French (jara: Introduction)

 --- Robert Hailman skrzypszy:

> > Grrr... my French heart is terribly wounded by this sentence! ;)))
> > Seriously, you probably hate more the American way of teaching French
> > than French itself (which has little to do with what those know-it-alls
> > pretend it's like). By staying on this list, you'll learn soon enough
> > about the "true" image of French, since it's one of the ever-returning
> > subject of this list :)) .
>
> I used to be a rampant French-basher, but Christophe speaks the truth.
> French does come up a lot on the list, and every time it does, I appreciate
> it more. [...] It's really not the dull, useless language you learn in
> school.
>
> Wait, am I defending French? WHAT HAS BECOME OF ME?!?!?
Same thing here. At school, I enjoyed reading French literature for its
content, but I developed a strong disliking towards the language itself. When I
worked in Luxemburg, I met the strange phenomenon that among 15 equally present
nationalities, the French were well-represented on both sides of the scale of
niceness: the nicest people, and the most boring, irritating and unpleasant
people were largely French. When I shared an office with two incredibly stupid
French ladies who categorically refused to speak any other language (which IMO
is quite an offense in such a multinational environment), they drove me mad
sometimes. I almost hated French back then. In the same period, I started to
like German a lot, while I had always disliked it before.

I think people are always an important factor in your judgment of a language.
Well, France seems to be particularly rich in unpleasant people (no offense
meant), but on the other hand, some of the best friends I've ever had are
French. Interestingly, as soon as you start to like the people, you will start
to like the language, too. Just take Christophe, the living proof that French
people can be really nice, as an example!

And well, beauty is a subjective thing of course, but no one can deny that
French is an interesting language. After I started working on Wenedyk, I had to
study some Latin, Vulgar Latin, and Old French, and this is the point where I
fell in love a bit.

> Uh... erm... nasalized vowels still make me want to vomit. Or something like
> that.
Then I don't advise you to look at Hattic. You would probably puke out your
intestines ;)

Jan

=====
"Originality is the art of concealing your source." - Franklin P. Jones

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