So, as the title would infer, I’m taking up the Language of Love. I don’t have a particular reason to do so, I just want to. Maybe I’ll go back to France some day, or maybe it will come in handy if ever I’m in Quebec.

Counting English, French will be the fifth language I’ve studied in depth. I’m not fluent in anything but English, but I’m almost dangerous in a couple others. It’s not that big a deal really. I lived overseas for more than a decade, and it’s a handy skill to have. You pick it up naturally enough just walking around, but I always wanted to take it a step further with formal classes and self study.

I love language, and I love the freedom it gives you when you’re travelling. There’s something about unlocking an idiom or understanding a full sentence spoken by a native that gives me an endorphin kick. I love reading a word or phrase in a novel and understanding without looking it up. I love seeing how things are expressed differently, and how they are exactly the same. I love teasing out meaning in the written word, recognizing roots, figuring out the various lemmas a word can take on.

I remember my very first German sentence spoken by a native: Wo ist mein hammer? Not exactly Schiller, and a literal translation with every word basically a cognate and in the same order as English, but hey, I got it first time without the normal wie, bitte? After years of living there, I developed what I term Museum Deutsch. Completely useless for day to day use, but I can tell you all about Die Schlacht im Teutoburger Wald and that die Hoheit means sovereignty.

Since I don’t have specific academic goals in mind and I’m not planning a Francophone trip anytime soon, I think I’ll take a different approach to my studies this time. I’ll try and have a lot more fun this go round and take a more relaxed approach to language learning. I’m already a Spanish speaker, and a pretty good reader, so the reading exercises are a breeze at this level. I’m not going to sit and memorize complete verb tables covering both genders, plurals, or formal/informal structures. I’m just going to try and jump in and go.

I’m using Duolingo right now to kickstart my comprehension and a “Made Simple” workbook I found at the language section at the PX. The Duolingo is pretty good. It’s basic stuff with native speakers so you can hear it at speed. I swear though, when the male voice reads on the slow setting, you can actually hear the French contempt coming through his voice. He deliberately enunciates each word at you, the hayseed americain arrogant enough to tackle the language of Flaubert or de Balzac. How dare you try to form the graceful intonation and delicate timbre of  la langue française with your Cheeto stained lips and peasant’s education he seems to say. I wonder if he’s a waiter in his day job. Balzac.

The workbook takes an approach to reading comprehension that I really dig. It starts out with basic scenario to go with the basic grammar lesson you just read and tells a little story. M. Brown lives in the New York suburbs. He takes the metro into the city every morning. He works in his building all day. Except in French. The next lesson takes the same basic scenario and adds a more complex grammar and vocabulary from the latest lesson and retells the same story, this time with a little more color. M. Brown and his wife live in a separated house in the suburbs. They have two children who are very bright and play the piano. You get the picture. Presumably, by the final lesson M. Brown will have his own Cinq à sept and be rethinking his career choices. I can’t wait to read his saga.

Barrons published a Spanish reading workbook very similar to this one, and it really kicked up my reading a notch or two when I was studying for a test, so I’m stoked to be using this one from the get go. Later on, if I stick with this for a while, I’ll pay for the News in Slow French app to work on more advanced comprehension.

So there it is. No end game in mind, no great life altering journey to the land of baguettes, coït buccal, and labor strikes. Just a man of leisure taking a stroll down Gallic Lane with a bottle of Vin de Table and a French phrasebook at the ready.

Wish me luck.

Favourite German word: elbogen