Wonderwags: French Friends and Language Challanges

Recently our French friends, Nicole and Cecile, visited Lititz.......it is so good to see them again!

I've really enjoyed having them here, so nice to see friends again and go on field trips together.

I was going to title this post "Lititz Woman's Head EXPLODES from so much thinking", but I was afraid that, since the photo was of Nicole and Cecile, the impression would be that their heads had exploded, but no, of course not. The exploding head would be MINE. Here's the story.....

This week I hosted Nicole, Cecile's mom. Nicole hosted me when I went to Avignon and was so good to me and Deb and Marcy, cooking delicious meals and driving us places and making us feel so welcomed. So I wanted to do the same for her.

Nicole is wonderful! What a trooper! I loved having her here!

As I tried to talk to Nicole in my SUB-basic French, she listened carefully, trying to understand what I was saying . She talked very slowly so I could understand her words. She was SO patient.

But having conversation in a language that you barely know is a CHALLANGE....a challange and a half! Holy cow.

The challanges are multi-leveled....my head was working way beyond it's capacity! Let me illustrate the steps to a conversation:

1. Thinking of a topic. This is not usually hard for me.....but.....

2. You have to decide if you know enough words to make even a sentence, never mind a whole
conversation.......but.....

3. If you need a word....you know....from deep in the folds of your brain....like 40 years deep
(when I took French) and can't find it there in your brain, you have to look it up in the
French-English dictionary. (thank GOD for the dictionary!!). But....

4. Even though you see the word, trying to pronounce it, stabbing at it 4 or 5 times, there may
still be a puzzled look on Nicole's face....but.....

5. You can always show her the word in the dictionary. Whew! But....

6. Three words later, there's ANOTHER word you don't know. Whoo-weee!

When we were talking there were lots of hand gestures, of course, and on my part a lot of head nodding and "oui, oui, oui". But THEN, oh dear, Nicole ask me "comprends?" ("understand?") and I have to admit, "uhhhhh.....NON". The head nodding and the "oui, oui, oui-ing" were just HOPEFUL things, hope, hope, hoping that everything would fall into place and make sense by the end of the story. But occasionally I did figure it out. Occassionally.

I would ask Nicole a question, and then not be able to understand her answer....if what I asked about had happened or if it didn't happen. After all the nodding and "oui-ing" and trying to look intelligent, I didn't want to admit to not getting the answer. Sigh.

But I did find a neat strategy for coming up with topics of conversation. As I was thumbing through the dictionary looking for yet another word that I didn't know....there are SO MANY WORDS!....as I was looking through the dictionary, I would scan for a word to jog my brain for a new topic of conversation.

For example, yesterday, while we were waiting for Cecile to come pick up Nicole, I was looking through the dictionary and saw the word GREEK. Oh happy day! "Nicole, tu as voyage a Greece?" ("Nicole, have you traveled to greece?"....I guess, I think, who knows.....I probably said, "Nicole, you HAVE WENT FOR Greece?")

And Nicole told me about her trip to Greece in 1976....and I understood it all.....I think.....