Things I should have learned in school
When I was in high school and decided to take a foreign language, I did the logical thing for a kid growing up a half-hour from the Mexican border: I took French. Très pratique, non? Not surprisingly, after two years I never really mastered it (I think I learned more in two weeks of Spanish immersion in Mexico later in life than two years of classroom French). Still, whenever I go to France I'm always surprised how much of the simple stuff comes back, which is nice because I find it infinitely more appealing to speak French than German.
Today, though, I was reminded how many of the simple things I forget. When I got back from lunch I had a voicemail message from a colleague in Paris, whose assistant left a message for me in French (I'm not entirely sure why, since anyone who reaches my voicemail wouldn't possibly mistake me as anything but American, but that's cool, it's all part of working in an international environment). I figured I could maybe make sense of it and feel like a real citizen of the world (or at least of a partly French-speaking country). I was able to sort out who had called, that they wanted me to call them back, etc, but then she gave the phone number and my brain synapses started firing backwards.
You'd think numbers would be easy, but here's the thing that threw me off: French numbers are pretty simple through the 60s, but then it gets complicated because they really don't have numbers in the 70s, 80s or 90s. Or should I say, they have messed-up numbers at that point. Take the number 72--if it followed the rest of the numbers, it would be something like septante-deux. But no: it's soixante-douze, which basically means 60-12. Even more confusing, one of the numbers on my message was 92. In my book, that should be something like neufante-deux. But NOOOOOOOOO, it's quatre-vingt-douze, which basically translates as 4x20+12. I'm sorry, but is it too much to ask not to have to do mathematics in my head just to figure out what a basic number is? Who can I talk to about that? (Because the French are all about accomodating their language to meet the needs of idiots like me!)
But seriously, good people of France: I love French et j'aime votre pays. Just fix those crazy numbers--that's all I ask. Merci beaucoup.
Today, though, I was reminded how many of the simple things I forget. When I got back from lunch I had a voicemail message from a colleague in Paris, whose assistant left a message for me in French (I'm not entirely sure why, since anyone who reaches my voicemail wouldn't possibly mistake me as anything but American, but that's cool, it's all part of working in an international environment). I figured I could maybe make sense of it and feel like a real citizen of the world (or at least of a partly French-speaking country). I was able to sort out who had called, that they wanted me to call them back, etc, but then she gave the phone number and my brain synapses started firing backwards.
You'd think numbers would be easy, but here's the thing that threw me off: French numbers are pretty simple through the 60s, but then it gets complicated because they really don't have numbers in the 70s, 80s or 90s. Or should I say, they have messed-up numbers at that point. Take the number 72--if it followed the rest of the numbers, it would be something like septante-deux. But no: it's soixante-douze, which basically means 60-12. Even more confusing, one of the numbers on my message was 92. In my book, that should be something like neufante-deux. But NOOOOOOOOO, it's quatre-vingt-douze, which basically translates as 4x20+12. I'm sorry, but is it too much to ask not to have to do mathematics in my head just to figure out what a basic number is? Who can I talk to about that? (Because the French are all about accomodating their language to meet the needs of idiots like me!)
But seriously, good people of France: I love French et j'aime votre pays. Just fix those crazy numbers--that's all I ask. Merci beaucoup.
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