Last week I had my first Intermediate French test. It was very difficult – we were tested future and past tenses, negations, propositions, and the use of him/her/them/there/it/… (le/la/les/y/lui/leur/en). So many of the conjugations are irregular, and my vocabulary is very small. I only got 59% on the test, but I am actually quite proud that I passed it at all.

My ear is starting to really improve, I can pick out words that I recognise more easily, and now I can have a basic conversation with someone – as long as it is about kittens, food, or travel. I move onto Intermediate 2B next week, and I really need to lift my game. In order to keep up with the pace of the class, I need to learn new words every single day.

Unlike the organic English language, French language has a group of Les Immortels at the Académie française to determine the correct name and gender of all new words, and to regulate the usage of old ones. Over the years, these have been some of their rulings:

Je céderai (I will give up) will now be spelled Je cèderai
Elle considérerait (She would consider) will now be spelled Elle considèrerait
Ils interpréteront (They will interpret) will now be spelled Ils interprèteront
Crémerie (Cheese shop) will now be spelled Crèmerie
Pedigree will now be spelled Pédigrée
Revolver will now be spelled Révolver

They are even changing the spelling of August, in their war on d’accent circonflexe, and thus août will now be spelled aout. Furthermore,
bûcher (stake) will now be spelled bucher
Elle connaît (She knows) will now be spelled Elle connait

Even the beloved Île de la Cité and the Île St-Louis in Paris should properly be known as IIe de la Cité and the Ile St-Louis.

C’est la vie.

One of the most charming quirks that many non-native English speakers have is that of anthropomorphizing objects. When talking about my watch, the jeweler assures me that “she will still be waterproof”. A lecturer on the large intestine informs me that “he aids in the digestion of plant material”. My SAS programming tutor reminds me that “he will iterate the step until the condition is false”. When speaking in French about the weather, I must remember to say “he makes cold” and “he did have snow”.

One of the hardest things for me is learning which objects are feminine and which are masculine. When talking about an object, I search my brain for the word for “it”, completely forgetting that I should be using “he” or “she”. I am tempted to place stickers of mustaches and bows on all our items in an effort to start remembering gender.

Image from Snugg

Last week I sat my first French exam. I really struggled with conjugating some of the verbs (I forgot that connaître “to know” conjugates to nous connaissons “we know”), and it is still hard for me to remember that often something special is required if the next word begins with a vowel. Still, I have learned a lot in the past few months, and I have really enjoyed my classes. The lessons themselves are mostly spoken role-playing, while the homework involves memorisation of vocabulary. I have a great teacher, and I really enjoy the company of the other students. It is a very fun environment, full of laughter whenever I tell them I am wearing a hen “Je porte une poule” instead of pullover “Je porte un pull“, or I try to pronounce the word like happy (“heureux“) that doesn’t contain any phonemes found in the English language.

Yesterday I had my first French class. Monday and Wednesday evenings, 4.5 hours a week, 7 weeks per unit. Our teacher told us that it is a very intense class with a lot of memorisation. If we miss even one class we will struggle to catch up. If I pass every unit for two years, they tell me I can reach proficiency. It is going to be tough. For the first night, all we did was learn the alphabet. This was when I was very glad I was no longer learning Japanese, and it was actually possible to learn the whole alphabet in a couple of hours. However, the vowel sounds are killing me – a â à e ë ê é è i î o ô ou on un u û ù ü y. Most of them sound exactly the same to me, and I spent most of the night saying “uhh eeh ooh ohh ehh”. Still, one of the reasons we moved to Belgium was so that I could learn French. Fear of public humiliation is a great motivator, so I am determined to really focus on doing as well as I can in this class. I have assembled the following language-learning arsenal.

At home
• Rosetta Stone software

On the iPhone
• Byki audio-visual flashcards (a bit buggy)
• Coffee break French enhanced podcasts
• French nursery rhyme songs

On the Metro
• Eavesdropping on conversations
• Translating the ads

At work
• Trying to understand the lunchtime conversation
• Basic greetings with my colleagues

In the evenings
• French class
• French class homework

It is going to be a very long road…