Apple Bottoms

Last weekend for dinner with friends, I made this super easy apple pie-type dessert. It’s actually a French tarte tatin, or apple upside down. My host mom made it a lot in France, and boy is it delicious and easier than pie.

Tarte Tatin

First, just peel, core and slice a few apples. 

Guess the poorly pronounced French word, the game

So not too long ago, I posted a piece about France that I wrote for The Knoxville News Sentinel. In it, I joke about assigning points to different French sightings.

Well, the game exists!

Over the weekend in Amsterdam (I know – more later!), I mostly hung out with French guys. My travel buddy hates speaking French if she can avoid it. So, in a room with six French boys who spoke minimal minimal English, she asked questions such as “What is your favorite cheese” and I translated the really hard stuff.

Breaking through the French-English barrier

I met with my language teacher today to find that she thinks I’m totally bored in class and fed up with Asians. I can’t say I’m excited about her kindergarten-style teaching, but it’s way easier and more entertaining than having a strict, boring teacher. And the Asian thing, totally not true. I am tired of doing vocab especially for them, but I’m finally getting to know some of them (it’s hard when you can’t pronounce the difference between Ji Hye and Jihui), and they’re really fun. I tried to tell her that in the U.S. I normally sleep in class, so “bored” is really making progress.

But in talking to my teacher, I think she really hit on one thing that I hope goes away.

Death by present tense French conjugation

Somehow I made it to 300-level college French (about six years total study high school and college) with only two B’s, and my present tense conjugation is deplorable. In language class we (finally) did some grammar, and oh my, it’s all a mess. I guess I made it through with the ten verbs I expected to use the most plus the regular -er verbs? Some of these verbs I somehow had no idea how to conjugate in the present tense, but I know the passe compose (regular past) and the imparfait (past imperfect). Does that make any sense?

I know I’m going to die. My class is full of Asians, who rock at verbs but who aren’t too great at vocab. So all we ever do is vocab so far. Vocab puts me to sleep since most of the words have the same Latin or Germanic root as English. We went over the verbs soooo fast. I need a Bescherelle (book of all French grammar) and a pocket Robert (calculator-size electronic dictionary) asap. Too bad voting, travel plans, eating and other concerns top my list of things to do right now.

Franglais

I love Franglais. It makes me laugh my ass off.

Let me explain. I’m in a program with 161 other foreign exchange students. The majority are American or Canadian and speak English. Even the Japanese and most of the Mexican kids speak English. So you get Franglais.

So I was mange-ing this sandwiche when this guy …

My goddamn valise is a piece of merde!

So convenient, so hilarious.

Why French?

For all of you who think I’m crazy or stupid for studying French, whether it’s because it’s hard, dying, less useful than Spanish, not as beautiful as Italian or whatever …

I always knew it was the best language to insert into one’s literature. It’s the one you see most frequently, often without a translational aside. And it has so many parallels with English because of how the languages blended during the Hundred Year’s War.

And here’s beautiful proof from Johns Hopkins University that languages, even dying ones, are important for writers: