arisha: (Default)
arisha ([personal profile] arisha) wrote2002-11-08 05:28 pm

colour them wonderful

Before the rehearsal of the Remembrance Day assembly, I was standing in the hallway waiting for someone to open the theater doors. With nothing else to do, I was reading over the homework that Madame (I think she prefers to be called "Mademoiselle," actually, but it's such a mouthful) had given us. It was just a sheet for practicing the differences between l'imparfait and le passé composé -- two different past tenses --, where most of it was a fill-in-the-blanks paragraph (a silly story about snowballs hitting the principal instead of Gaston, because Juliette had called "Gaston, je t'aime!" and he had run out of the way, it was silly to the extreme).

So! I was standing there reading that when a friend of mine, who is already bilingual (in English and some kind of Chinese, I don't know which) and taking Japanese classes (she despises French) came up and peered at it.

"Wow," she said, "can you understand that? Just by reading it? Without looking up any of the words?"

"Yeah." Because it was such a stupid story and the vocab was pretty easy. ^^;;

"Wow," she said again, "you must be fluent in French by now, huh?"

"Hardly." Because I'm not. (Although I was very very proud of myself when I could understand most of that Air Farce-like show. I think I mentioned it in here but of course I must mention it again. They were counting the number of "merci"s this politician said during his speech. I think the number was 32 (plus a couple other versions of "thank you," including English), and then he said "mille fois, merci" and the number jumped to 1032, wow that killed me.)

"Yeah right! If you can read that so easy you must be! If I see something in Japanese I can't understand it right away."

"Yeah," I said, not really thinking, "but Japanese is harder."

"No it's not!" she argued. I disagree, but I guess it's a matter of opinion, eh?

"Okay," I said, "but French does have a lot more similarities with English."

"No, I don't think so, you must be fluent!"

And . . . I didn't have anything to say to that. x_x;;;;

[identity profile] manicwriter.livejournal.com 2002-11-09 10:34 am (UTC)(link)
I don't check my holegirl88@hotmail.com addy very often, so I just noticed today that you e-mailed me the URL for your NaNo stuff. I'll check it out sometime when I've got more time... I'm awfully busy at the moment, trying to write my own damn novel, but I just thought I'd let you know that I do plan to go there!

[identity profile] arisha.livejournal.com 2002-11-14 08:31 am (UTC)(link)
Thanks for telling me. :)
Of course, now I've been posting the newer entries on an LJ account instead . . . just to be annoying, you know. ^^; They're at [livejournal.com profile] embruns, and I've added you as a friend so that whenever you want (if you want) you can go read through it.

I do like the excerpt you posted from your story, by the way. And the entry title quotes are always interesting. ;)