personal_mythos

In the francophone blogosphere (I mostly read CanalBlog), I keep hearing about Marmiton.org, a site where users submit and comment recipes. It's not quite as photo-filled and flashy as some of its English-language competitors, but you're not here to learn English, right? And it's pretty good nonetheless, with features about seasonal recipes, categorized recipes, and versions in Spanish, Italian, and English (the English one is called "Let's Cook French"). Because it's all about user-submitted content, the four sites are probably rather different, but if I was studying those languages I might give them a whirl.

There are a few things to know when using French recipes - they (the French) use the metric system, and measure most dry ingredients (sugar, flour, etc.) by weight, not volume, though liquids are usually in mL and cL. The exception is for small quantities, which I'll explain below. All temperaures will be in celcius or (occasionally) refer to the settings on old French ovens.

( vocabulary after the cut )

Last night I was watching Buffy, and there's this guy who starts going on and on about how sensual languages are, and just think about the difference between "car" and "voiture" for example. He gets really into it, because this is Buffy we're talking about, and there are supernatural forces involved.

It's true that languages are sensual, in the sense that each has a feel of its own, but I don't think that feel has much to do with individual words - it's more about the pacing and the sounds of a language, rather than whether you say "butterfly", "papillon", "chou" or "mariposa". I mean, people say that everything sounds better in French, but I've never really seen it, even though one of the reasons I picked French to study in high school (over Spanish and German) was because I had heard that, and especially from my mother.

That said, while I don't see it on the level of individual words, the language can be downright fun when spoken well. The trouble is that it takes a long time to appreciate it and to be able to play with a language oneself.

Then too, speaking a language is a very tactile experience, the more so the better you get - at first, you use the sounds of your native language to approximate those of your second (or third, whatever) language, but as time goes on it gets easier to use the real sounds of the language. At this point speaking can become downright exhausting, because you're learning to use muscles you've never had to exercise that much. This is one of the reasons why it's difficult to pick up a language again after a long hiatus - you have to get back in shape! I've been known to choke on the French R from time to time myself. But when it goes well - a somewhat arbitrary state of affairs - it makes me feel smart, in control, clever, in a way that's as much about the physicality of words and body language as the slight, mundane cruelty of an expertly-wielded joke. Spoken languages bring with them their own culturally-specific body language, of course - something I'm not all that good at - and human interaction is about the play of space among other things - you can feel it when things are going really well with a friend or lover - something about the way the space between you outlines a certain energy or tension.

Can you tell that I'm a very tactile person? Someday I'll have to write an entry about that...

Push Start is a French show about video games that I discovered recently. They have all the videos on their website and on Dailymotion - a total of 35 episodes thus far. It reminds me a bit of when I used to watch X-Play on TechTV/G4TechTV/G4TV back in the day, except that you never see the hosts and it's not played as much for laughs. The previews are also mostly in the promotional vein, whereas X-Play never had any compunctions about ripping the designers a new one if they didn't like a game. In other words, the two shows are about as unalike as two shows about video games could be.

Many of the interviewees speak English and are dubbed into French - something I always found a little disconcerting (speaking out of my monolingual American childhood here) because it drives home the fact that we're not in Kansas anymore, or at any rate the expected audience isn't. Interviewees who speak French are not subtitled even when they have a noticeable accent (perhaps the producers of Push Start have a better opinion of their viewers' intelligence than G4 execs do). I understand Quebecers (at least of the urban variety) pretty well, but it takes a bit of getting used to if the only accents you know are some of the more 'standard' French ones. French video game terminology is often borrowed from English, much like French computing terminology in general, which could be a boon, although personally I didn't recognize very many of the English words in French when I first started seriously working on my listening comprehension.

As you may know from this previous entry, I think that the easiest (not to mention most fun) way to learn languages is to simply watch, listen to, and read things that you enjoy, even if you don't understand them. That is to say that in the beginning, you'll need to find things that you can enjoy with little to no understanding, and you may want to start mainly with videos, because you can get a lot out of the visuals in many cases.

I didn't come to this idea entirely on my own - I started watching French in Action on my own in order to go faster than my far-too-easy university French course on the advice of the good folks at How to learn any language, and started into internet radio (RFI) and reading novels and French-language Wikipedia, it was slow going and I resented it, because even though it was a goal I had set for myself, RFI was boring, and I was frustrated with not understanding.

Learning Japanese has been a much more positive experience, perhaps partly because, unlike French, it was something I wanted from the start, and also because I already knew a bit about Japanese pop culture and Japanese things I liked, and so when I found All Japanese All The Time, whose author promotes the idea of doing fun things in your target language all the time, I had some idea where to start. I also started doing this three months, rather than four or five years into my studies, and the result is that my progress in Japanese has been fairly rapid and seemed easy, even though I remember months of almost total noncomprehension. Said months were easier to bear because they came towards the beginning - I knew I shouldn't be able to understand, and had no false pride - and because the things I was watching were generally entertaining. I also came to like the Japanese language more than I have ever liked French.

Recently, after I found out that I wasn't going to Japan next year after all, I decided to refocus on French, because I want to study in Montreal and will need all the language ability I can muster. I am still rather ignorant about French things compared to my level of knowledge about Japan, but there's a lot more out there online than a few years ago, and I've found things I really like, which has made me feel a lot better about the language.

Anyway, the authors of All Japanese All The Time and Antimoon have explained the idea at great length, and Khatz of AJATT also gives a lot of ideas of things to watch/read/listen to if you're learning Japanese. There's also 100 Japanese Things, which lists and explains Japanese things for Japanese learners. But I have yet to find such a thing for learners of French (tell me if you've seen one!), and of course I have a lot of favorite Japanese things the above sites don't mention. So I figured I'd start my own list. ( Number one, of course, is the above-mentioned French in Action. )

I believe that reading should be enjoyable. Ditto language learning. In fact, an excess of unfun reading or language learning can kill motivation to do either one. And yet teachers often advise the (very unfun) use of dictionaries and laborious reading methods that are supposed to improve comprehension.

This bugs me, and not just for the reason I gave above. There are several other problems with this approach:
-looking up words is rarely helpful unless you understand the surrounding text quite well and have a vague idea of what the word means already (from having seen it before). Otherwise, not only will the definition not help you much to understand, but you won't remember it later.
-If you do it in a bilingual dictionary, it causes you to start translating, which impairs comprehension quite noticeably.
-it slows me down a lot. I want to get to the point.
-it makes me feel like I'm in class. This is stressful and makes me think in terms of numerical progress, though language learning does not work like that.

I think that for language learning, it's best to read things you enjoy in large quantities and as fast as is comfortable or as allows for acceptable (to you) comprehension. Only use the dictionary when you've seen a word repeatedly and it seems important but you're just not sure what it means (for nouns, an image search sometimes works better). I think this is the best way to become a better reader and writer in the language of your choice (and enjoy it, coming to like the language more).

I believe that Stephen Krashen has something on his site about how counterproductive teacher-imposed "reading strategies" often are. Khatz of AJATT of course writes a lot about the importance of enjoying the journey, but he's largely pro-dictionary.

Just a note - I'm not against dictionaries on the whole. I love looking up words and phrases that have been bugging me or to find out their origins. I think the way that words travel and change their meaning over the years is fascinating. For instance, "alley oop!" is from the French "allez hop!", and "entrée" is borrowed from French, but in French it means appetizer, not main dish.


EDIT: I forgot to add that eventually it's helpful to use monolingual dictionaries, in part because it teaches you how to define words, in part because you may need to know how to use them. I've also heard of people who learn to read and write in a language by working their way through a good monolingual dictionary.

いきなりENGLISHって言う事は知り合いの人が二人や三人で日本語かあなたの他のしてる言語で話しても、あなたにはいきなり英語で話す事。私には良くおこる事よ。

ちょっと説明する。もうしてるだろうけど、フランス語話せるので、フランス語話す家ですんでる。同居人がフランス人で、彼女が知り合いのフランス人を二回こちに招待してたんだ。そのフランス人たちが二人でフランス語話しても、私に何か言おうとしたら、よく英語でしてんの。もちろんその後フランス語に戻るんだ。フランス語がよく分かるのに、同居人の友人さんが時々訳す事にもなるんだよ。わざとは思わないけど、なんか彼女らが私との違いや遠さを感じさせるように見えるの。むかつく！

で、同居人にこんな事説明しようと思ってたんだけど、今日ちゃんと私にもフランス話してくれる。気づいたかどうかは分からないんだけど、気がすんだ。いつか話さなきゃならなくてもね。

で、その「いきなりENGLISH」と言う名前好きなので、サイトにしようと思ってたんだけど、何のサイトがいいかな、そのタイトルで。

ふーん。日本語で家の事話すのをやめようか。同居人が日本語分からないんだから、ちょっと何っていうか、sneakyかも。

Back in high school I saw a cartoon that explained the history of the United States in terms of white people being afraid of everything. Apparently it's from "Bowling for Columbine" (which I'm pretty sure I saw as well).

I remembered this because recently I've been watching a series called "Hetalia Axis Powers", a loosely historical but very silly show in which the countries are people. I just watched episode three, which is set just before/during World War II and mainly features Italy and Germany. I find Germany adorable, and it kind of bugs me... he's a Nazi at this point, yes? Or at any rate a nation of Nazis... trying to think about countries as people is hard. At any rate, so far the show is mostly from Italy's perspective, and Italy really likes Germany, but thinks France is a bully, etc.

Another example is School House Rock. At my middle school we mostly did the grammar ones ("conjunction junction, what's your function," "Mr. Morton is the subject of the sentence, and what the predicate says, he does," etc.) and the math ones, in part because we had the same teacher for math and English and she liked Schoolhouse Rock, and perhaps in part because the history ones seem really outdated. They're from the seventies and eighties, and they're very patriotic, very whitewashed, and very into the melting pot, from what little I was able to sit through.

Animaniacs takes a more snarkily humorous approach to educational programming - their educational segments are also musical, but somehow connected to a silly scenario such as a contest, and performed in a silly manner, like the anatomy of the brain segment or the state capitals one.

Education is always political - no matter how careful teachers are to keep their politics out of the classroom, and in American public schools up through high school, they're often very careful, their politics and those of the school come through in the curriculum. Not only are patriotic gestures, such as students having to recite the pledge of allegiance, important, but so are the questions of what is included and excluded, as well as the phrasing used. The American public school system, and especially the 'social studies' classes (more or less a mix of history, geography, and area studies) are oriented towards legitimizing the U.S. state (that is to say the existence and authority of the United States as a nation) and forming students into patriotic citizens.

This becomes increasingly clear as I study more international history as well as the history of native Americans and blacks - my history classes before university continually glossed over the histories of slavery, segregation, and of the native peoples of this continent, as well as U.S. colonial interventions and the continuing effects of racism, sexism, etc. Certainly these classes acknowledged the existence of at least some such atrocities, but there was no in-depth description or attempt at analysis.

English classes, too, exemplify this trend - I'm far from the first to note that most authors considered notable or literary are dead white men. Women's writings and the writings of people of color are often excluded, to the degree that there have to be specific classes to study them, and even then, 'genre' fiction is rarely the object of study. Certainly it's impossible to please everyone or to arrive at a perfectly balanced curriculum, but more variety and more choice for students would both certainly help.

I also don't believe that one always has to read things that are difficult in order to learn from reading. Certainly the learning is more obvious when the material is somewhat challenging - one picks up a good deal of new vocabulary and background information - but even easy material can teach the reader a lot about structure, pacing, genre conventions, literary devices, that sort of thing - especially useful for writers. Then, too, reading ultimately needs to be fun in order for students to start reading on their own (the best, and perhaps only, way to attain really high-level literacy). In order for reading to be as fun as possible, there need to be few constraints, so that readers can choose material that interests them, likely at a level they find either easy or moderately difficult. Level of interest is more important than level of difficulty, though - I, for one, am often willing to push through a difficult piece if it is fascinating, but may stop reading an easy thing if it is deathly dull. I feel like classes that force students to follow a prescribed set of materials are largely responsible for students who do not like to read and write, or in the case of foreign language classes, do not enjoy using the language, find it frightening or unpleasant, etc.

This got pretty long and rambly, so I'm going to cut it off here and maybe continue it in a later entry.

It's beautiful, is it not? As you can see, I bought it from the Vagina Monologues group on campus. Around the edges, the flyer reads: Whats special about your vagina - What does your vagina remind you of - what does it smell like - if your vagina got dressed what would it wear - if it could speak what would it say

Very thought provoking. When I attempted to imagine my vagina getting dressed, I could only imagine a sort of butch dyke look (although how it manages that I couldn't tell you).

Also, I was going to get into some long introspection about why I'm sometimes shy and how much it sucks, but then it occurred to me that it would be far more entertaining to post Anaïs' "Mon coeur, mon amour", (my heart, my love) which explains part of how I feel these days. Basically it's a song about finding self-absorbed couples really annoying when one is single.
( Video and English translation after the cut )

Last Thursday in section, as I sketched some of my classmates in order to stop being bored out of my skull, I realized that it would be a good idea to dedicate time every day to drawing in the hopes of someday not sucking. These days about all I do drawing-wise is sketch garments for my history of fashion class and sketch classmates if I get really bored. Otherwise I would aimlessly doodle and write more angry marginal notes than I already do. :)

So anyway, the idea I had was to do a drawing month inspired by NaNoWriMo - something like sketch for an hour every day. Or do a certain number of drawings in a month. Turns out that such an event already exists, but I'd rather do it sooner than November, because I'm impatient like that.

Anyway, for the particularly brave, I have the least-awful classmate sketch.
( Clicky )

I'm kind of in the phase of my personal goals (mainly, improve my Japanese and my French and practice writing) where I look at my efforts and tell myself that I could have done better. Writing is the worst, of course - though I've posted on this blog (last month, anyway) and written a couple of papers, that's about it. I haven't done any fiction. I haven't read much fiction either, mostly silly websites and stuff for class.

Even with the language practice I spend too much time on the internet doing things in English. Rather than making progress on the book I decided to read, Michel Foucault's Surveillir et Punir (Discipline and Punish - the book itself might be the problem...), I've been doing relatively unproductive things, though I did finish Alexandre Dumas' version of Robin Hood. I haven't read that much in Japanese either, just a few volumes of comics, not the 1 volume/day I was kind of hoping for.

I actually don't feel too bad about it, but I do feel like I need to rethink my priorities - namely, now that I'm not going into JET, how high of a priority is Japanese? Will I go to Japan some other way? When am I going to use the language? I mean, multilingualism can only be a boon, but how much am I going to focus on it?

Speaking of multilingualism, I've run into a variety of systems for describing fluency. The basic problem - the reason that there is not one system that everyone uses - is that language learning is not straightforward or linear. I can't easily say that I'm more or less skillful than someone unless the difference is quite large, because we will likely have different specialties/areas of interest in which we are the strongest, although specialization does lead to higher degrees of ability in general over time.

There is a tendency, in my opinion, for systems describing fluency to focus either on conversation (with a hypothetical native speaker) or on working or professional proficiency. Both are incredibly vague criteria, especially professional proficiency. One might, for example, do a job that required very little language use, or work in customer service and need strong speaking abilities, or be an academic working in one's native country but publishing papers in English, and thus need correct but not necessarily interesting written English with a specialized vocabulary, but have little need for conversational ability. You get the picture. I suppose the best that individuals can do is to set our own goals (and take language certifications as needed). This has been on my mind since I started thinking about grad school abroad, and the need to achieve high fluency in French and somehow convince the admissions officers of it as well.

（うん、ちょっとほれてるかも）*

Two of my main interests are languages and psychology, although I think I've talked more about the former on this blog. I am particularly interested in the psychology of multilingualism and of language learning.

See the first part of the title? It's something the little voice in the back of my head (you know, the one that makes snarky comments on your life?) said to me tonight. Yes, my little voice speaks Japanese. Quite frequently, actually, and without me particularly asking it to. That's what obsession with the language, and loads of listening, gets me. Well, that and better skills in the language in general. Even though my French is better than my Japanese, it rarely speaks French (except to say «T'es bête ou quoi?»*), and yet it says all sorts of things in Japanese - usually in ridiculous manly cartoon character Japanese. Frankly, this is an improvement on depressing English, and I usually answer it in ridiculous childish or girly Japanese (うん、がんばるから、まっててね！*). Not that it always makes sense, but it's fun anyway.

On another psychology-related note, I've heard that you know you're fluent when you dream in a language. In fact, I've been told this by people who doubt my fluency (in French - I don't claim fluency in Japanese). Frankly, I think this is a load of bullocks. I've had more dreams in Japanese than in French, even though like I said, I'm much more fluent in French. Not only that, I once had a dream in Spanish, and my Spanish is terrible, and was even worse at the time! I think that there are a couple reasons for this: no one remembers all of their dreams, and obsessing with something raises the odds of dreaming about it.

I've added a psychology tag because I want to write more about the subject. One problem is that I've had some trouble finding articles about the subject, although there seems to be more research about language learning than about successful bilinguals/multilinguals. Then again, maybe I've just been looking in the wrong places, and not all that hard or that recently.

*This is what we call a "bilingual bonus" - it's extra stuff if you get it, but if not, that's okay since it's not the point of the post. I think I got this term from TV Tropes (warning: high risk of time-wasting).

My housemate - I'm just going to call her Luiniel (it's part of her email address, and a Lord of the Rings reference, apparently) invited one of her buddies from France to visit her. Said buddy is currently studying at another university not so terribly far from here, so it was doable for her to come visit for a weekend. She got a ride with our landlord (did I mention he's cool?). She showed up late Friday afternoon, disrupting our ambitions to go check out the mall, but apparently there was traffic and then they took the scenic route. Anyway, Friday evening we'd been invited to a French party over at the International Living Center on campus here. No one was able to tell us much about it in advance, but we knew a few people who were involved.

When we got there, I saw a French girl who had been in my Women and the Law section last quarter, as well as a couple of Japanese girls who probably live at the ILC and who go to the (Japanese) Language Table most weeks. Anyway, as expected it wasn't a very francophone crowd - that I know of, there were two French girls from the ILC, Luiniel, her buddy, myself, and an Italian and a Colombian (I think?) who could speak French. It's quite likely that there were others who knew at least a bit.

There was food - a cheesy potato thing (delicious), onion soup (not vegetarian, didn't try it), and macaroons (pretty good, but my uncle does 'em better). There was also French music and random pictures of French stuff and people, a half-hearted game, and a boring speech about the evils of overly restrictive immigration laws. Then we all went outside and chatted for a bit, but people started to leave.

We got invited up to a party in one of the ILC apartments - apparently the apartment of the abovementioned French Girl From Section and two other girls (Californian - her description - and Dutch) we knew slightly. This turned out to be a party of the getting drunk and smoking type, with loud music, vodka, and some red wine (Merlot?) that I didn't like, but I could stand. Since I almost never like wine, I assumed that the fact that it was drinkable, if unpleasant, meant that it was not terrible, but Luiniel and her buddy informed me otherwise. In any case, we drank it out of mugs and thermoses and so forth - very classy.

Because the party was on campus, it was this big panic about the possibility of campus security coming and 'writing up' those of us who were underage. People would spot an officer and the shout would go up to turn off the music and for the underage people to hide. But while we were there, they didn't come up. At one point we switched apartments, I'm not sure why. It was quite strange. And when people started smoking, of course they did it on the balcony so as not to set off the fire alarm, which eventually meant that most of the party was out there, because the non-smokers followed their buddies.

At one point I was surrounded by Luiniel, her buddy, and French Girl From Section, when the other French girl (who turned out to be friends with FGFS) came up to us. We had all been speaking French, and the conversation went something like this:
FGFS's buddy: Vous êtes toutes françaises? (You're all French?)
Me, raising hand: Pas moi. (Not me.)
L: Mais elle parle très bien français. (But she speaks French really well.)

...did I mention how much it amuses me when French people assume that I'm French? In this case, though, I can't put it down to the awesometasticness of my French skills*, because that 'Pas moi.' was likely the first thing she heard me say, and definitely the first thing I said to her.

In the end, we got bored and left, but not before I spilled wine on my coat. It came out, but now there are new stains. I'm better than I used to be, but I'm still a klutz. Maybe I shouldn't buy pale-colored coats.


*Honestly, I have no idea whether there are usually problems with my accent, except that sometimes I have problems with certain words, like fourrure (fur), and sometimes I have trouble speaking at all - my accent comes and goes, and sometimes it comes thick enough to near strangle me - but in general people understand me and sometimes they even assume I'm French (after a few minutes of talking, max), assume I was fluent in French as early as elementary school (after knowing me for months), or seem surprised to learn that I'm American (that last after talking with me for a good fifteen minutes at least).

Well, that's it, I didn't take a photo today and I don't feel like taking a stupid photo to make up for it. So no more photo every day thing for me. I still plan to take lots of pictures, but there you go. I spent most of the day at the computer working on my essay due Wednesday, so not much to photograph.

Yeesh, I am tired. And tomorrow it's up early, so I can see the inauguration. It's my first one. For Clinton I was too young and didn't care much, and for Bush I didn't entirely care but at any rate I didn't want to.

On campus there'll be a dance tomorrow to celebrate Obama's inauguration (very leftist campus here), but I'm having a friend over in the evening, so I don't know if I'm going to bother. Most of the time the campus dances suck anyway... by which I mean that I don't like the music (mostly hip-hop and rap), no one I know goes, and they're very straight and uncreative with the dancing. Dancing should involve more than booty-shaking!

I'm feeling really ambivalent. Not sure about my essay (it mostly answers the prompt, but probably not as well as I could have) but I still have time to revise... maybe. Nervous about Obama. Discontent with today's manglings of the French language. Discontent with the fact that I didn't get to work on my languages much today. Nervous as to whether I'll have enough time for everything. Not sure about next weekend. Blah.

Comme j'ai dit avant, on a une fois par mois les crêpes et on reçoit les francophones chez nous. Il y a en fait pas mal de francophones ici. Aujourd'hui c'était peut-être vingt, ou même un peu plus, ce qui va bien. Des fois il y a jusqu'à cinquante personnes et là c'est trop. C'est pour la plupart des américains et des français, mais il y a parfois des belges, des suisses, ou des africains. Aujourd'hui il y a avait un colombien. Mais toujours pas de canadiens. Tant pis.


Une table bien chargée. D'habitude ça semble beaucoup plus chargé quand même.

C'était super sympa. J'ai rencontré deux étudiants qui sont venus pour la première fois, et c'était la première fois pour ma coloc elle aussi. Elle l'a bien aimé, je crois. Les enfants sont toujours aussi actifs et impatients qu'hier, mais ils ont insisté moins quand j'ai dit que je ne voulais plus.

C'est étrange d'ailleurs, je continuais à penser en français même après, quand j'ai commencé à lire un manga en japonais (Fruits Basket). D'habitude je pense en japonais quand je fais quelquechose en japonais. Il y a je crois deux significations: j'apprends un peu plus le français, et puis que j'étudie moins qu'auparavant le japonais (ce qui est vrai). Je ne sais pas si je serais assez branché pour aller à l'Université de Québec. Deux ou trois ans fait longtemps déjà, mais bon je devrai être à un niveau de deuxième cycle, et surtout lire et écrire très bien. Pour le japonais, ça va plutôt, il faut justement continuer et je saurai probablement me débrouiller quand j'arrive au Japon. Mais il faut d'abord il aller. J'ai un peu peur que je n'arrive pas à réaliser mes rêves. Mais enfin, si je réussis à être heureuse, c'est assez, quoi.

For the English speakers: Today was the day of crepes. There were maybe 20 people, and I met a couple of students I hadn't seen before. It was my housemate's first time as well, and it was a lot of fun. The table you see above has a fair number of things for the crepes on it, but sometimes we have a lot more stuff.

Ouais, c'est la version trilingue!

Je veux dire les filles de mon propriétaire, qui ont toutes les deux neuf ans. On a fait une bataille d'oreillers, les deux contre moi. Elles ont souvent changé de règles (une fois elles ont commencé à jeter des balles, et là j'étais pas d'accord). C'était bien amusant mais je suis crevé. Elles ont voulu continuer quand même. Mais bon, il est sympa de m'entendre aussi bien avec eux. Et avec ma coloc très sympa elle aussi, je suis heureuse ici. :)

Yay, trilingual version!

My landlord's daughters came over today. They're both nine. We had a pillow fight, them against me. They changed the rules constantly (one time they started throwing balls, and I wasn't cool with that). It was fun, but I'm worn out. Of course they wanted to keep going anyway. But it's cool to get along this well with them. My housemate is cool too, so I'm happy here :)

いわさの日英仏版だぞ！イエイ！

子供達って大家さんの娘さん達。二人も九歳。色んなルールを急に変えて枕投げをしたんだ。一回は球を投げたんだけど、やっぱり嫌だった。楽しかったけど、疲れた。彼女らはやっぱり続きたかったんだけどね。二人とこんな風に仲良く成るのは嬉しいので、ハウスメートも優しいし、嬉しいナーと思ってさ。

( photo/写真 )

First, a random piece of McPie.

I was walking along innocently enough, and I found the boxed apple pie you see above. The box is opened, but the pie is still inside. Clearly one of the mysteries of the universe (I've never actually eaten McDonalds pie).

As for the title, I was thinking today about how when I talk with my housemate, I don't know what knowledge we share off the bat the way I often do with an American who's the same age as me, so I always have to ask. For instance, she's never seen Sesame Street nor heard the Discovery Channel song (you and me baby ain't nothin' but mammals so let's do it like they do on the Discovery Channel), but on the other hand she knows Pippi Longstocking (Fifi Brindacier??) and The Avengers (Chapeau melon et bottes de cuir???) and loves The Lord of the Rings. At any rate, it's interesting to find out what she does and does not know (not to mention what she thinks is weird).

I forgot to add an entry 'till about ten minutes ago, so there you have it. Also, I only took one photo today.

Here it is.

Anyway, still sick. My throat has mostly cleared up, but now I'm super congested. My nose is so runny I'm afraid it might get between me and my sleep. At any rate I can't sleep yet, I have section tomorrow and have not finished the reading, because I was a doofus and spent my time reading Lovely Complex (ラブ☆コン) and Fruits Basket (フルーツバスケット), forgetting that I have not only class, but section tomorrow... in the morning, so I ought to at least read the first reading and skim the second tonight.

I really want to do another 日本語版 or maybe une version française, but I don't think anyone reads those. Maybe I could do a trilingual version? Version trilingue, and how would you put that in Japanese?英仏日バージョンって言うのかな。It would be good practice for my future French blog hopes. Hmmm.

No pictures yet today, but yesterday evening was awesome! I have no photos, but my housemate took some.

My landlord has two daughters. They're both nine. He has split custody (basically, but probably not officially) and so they usually spend one or two days a week with him, and sometimes he takes them on longer vacations. Usually he does this Friday night/Saturday most of the day, but this week the older of the two (no, they're not twins) was still in Hawaii on Friday, so they had to do it Saturday instead. This was my housemate's first chance to meet her (really need pseudonyms here) and we all had dinner together, though we all ate different things. Before that, though, we played with some balls my landlord had checked out of a game library (the girls chased me around the house!) and my landlord put on some music, so me and the girls danced.

Afterwards, we worked on a world map puzzle. It was really hard - I did the Americas, and it took forever, with little pieces representing one or two states or a Canadian province. There were lots of 'Americans suck a geography' jokes, and we didn't finish the oceans or Antarctica. There were also lots of earthquake jokes, because the pieces didn't generally hook into each other (except the oceans) so if you touched anything, the whole thing would move. I feel like I learned a lot, though.

After this, the girls (and probably our landlord) went to bed, and me and my housemate stayed up for a while talking about chivalry (in the insulting 'you're weak and fragile' sense), feminism, cartoons, kids' shows and books, and California (including Hearst Castle and the Winchester Mystery House). We kept speaking French the whole time, because we had with our landlord and the kids, even though usually we speak English among ourselves. I would like to speak more French, though. Really, when I see how hard my housemate is working on her English I tell myself I need to work harder on my French, too. Not to mention my Japanese!

Normally the crêpes would be today (we meet the second Sunday of each month and speak French and eat crêpes for hours with as many as fifty other francophones) but our landlord felt like he'd be more up for it next weekend.

En études de feminisme (ma spécialisation à l'université) on parle beaucoup de la façon dont on se decrit. C'est toujours par rapport aux autres, à l'autre. On fait partie de certains groupes et pas aux autres. Ça nous donne des idées de ce qui est normal, ce qui est étrange ou même mauvais. Quand le groupe est assez grand et comprend des personnes qui nous ressemblent beaucoup, ceci est facile.

Mais quand ce n'est que deux personnes - soi-même et une autre - ça devient difficile. On remarque facilement les différences, et les idées de la société plus grande s'effacent peu à peu. Parfois c'est dangereux, quand on est avec quelqu'un d'aggressif ou de fou. Plus souvent, c'est justement une atmosphère assez singulière - on crée des règles propres aux deux, on parle une langue privée, on forme des habitudes, on perd le sens de ce qui est normal ailleurs.

Il y a un peu cette atmosphère chez moi. On est francophone - tunisien (le propriètaire), américaine (moi), et française (ma coloc). En français, je n'y pense pas tellement. En anglais par contre, j'y pense de plus en plus. Je me rends compte de plus en plus de mon accent très américain. Je le soulinge même, surtout en décidant de proncer certains mots à l'américaine, et pas à la française. En même temps je le regrette un peu - pourquoi n'ai-je pas un bel accent irlandais, ou anglais, ou même français (pas un fort quand même, justement un léger)? Parce que je suis américaine, parbleu! Et je devrais en être fière, même si je n'aime pas M. Bush, même si je sais que ce pays est fondé sur l'esclavage et le génocide. C'est bête. Et donc des fois quand je parle anglais à la maison, ça m'agace (c'est aussi parce que je veux utiliser mon français, mais bon).

昨日言っていた、明日英語を使わないようにするって。やっぱり無理だった。ハウスメートさんと英語しか話さなかった。Language Tableもなかった。Facebookも色んな物も英語で読んじゃった。まあ、読売ニューズポッドキャストを聞いたし、ちょっとだけだけどフランス語で読んだんだし、頑張った気もするけどさ、ジュリーさん（ハウスメート）があんなに頑張ってるのに、どうして私はこんなにへたれみたいになんにもしてへんって思う。だから日本語で書いてるねん。それに大阪弁大好きや。下手なんだけど。

空がきれいヤロ？Nobel Driveで帰り道。

ちょっとだけでも頑張る。それが夢への一歩！

えっと、他に難しい事がある。ジュリーさんがフランス人の留学生なので、英語がもっと上手に話せるように成るために、いつも英語で話したい。だけど私にはフランス語の方が話したい時もある。ジュリーさんの邪魔になりたくない。どうしよう？

日本語版