I love French. I love the sound of it including the ever baffling gender of nouns. I can't remember when was it that I started loving this language. It happened way before my Europe tour Spring 1995 and probably started with my watching many a foreign movies in the cinemas. Reading the English subtitles sort of make me wish I could understand the beautiful language. As it is now, I prefer to have subtitles in french to follow the conversations when I watch a dvd.
Coincidentally, Yan learnt french as an elective in his university days. Between the two of us, he is way ahead of me in terms of grammar, vocabulary and pronounciation. Afterall, he had a real french course whereas mine was in the form of a "weirdo" old French native lady that eventually spooked me.
At the farewell dinner of Ludovic, who was to be posted to London, I found myself explaining to the young French guy my "horrible" French tutor. I actually forgot her name. Let's call her Mdm. Well, I was a young auditor and I decided to take personal french lessons from a native speaker in the late evenings after work. It was quite an adventure learning the language that I love and a misadventure as well. Mdm would teach me using photocopied materials and cassette tapes!!! GASP. We were already in the cd generation then!! Still, I was learning well, the numerals, the days of the week, months, and so on until she sort of expected me to join her for dinner as well.
Then, being courteous, I declined. But still I had to wait for her during lesson time to finish her cooking and dining. Subsequently, the lessons became more 'improper'. I was not sure if it was a 'french thing'???? I had remarked to Ludovic, but she started to wear only filmsy nightgowns, almost see through material and boy, it was not a comfortable thing when you could see your teacher's wrinkled breasts, like an old turkey ready for the oven. It also bothered me much that she's quite 'touchy', I personally do not like strangers touching me at all!!!!!! even on the hand.
When the peak audit season was round the corner, I decided to end the $200/ month lessons and to my horror, even with ample notice time, Mdm flew into a rage, throwing off tapes and materials on the floor. She yelled at me in french, and heavily accented English about asians being no good. No commitment. STUPID. etc Her bizarre behaviour only confirmed my hunch that she was a "weirdo". She had a Malaysian lover who was almost a third her age. I saw him once during lesson time and when they were kissing I almost puke my dinner due to the very vast age gap. What did he "see" in her????? a grandma that he never had????? SHUDDER!!!!!
Anyway, Ludovic thought it was weird too. The silly incident did not mar my interest in the subject at all. Instead I found myself eager to self-study at my own pace, leisurely, enjoying the very long process of mastering the language. It's like working on my figure and educating rachel and learning violin. I love to work on something very long term, its liken to art -sculpturing and painting. Forever, fine-tuning and correcting. Perfecting it.
Rachel now 4.5, is learning French as well with the very entertaining Salut Serge!!! dvd, cd pack produced by BBC. Already, she has a bookshelf full of french story books and other learning materials. She told me she prefer to learn french than mandarin even. In time to come, my entire family will probably need the help of Alliance Francaise when we have the budget for it.
This is a snap-shot of our home-schooling. Other than the usual academic subjects, Rachel gets to develop her artistic side, definitely her stronger side, with art, music and languages. For the past few days, she's been singing "No boundaries" by Kris Allen and Adam Lambert with a copy of the lyrics and her toy guitar like a rock star. Other days, she had fun all dressed up to do messy art work and then showcase her "acrylic masterpieces" in the gallery in her toy room.
Personally, having just revived my literary side, reading both Dr Zhivago and Tess of the D'urbervilles, I am now systematically memorising my Suzuki Vol One songs and re-learning my French. Both Yan and myself too, have a tonne of french materials in our bookshelves.
Who say that the life of a housewife is uninteresting?? Certainly not mine, when its full of learning activities, dvds, music, art,outings, new Jamie Oliver recipes on top of the housekeeping.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment