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Friday, May 2, 2008

Parlez Vous Franglais?

I know I claim to be a francophone, but the truth is my French is almost gone. When I decided to focus on Spanish, I think my French dwindled to nearly non-existent. Lately, I've taken to reading French blogs and while I can still understand the gist of the posts, I find myself pausing every now and then to try and remember what a word means and how it is used in that particular sentence. I'm a methodical learner and quite ardent about grammatical rules (you really ought to believe everybody when they say I'm a dork). It really pained me to realize that I can no longer recall how simple expressions are phrased. I mean, I was a pretty good student - wait, you weren't there, nobody's here to contradict, so - I ruled in my French classes. Really, you would have hated me. Except that now, after all those semesters of ruling, I've had no practice whatsoever since (I mean I've even stopped watching TV5 - for that matter, I've stopped watching TVE too and that was the only reason we got cable) and now I can't even complete a sentence in straight French. My (non)skills have been reduced to Franglais (which I'm sure the French scorned when I was there). Oh, what to do? Because I love everything French, especially the language. (Well, for starters, to be more truthful, change that francophone claim to a humbler francophile) I really ought to review. Anybody interested in reviewing with me?

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