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08/10/2006: "je commence de practiquer"
I've wanted to be bilingual for as long as I can remember. I've always been envious of polyglots, especially those that simply grew up with it. I guess that's why I took French all the way through highschool. With this interview coming up, it's provided the impetus to rekindle that desire that was also awoken when I considered joining the military.
Alors, j'avais decider de pratiquer ma Francais ici, et dans courrier electronique avec les trois ou quatre amis j'avais qui peut parlez Francais couramment. (Merci de Babelfish pour l'assistance avec mon vocabulaire, comme "couramment".)
Si je gagne le position avec le Conseil national de recherches, je peut continuer avec l'apprendrez de Francais. En attendant, je peut exercicer le petit peu de Francais j'avais maintener depuis ecole secondaire. Maintenant, j'ai besoin de ecrirer le peu de peu des amis qui parle Francais, et commencer un dialogue avec lui.
Meanwhile, I'll try doing a few paragraphs (or sentences) here and there en Francais just to exercise that atrophied language muscle I've still got kicking around somewhere. Yes, the French will be bad. Yes, I'll be relying heavily on both memory and Babelfish. Yes, I will eventually have to learn the extended keyboard strokes so I can actually get the right accents and that funny "c" with the hook under it for "Francais".
I know I've got a bunch of French tucked away in my head... over the past few days I've been dredging it up in silent conversation with myself, and there's a decent body of it there. I did take it all the way through to OAC in highschool. On honeymoon, when we had to figure out where to trade our Francs for American dollars during our day in Guadeloupe, I managed to have a brief but complete conversation with a bank teller (or should that be banque teller?) about needing to purchase American money. It's there, it's just dormant. It needs to be woken up, especially if we're going to homeschool the kids and have them learn French too.
Ideally, I'd like to dust enough off such that I'm confident enough to say during my interview next Friday that, "Je peux parlez seulement une petite peu de Francais, mais je veux apprendre plus." I didn't manage to squeak that out many years back when I had a phone interview with CAE in Montreal, and I regretted it.
And before you ask, I won't be borrowing a page from the Arrogant Worms Radio Free Vestibule: "I ahm bileengual... but mey eenglish is a leetle rustee. If we could do the interview in eenglish so I can practice?" J'avais perdu ma cahier des exercices, et j'ai faim pour des pamplemousses. Puis-vous moi aider?
