L'Étranger

I wrote exams for four consecutive hours today (I am done 4/8). I am getting used to this whole writing exams every day thing now. I think I did okay on my politics exam today (I'm failing the course), so that made me feel a bit better.

I came back to my room and finished reading L'Étranger by Camus. I bought a copy that has a dossier in the back with literary criticism of the book. The cover of the book is Conference at night by Edward Hopper, so it also has an essay comparing the book to the painting. I didn't even realize it until I read about it in the dossier, but probably one of the reasons why I didn't have too much trouble understanding the book is that it's written in passé composé instead of passé simple.

My friend Robert

Two exams down, only 6 to go!

I wasn't allowed to use anything other than a pen for today's exam (Compte Rendu - listening to an audio clip and then writing a summary).

However, in my spare time I have been getting better acquainted with Le Robert.

Now when I talk to friends from back home who did immersion and I talked about tutoyer-ing and vousvoyer-ing, they don't know what I'm talking about sometimes. Tutoyer and vousvoyer are the verbs for calling someone ''tu'' or ''vous'' respectively. And it's a big issue and very nuanced: vousvoyer anyone older than you but don't vousvoyer a friend or they'll think you don't like them. Coworkers are complicated. I usually tutoyer my boss because he is kind of a chilled out hippie. Complicated stuff though.

So here's another great word: zozoter. Zozoter is an informal word for zézayer. Zézayer means to pronounce the French soft J (as in, je) as a z (example: ze veux). There are two words for doing this! French really is a rich language.

Another one that I like is coq-à-l'âne, which is a passage from one subject to another unrelated subject without any transition. A direct translation of this would be rooster-to-donkey, or cock-to-ass.

I am going to finish watching The Life of Émile Zola, winner of Best Picture in the 1937 Oscars. Before I saw this movie I had no idea that Le Figaro used to be published in English in the 19th century. I am certain that this movie will help me succeed on my Art History exam. I also intend to watch Madame Bovary and Les Enfants du Paradis if I have enough time.

Mon cher Robert, things I wish I'd been taught sooner and a massive aside about American missionaries in France

For next week's exams we are only allowed to have a monolingual French dictionary, so yesterday I went to the librairie to buy a dictionary. After much deliberation, I came home with Le Robert micro, and a copy of L'Étranger by Camus. I've read a few chapters in L'Étranger and although I don't understand everything, I understand enough to keep wading through, but néanmoins (nez-en-plus!!!), it's a pleasant wade.

Le Robert has become my new friend, and I lie in bed and flip through the pages, checking out the IPA spelling of words, finding out precisely what the phonetic difference is between dessous and dessus. I've also been wondering about how to pronounce words that being with in-. So if it's in + consonant, you get a nasal vowel 

as in, vin. French has 4 nasal vowels and you can say them all in the phrase ''un bon vin blanc''. 

But back to ''in-''. If it's followed by a vowel, it's not nasal, it's just ''in'' in IPA, which is like ''een'' if you compare it to English I guess. Mystery solved. Thanks Robert!

The whole IPA thing is really useful actually, I wish I had learned it sooner. 

Another thing I wish I had learned sooner: liaisons à l'oral. Either no one ever taught me this, or I wasn't paying attention. Basically, if a word ends with a consonant and the next word starts with a vowel, you tie them together. Example, ''les petits enfants'', you would pronounce the ''s'' in ''petits'' (normally it is silent). Oh but you pronounce it like a ''z''. Now that I come to think of it, this is kind of hard to explain and there are a bunch of other weird rules like the ''d'' at the end a word turns into a ''t'' when you do the liaison. 

I'm not big on memorizing grammar rules. I like to be told a rule and then pay attention to the pattern in things I read or hear, but if I am asked to articulate what the rule is later on, I've usually forgotten the specifics. I'll just write whatever ''sounds right''. Memorizing rules is all right for some, but grammar is just a means to an end for me, I just want to be understood.

This post is just about as boring as my weekend, which has so far consisted of taking breaks from my translation work to study for my exams. I watched the movie ''Potiche'' last night though. I enjoyed it. On Friday there was a picnic with some of the other students. A few of them are American missionaries and they had another American missionary at the picnic who was visiting. I struck up a conversation with this lady ''What do you think is the best English translation of the Bible?'' 

''What's your opinion on Jehovah's Witnesses?''

She eventually got that glint in her eye and I knew she was hoping to save me. I tried to tell her about my church back home and how it meant more to me than the Baptist church that I've been going to here. I wrote down the name of my Winnipeg church on the back of a receipt and told her to google it because my Minister puts her sermons online. 

I don't really understand the logic in sending American missionaries to France. University is free and they have their incredible sécurité sociale, so the state is looking after the vulnerable, and the people are probably too educated to get converted to American-style Christian fundamentalism.

It's hard for me to have a discussion about religion with anybody though because I really have never looked into it enough to feel that I have any sort of authority to argue any position. What's up with diehard Christians always citing the prophesies in the Bible as being proof that it's the word of God. Is that good proof?

This missionary also chatted with me about evolution, which is NOT a good way to convert me. I told her, my belief in evolution is in no way at odds with an allegorical interpretation of Genesis, but she was all ''it is literally 24 hours per day in the Genesis story''. Even though I suggested that since the Earth wasn't formed there would be a different conception of time. Nope, she was pretty sure that all Evolutionists started with the notion that there was no God and took it from there, so they had faulty reasoning. I pointed out that Darwin was a Christian and didn't publish his results for years because of that. But according the the missionary he lost his faith later on. 

But she never directly answered my question: is the devil responsible for carbon dating and fossils?

Sigh. I should get back to work.

Soulagement par Bibliothèque

I've had the onglet (tab) open to write this entry for a few days already. But it's hard to know where to begin to describe how much I love the library here.

I am currently sitting in the foul-tasting weekend sandwich between the last week of classes and my week of 7 exams. For dessert, I'm having a vacation in France with my boyfriend. He is like high quality pistachio ice cream. But I digress...

English books have become part of my soutien here. The library has around 6 rows of shelves of English books on the second story (première étage by French standards). There are 6 more rows on the troisième étage, but I just found those since I've been too busy on the first floor.

Last week I found the Canadian section. It is about two shelves big and 50% Margaret Atwood. I took out a book called ''A North American Eduction'' by Clark Blaise. I really enjoyed it. Here is an article about him from The National Post: http://network.nationalpost.com/NP/blogs/afterword/archive/2009/02/18/philip-marchand-our-greatest-unsung-writer-what-if-clark-blaise-had-remained-here.aspx

I've gotten into reading John Fante because Charles Bukowski was a fan. I read Ask the Dust, and I read The Wine of Youth, which is short stories that Bukowski explicitly mentions in one of his poems:
''the writing of some
men
is like a vast bridge
that carries you
over
the many things
that claw and tear.''

-The Wine of Forever

Right now I'm reading Full of Life, also by Fante. I've read at least 14 books cover-to-cover since September, not including two books I read in French (La Salle de Bain by Toussaint, and La Place by Annie Ernaux), and a few more books I dipped into but never finished. 

If you return a book late to the library here, there is no fine, but you are banned from taking out books for the number of days you were late turning in your overdue books. 

There is something so delightful about this narrowed selection of books in a French library. First of all, they are there for French students who study English, so they are books that have somehow been deemed ''worth the effort'' to read in one's second language. They all have a certain quality. It is hard to define French taste in English books. They are pretty into Poe. 

I suppose I should read more in French than in English since I'm here, but the ease of reading in English and the tasty selection of books makes reading these books a guilty pleasure that I can't resist. But if there is one thing about the French people I've noticed, is that they tend not to feel guilty about their pleasures. So this is just mon délice, tout simplement.