This'll be the mother of all redundant posts. I received my copies of Beauvoir's La Force Des Choses I and II in the mail from Amazon yesterday; this year I'm writing a research paper on her. Excerpts of both have been translated into English, but I'm reading them in French. This will take me about six times as long and be about half as accurate.When I quit computer hell and moved (back) to Eugene, I did a three-month intensive French program at the U of O, which I paid for out of pocket (ouch.) I read books in French with English translations and a dictionary handy as much as I could stand it. I spent about five months my first year in graduate school working off of French sources writing a paper, then the next year I spent another five months working off of French sources writing my master's thesis. Somewhere in there I tried and failed to learn to read German, which is infinitely harder than French.
Now I'm at the point where I have to take my French reading to the next level; I can't afford to read through things getting about 60% of the words and 90% of the jist (which is how I've done it until now; it's harder for me to understand short quotes in French than entire books, because the books I read have narratives and/or arguments, which I understand, while short quotes often have individual words I don't know.) Since I don't have to teach this year, this is me claiming that I will work even fucking harder on memorizing a goddamn language I started when I was 25.
Note from my brother: What do the popemobile and a pimpmobile have in common? They are both are owned by men with a love of extravagant clothes and big funny hats.
Well said, Adam.
1 comment:
I opened a bank account and didn't speak English once! It was very gratifying - even if she did have to repeat just about everything she said twice. I found French harder than German, guess we went with the right countries. :)
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