French Lessons

For many years I have wanted to learn the french language. The great artists from the last couple of centuries studied in France, and invariably their paintings are most thoroughly described in french. The benefit would be great.

It just so happens that one of our new neighbors is French and she has graciously agreed to give me french lessons. Our first go was yesterday. Despite her patience, my thoroughly Americanized pronunciation of french words/phrases leaves a lot to be desired.

After she left, I walked a few blocks over to Half Price Books to search for any sort of help with regards to learning to speak french....mostly out of courtesy to Francoise. The poor dear might not want to return if I languish in leçon un for weeks on end.

There I was in the foreign language section and for the life of me I couldn't find anything regarding french. There was a sign that said that everything was alphabetized, but when I looked where "F" should be there were all these books on how to learn Greek. I know that F comes before G, yet I still looked to the right....Italian, Russian, Spanish....it slowly dawned on me that the F's would be left, but then there were books on German! Good grief. What's the deal?

It was a small moment of triumph when I discovered the french books---very properly alphabetized. Ah, I found the perfect set of lessons on tape; 8 sixty minute cassettes with an accompanying 400 page text book, in great shape at a modest price. Bought it. Came home. Put in the first tape. A long string of indecipherable french words came pouring through the atmosphere.

What?!

For someone who is a visual learner, I wasn't very observant. The program that I bought was ULTIMATE FRENCH ADVANCED. Not Beginning. Not Intermediate. Advanced.

Oh, well. C'est la vie.