My friend Seydou has returned from Cuba, so I was able to bother him again with requests for his company. Being the kind person he is, he immediately agreed on meeting me after work yesterday. I had to go and shop for fabric, so the poor guy, who had just spent twelve days instructing the Burkinabè embassy in Cuba on how to organize elections, was now forced to help me out with choosing a fabric. ‘I will ask one of my female friends to help you with this’, he tried at some point. Not that I lingered too long, though: I quickly decided not to bother with the ‘earthly colours’ offered to me by the shop assistant (apparently, that is what most European people want) and headed for the more colourful section, choosing a nice purple fabric. I am pleased to bits with it.
Something has changed between Seydou and me, although it took me a while before I realized what exactly. And then I knew: I understood about everything he said. Still, I thought it must be him, that he had learned to speak simple French in my company. But no, you know what happened? Without noticing, I have improved my French quite a bit. Seydou had noticed it too. I have become able to communicate.
I’m still nowhere near fluent, though, and still have great difficulty speaking and understanding. Having to talk to people in French feels a bit like being drunk: I miss about half of the things that go on around me, and the things I say often don’t make much sense. It’s a real handicap, you know, especially for me. I love to talk and write (as you may have noticed) and share every thought that happens to enter my mind with at least three people, although preferably with the whole world. But here, I’m just not able to do that. I just sit at discussions listening quietly, frantically trying to reconstruct what people are saying.
My struggle with the French language goes back such a long way, that I do not see us signing a peace treaty any time soon. When I was fourteen, I once told a group of French guys who asked me what I was called ‘J’habite Lotte’. It became clear then that French was not really my thing. I took it six year at secondary school and three semesters at the university and still was hardly able to count to 100 in French. But that’s also because French numbers are horribly illogical. It’s alright up to sixty. But then: seventy is sixty plus ten (soixante-dix), and eighty is four times twenty (quatre-vingt), and then ninety is four times twenty plus ten (quatre-vingt-dix). Why not just call it (√(25)+3)*10+10 then, right? And still the French wonder why English is more popular.
So anyway, the good news is, that things are improving for me. The bad news is, that people like Seydou will become the victim of this. I spent about fifteen minutes yesterday raging on about the lack of content in Burkinabè political discussions, while he was probably eager to go home and have dinner after a long, hot day of not eating and drinking thanks to Ramadan. Poor, poor guy. He must miss Cuba much.
Something has changed between Seydou and me, although it took me a while before I realized what exactly. And then I knew: I understood about everything he said. Still, I thought it must be him, that he had learned to speak simple French in my company. But no, you know what happened? Without noticing, I have improved my French quite a bit. Seydou had noticed it too. I have become able to communicate.
I’m still nowhere near fluent, though, and still have great difficulty speaking and understanding. Having to talk to people in French feels a bit like being drunk: I miss about half of the things that go on around me, and the things I say often don’t make much sense. It’s a real handicap, you know, especially for me. I love to talk and write (as you may have noticed) and share every thought that happens to enter my mind with at least three people, although preferably with the whole world. But here, I’m just not able to do that. I just sit at discussions listening quietly, frantically trying to reconstruct what people are saying.
My struggle with the French language goes back such a long way, that I do not see us signing a peace treaty any time soon. When I was fourteen, I once told a group of French guys who asked me what I was called ‘J’habite Lotte’. It became clear then that French was not really my thing. I took it six year at secondary school and three semesters at the university and still was hardly able to count to 100 in French. But that’s also because French numbers are horribly illogical. It’s alright up to sixty. But then: seventy is sixty plus ten (soixante-dix), and eighty is four times twenty (quatre-vingt), and then ninety is four times twenty plus ten (quatre-vingt-dix). Why not just call it (√(25)+3)*10+10 then, right? And still the French wonder why English is more popular.
So anyway, the good news is, that things are improving for me. The bad news is, that people like Seydou will become the victim of this. I spent about fifteen minutes yesterday raging on about the lack of content in Burkinabè political discussions, while he was probably eager to go home and have dinner after a long, hot day of not eating and drinking thanks to Ramadan. Poor, poor guy. He must miss Cuba much.
yeah, i don;t understand the logic behind the counting either, same in georgian (60 is 3 times 20, 35 is 20 and 15, etc): so illogical!
BeantwoordenVerwijderen(btw: you seem to have a lot of fun, great reading your blogs!)
Je suis très très fier de toi! (:
BeantwoordenVerwijderenHeerlijk, even in een andere wereld met jou blog!
BeantwoordenVerwijderen