Language and books en Francais

I just thought I would give everyone an update on how our language skills are progressing - note the positive tone of this statement. In fact both Alan & I are making slow progress with our French and enjoying the journey!

French Language:

there is this excellent bookshop-cafe calledBook in Bar also holds a regular English-French conversation group every Friday evening from 5.00pm – 7.00pm where people like myself can practise talking in French and the French people who want to practise their English can do the same. There are a couple of core regulars who speak fluent French and English and they are really great and very friendly and helpful. They are very patient with my slow French as I think through how to say something and they willingly correct the grammar or pronunciation or provide the best word / expression in French if I don’t know it. It has been a really great discovery and we both go every week.

We met a young French guy, Nicholas, (pronounced Nikola), who has applied to work in Florida and wants to practise speaking English before his job interview on 21^st June. His English is actually very good, but he really works hard at getting the grammar, colloquialisms and pronunciation correct. We meet him at least once a week for lunch or coffee and have a great discussion. He also helps me with my French as I will say something to him in French and ask about other things. As the English progresses I am going to ask for a reciprocal arrangement for my French!

I also decided to put a notice up in Book in Bar to see if there was anyone else interested in assisting me with casual French conversation. I drafted up a notice and got the group on Friday to check it for me and make any suitable corrections or suggestions – which they did. In fact one of the women has already offered to do conversation once a week and I have arranged to meet her this coming Thursday. I also got a phone call on my French mobile tonight that was so fast it was hard to understand, but I think it is a reply to my notice, so I will be ringing him tomorrow.

I have been talking to bank personnel about transferring money and the ability to obtain bank cheques (not possible without a French account), to hotel keepers about room bookings and services, to a retouchiste (a woman who does sewing repairs and adjustments) to get Alan's jeans altered, because he has lost so much weight (don't touch that topic any further, I am very jealous, but Alan does keep insisting we try the French wines with our meals - I have no hope!), to a hairdresser to get my hair cut and coloured (not green - je suis desolee), the French equivalent of the Ticketek booking agency to get tickets to concerts, check the seating etc, and to our bookings in the Loire Valley to confirm dates and payments.

I have also been busy trying to write in French including email correspondence with the owners of our flat here in Montpellier. They have kindly invited us out to their place in a village in the hills between Montpellier and Nimes - we are going this Sunday. She only writes to me in French, so I always write back in French and so far all is going well! I have also corresponded with a woman in Lorient, Brittany to organise our accommodation there in August for their big Celtic folk festival (with our friend Denise from Australia). Talking to her was harder, but we did it and corresponding with her by email has been tres facile (very easy).

All this conversation and correspondence has only been in French and, although my grammar and verb tenses are still appalling, it is really helping my French and I am noticing an improvement in my hearing ability, my use of tenses, my vocab. and my ability to remember words on the spot when talking, which is all really pleasing.

Alan, also, is showing signs of improvement. His vocab is greatly improved - way beyond his one word joke of "manger"! He can read and understand the odd sentence in French and he even picks up the odd word or sentence when people speak. However, he can still only speak one word at a time and his accent, although improved is still AWFUL! He has been very supportive of my attempts to speak French and is taking a more active role in conversations now, rather than walking away, because it is all too hard.

Books & Reading - a cultural and linguistic necessity!

In Montpellier we have found several excellent bookshops and a great public library service, and One of the shops I think I have mentioned before, is called Sauramps, and it is like an enormous Borders bookshop. I have already bought several French language grammar books, dictionaries, conjugation & grammar tools and ones with grammar exercises. They also sell lots of bi-lingue (bi-lingual) books in French English. I have bought a few of those and am currently reading one of them – a short story mystery by Elizabeth George, whose detective novels I really enjoy. These books are great because they have one page in French and the facing page in English and each set of pages exactly matches the other, ie it is the same paragraphs on both pages, nothing more or less. I read it in the French first and only check the English when I am stuck or usually when I have finished the page, to make sure I have got the meaning correct.

There are also lots of smaller bookshops that sell a huge range of everything. These shops are usually located in the Medieval quarter in narrow buildings that go back deeper and deeper and up and down narrow stairs with with rock walls and arched ceilings. You can spend hours just enjoying walking through the shop without looking at the books, but I succumb to the books as well! In particular I love “Book in Bar” which sells all the latest English language novels, plus the classics plus everything else in between including a cheap 2^nd hand book exchange and a huge selection of the bi-lingue books.

I think the huge array of bookshops is partly due to Montpellier being a university town, but books also seem to be part of the culture here and there are always lots of people in the bookshops.

I also mentioned the public libraries. They are called Mediatheques here, because they also stock media other than books (cd's, dvd's, archives, etc). There is a huge central branch and several branches throughout the suburbs and the satellite villages. Each branch has been given the name of a famous artist, so you have branches called Emile Zola, Federico Fellini, Federico Garcia Lorca, Jean Jaques Rousseau and believe it or not a branch called William Shakespeare! They are not free - there is an annual subscription, but it is quite cheap (currently 13 euros for an adult, 22 euros for a couple and reduced rates for students aged between 18-25 at 7.50 euros. Children are free.) Alan kept meaning to join so that we could borrow some cd's of local music, but we seem to have got busy and never found the time! Oh well, he will go in one day soon and listen to them there.

Also this last weekend in Montpellier, there was a “Fete du Livre” or a huge book fair (sort of like a trade fair) in the Place de la Comedie – the equivalent of Federation Square, with several huge marquees set up in the open space where most of the bookshops in Montpellier had a stall and also the newspaper and magazine stands. They had books for sale, authors to talk to and also various conferences, round table discussions and presentations. We went to a round table discussion presented by Book in Bar where several ex-pat (USA, English & German) writers who had settled in France and written about some aspect of French life, spoke about their experiences. It was all in French and reasonably fast, and I was pleasantly surprised to find I could understand a lot of what was said, even to the extent of understanding the question and most of the answers that each of them gave!

I also bought a book at the fete by a Scottish writer. The book is called a “A Pheasant Plucker” (don’t comment on the clichéd pun!) It is meant to be a light humorous detective/spy thriller set in Montpellier. It is written in English, although the guy can speak fluent French. I haven’t read it yet. The guy was an ex computer executive from Glascow, who had worked in France at various times with his job and decided to settle in the sun in the south of France when he retired. He took up writing as a hobby and after hawking the book round to several publishers, finally found one who would publish it and now it is on the curriculum here at the Montpellier University, as he said for the French students learning English it is nice and light (a change from the “classics”) and being set in Montpellier they can relate to it more easily. Not bad going for your first novel – not quite as successful as K D Rowling of Harry Potter fame, but certainly a good start. He is currently writing his 2^nd novel.

To answer a one of a friend’s earlier questions, I haven’t read many books on other people’s experiences living or travelling in a foreign country, other than the classic Peter Mayle and Bill Bryson books and a few others. For some strange reason they have never appealed. Maybe part of it was jealousy on my part (If I can’t be there, I don’t want to know, and some it was just that travel experiences are a personal thing and what one person experiences or finds interesting is not necessarily what I want to read). I have read little excerpts out of the glossy coffee table books and find them good, but not inspiring enough to read the book from cover to cover. However, now that I am here in France and boring you all with millions of blog entries, expecting you all to be fascinated by our enjoyment and adventure, I am feeling a bit hypocritical, so I might start revising my opinion of those books and try reading a few more of them!

One other good thing – Alan bought a book!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! This is indeed a cause for celebration – not a novel as he doesn’t read them, but an excellent French language book for beginners with a dvd, called “Excuse My French”. It is published by the BBC and from I have read of it already, it looks really good and I will probably use it as well! Alan & I have watched the part of the dvd now and we are thoroughly enjoying. It is a BBC 4 part reality series (we don't normally watch these!) where 3 prominent English tv personalities are sent to live in a gorgeous villa in the South of France for 4 weeks to become fluent in French.

One guy, a middle aged sports commentator has no French at all and apart from his interest in sport, is very similar to Alan! The 2nd guy is a young stand up comic who has a bit of school French barely used, and the 3rd person is a 60's+ female tv presenter who has A Level French that she has used a bit on holidays. I felt I am now somewhere between the comic and the tv presenter! They have one on one teachers and only speak French between 10am - 6pm in the evenings. They are given certain challenges to meet each week all leading up to a major task at the end of the month.

There have been some great lines in it, for example:

• when trying to describe the taste of a white wine to a top sommelier, Ron the illiterate French guy said it tasted like piss (he meant piscine - swimming pool)
• when Marcus, the middle level speaker and a comedian by trade was attempting to describe playing boules in French, he started with and as my hand cradled the elderly peoples balls...

Anyway I am sure you get the idea. The dvd also has French exercises, so we will be on to those once we have wetched the last episode of the tv show.

Hope this has filled you in on our language exploits and a bit more of the culture here.

Au Revoir for now, Pam