Frenchy stuff

So have you ever wondered what happens in French when you want to put quotes around a word that starts with a vowel and has a definite article? I saw an example of this the other day, and yup, you get three little lines, one for an apostrophe and two for the quotes: l'''alliance'' for instance. I don't know why I'm surprised; after all, this is the language that brought us "créée." That's the feminine past participle of 'create'. I don't know. Three of anything in a row is just extravagant, bordering on immoral, I think. (Okay, there's the ellipsis, aka dot dot dot, but that's different.)

Another fun thing I learned is that a voice over in French is called "un une voix off". I love it when translations go inexplicably wrong like that.

By the way, I left my intensive French class, and now am taking a strictly oral class 6 hours a week, with Ps, who I'm going to have individual lessons with later; she's the one who is a former student of C's and a linguist. It's much more helpful than the other class. Next week I'm going to take my turn giving a 15-minute talk. I think I'll do it on American cuisine, and make some rice krispy treats. :)

My French is slowly improving. The talking, well, sometimes it's good and sometimes it's not so good. It's hard to get a sense of improvement. (Though, meeting with my language partner An the other day, speaking English, I kept catching myself from wanting to speak the little phrases in French.) As for listening... well, now, listening to the TV or the radio, or even passing people on the street, I can understand a lot more. Not everything, but a lot more.

The whole process is like going out in a fog, to quote Shunryu Suzuki, who was talking about enlightenment. You don't know you're getting wet, but eventually you realize you're soaked. Or maybe I'm just drawn to that metaphor because I'm still warming up from having biked in the rain.