Monday brought a new week, and a new language school for me and Will. We are now taking classes at the Alliance Francaise, which is going to be much better for both of us than our prior school, if my first class is any indication. Unlike the other school, the Alliance actually has a curriculum and textbooks, if you can imagine such a thing, and the instructors actually give out homework to allow the students to assimilate what they've learned in class. And the instructor in my class -- a very French-looking woman in her mid-30s named Sophie -- was very, very serious about the class, to the point of semi-intimidation.
First example: We were doing an exercise that involved reading headlines from newspapers. The point of the exercise was to change the form of the headline from a noun-dominated phrase into a complete sentence, converting one of the nouns to verbs. Thus, for example, the headline "Departure of the French National Team" would change to "The French National Team departs today." One of the headlines was "Baisse du Dollar" (lowering of the dollar). The student who attempted the conversion meant to say "Le dollar baisse," but (unknown to me at the time) mispronounced the verb by using a "z" sound rather than an "s" sound. Not a good thing. "Attention!" the instructor, in a forceful, authoritative voice, "you may not say this word in any French class or use it in public! It is very vulgar. Pay attention to this! If you use this word, it will be very bad." She explained that the vulgar verb for having sexual relations with someone is "baiser" -- pronounced with a "z" sound, while the verb for "to lower" is "baisser" -- pronounced with an "s" sound. I almost said that given how low the dollar is, the vulgar term might well apply to the dollar from the vantage point of someone like me, living in Paris with dollar-based savings, but I feared getting shown the door.
Second example: The conjugation of one of the few first verbs you learn in French, "comprendre" (to understand). She asked one of the students to conjugate the verb, and it's easy at first, "je comprends, tu comprends, il comprend...." but when you get to the "we" form, the stem changes -- "nous comprenons, vous comprenez, ils comprennent." Well the poor student did not change the stem in the "we" form, and said, "nous comprendons," and you'd think she'd constructed a sentence using "Le Prof" as the subject and "baiser" as the verb. "Attention! Attention! What happens in the first person plural? Everyone must know how to conjugate this verb and others like it correctly!" Whew. Damn. Where did that come from?
But the good news is this: Whenever I use the verb "baisser," it will forevermore be with an incredibly exaggerated "sssssss" sound, and when I got home I wrote out the conjugation of "comprendre" five times to get it stuck in my mind. So I'd say, at this point, that I have a pretty good instructor.
For our next subject, take a look at this:
This is the clothes dryer in our apartment in Paris. Suzie and I were discussing the other day how our energy use must be a tiny fraction of what it is when we are living in Santa Rosa. Actually, what started us on the subject was our noticing that our money seemed to be going farther than we thought it would, even living in an expensive place, and even with the dollar in baissssssssssssse (see?). We concluded that part of the reason was we are not spending $150 a week on gasoline. That's a big carbon reduction, as is our use of the old-fashioned clothes dryer shown above (which has the added benefit of being much better than a dryer for your clothes; the lint you pick out of the filter in your dryer are the small pieces of the fabric that the dryer has ripped off of your clothes, slowly destroying them). Plus our electricity use is down (fewer lights, no air conditioning, less TV). If the County of Sonoma really wants to fight global warming, perhaps they should allow me to stay here and continue my petite carbon emissions.
The last subject today is my remarkably resourceful son Andrew. We sent him off today, alone, to a new French tutor whose office is directly across the Seine from Notre Dame, in a busy, busy area. We told him where to get off the Metro, and gave him directions, and the phone number and address of the tutor. Things didn't quite go as planned for him -- his Metro ticket would not work (even though he has a monthly pass); he turned down the wrong street; and we neglected to tell him that the bell for the tutor's office didn't work. But at each stage -- carrying his stakeboard along with him -- he surely and competently responded to the situation facing him. He asked for a new ticket; he asked at a bookstore where the correct street was; he went to a nearby hotel and asked them to call the number of the tutor when he wouldn't answer the door. I'm proud of him for being level-headed and unafraid.
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