The Aftermath

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French is a beautiful language.  It flows from the tongue so nicely and gives the speaker an air of sophistication that they might otherwise never achieve.  I think I probably passed my test but I don’t feel as strongly about it as I want to.  It’s one thing to write sentences in your home with your French/English dictionary and your textbook to guide you, push you in the right direction if you are unsure.  It’s an entirely different experience to produce on command an essay containing no less than 8 paragraphs discussing what you like to do during the week and what you don’t like doing on the weekend, complete with timed deadline and a huge clock that I could swear made loud ticking noises that drowned out whatever stray French thought I had at any given moment.  I soldiered on but the results were not as full and varied as I would have liked.  All of my sentences seemed to fall into the basic “J’aime joue au football americain” style.  To the average American I’m sure that looks impressive but it is literally the work of a 2nd grader in France.  A 2nd grader who has been left back a grade or three and might have sustained a serious blow to the head at some point in their young life.  Hopefully over the course of the next month I can make enough headway with the language to feel comfortable talking to 6th graders in France and not have to whip out the old dictionary to translate the French form of “asshole”.

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