French 101

The French Seminar yesterday with Ms. Bowie was such an educational experience, I learned the basics of the French language and how to pronounce each word. I realized that the anatomy of French is similar to the anatomy of Spanish in that both have a masculine and a feminine ways of ending a French word. I found it slightly easy for me since I am a Spanish speaker and know the different pronunciations and ways of saying words.

At the beginning of the seminar, Ms. Bowie showed the class the common French words in the English language, some words were not even defined because we used the same words regularly such as “bouquet” or “ballet”. I kept reminding myself to not pronounce the last letters, like “genre”, when saying the word; I have to remind myself to say “jan” as an easier way of pronouncing it.

After that lesson, we then learned about the countries that speak French, I was actually surprised to see that many African countries speak French because of colonization centuries ago. Some of the countries include Algeria, Morocco, and even all the way to Cameroon. Ms. Bowie also showed us statistics of France with their 65.8 million people and the 95 “Départements” of France.

Learning the greetings was probably the most fun part of the seminar, we were split into groups of two, and each partner had to say their part. My lines were, Ja m’appelle Julian, Et toi? Which translated to, “My name is Julian, and you?” Then my partner (De’Rael) and I said goodbye in French; I had to say “A plus tar” while my partner said the other way of saying goodbye, but it was just too much of a struggle for me to say, sadly.

Then the best/worst part came of the seminar… The food. Ms. Bowie showed the different types of delicious foods of France, including the éclair which just absolutely worsened my hunger. The chocolate glazed on top the soft fresh bread , man, just thinking about it make me hungry right now… Anyways, we saw the different types of foods from breakfast to dinner, while learning the pronunciation of the foods.  When I heard the food “Poulet Frites” I mistakenly thought it was fried chicken… but it was actually “chicken with fries”, I put my hand to my face while also giggling.

I loved this seminar because I learned French and knew how to pronounce each one, as I learned that you need to use the muscles on your throat to pronounce certain parts, which is a little uncomfortable. I liked how Ms. Bowie described her background by telling us where she came from and how her society was like. It truly saddens me that there will only be two more seminars.

~Julian