizarre accent, the uber-earnest entertainment culture, the way people clap excitedly to folk songs about birds (which is what they did at this Quebecois concert that we later went and where I was definitely the only one in the room who didn't know the words of every song)?
It's daunting.
At least the Canadiens won tonight. Go Habs Go .
