Con Carne

The trouble with languages when you don't have any filtering abilities is they get all mixed up.
During my daily embarrassment where I have no idea what my wife is talking about, she says something that I think I understand, followed by "con" ok must be like spanish, it's the same word for god's sake, it means "with" like "con carne" with meat. But of course not we are talking about the french here, which is why when I want to go left, my wife wants to go right. Anyway with the word "con" she is asking "when" . Maintenant, means now, go figure. So our most common use of the word "Prejudice" to prejudge, is not how the word is used in french. We have similar definitions for the word but I have never heard it used for this. They would use it only to refer doing someone harm, to suffer mental distress. In french the word that has then same meaning as prejudice is "prejuge" accents on the "e's" of course.

Ma Chere Amour

I get this email, "Cher(e),"
Now I know enough about French tell you this is a opening like saying Mr(s), but "Cher" I find out is dear, so we would say, Dear Mr.(s), meaning Mr or Mrs. They can do the gender in one word, kinda like "I can name that song in two notes" . So anyway, I am wondering now about that word.
And speaking of naming songs, "Ma chere amour" this is what has me messed up. I wondered how that was spelled, surely not as above since you can't pronounce the last e in french.
So I have this discussion with my step daughter." Cher " it does mean dear, and they use it as a term of affection also. So why have I learned the a word "Chereee"? Well she tells me you can pronounce the last E in songs and poetry. Songs and poetry pass along so much language, no wonder I'm messed up.

"Return of the language from hell"

I'm back and taking French class at DVC, a Jr college in Concord CA.
So it's me and Seb my French speaking son trying to figure stuff out together.
I have enough vocabulary to sometimes fill in the gaps with Sebs English.
So I'm going to French class last night and am fixing dinner, I ask Seb if he wants "3" "trois" poisson.
Well he tells me no it's "tRois" I can't hear this, I pronounce it like "toi" or you. I miss the "r" thing and how that works. When people say "toi" or "trois" it sounds the same to me, and I have never been corrected before.

People get a little sloppy with language and I think most of the French don't pronounce well anymore than we do English. "Oui" for instance is pronounced by the kids in Belgium "WAY" rather than the known "WE". I understand this is a Paris thing also.

Now I have a French speaking teacher that also speaks English, this is making my understanding of what I am learning come a little quicker. My Dutch speaking teacher with little English was great but this is a easier for me.

I am really listening to the words and trying to figure this out last night. Something else hit me.
When you are trying to learn the gender of nouns you have to learn the proper article which written is easy to see. It's a little more difficult to hear. For instance "la chaise" the chair, is feminine. But when people are talking they will use the plural or"les chaises" the chairs. OK so the S's are silent and this is pronounced "le chaise" which would be masculine, now "les" and "le" are not pronounced the same but it sounds more like "le" then "la" and I get confused.

What else did I learn, well "neuf" is not only nine but NEW, so there is this town near the airbase in Belgium call "Neufmaison" it was kinda a small town, I always thought it meant 9 houses. So maybe it's like NEWHOUSE Minnesota.

Not a good cup of coffee

Well when you get your coffee in bed, you don't complain to much. But on my arrival down stairs I tried to correct what I was told was not a good cup of coffee. To weak, so I made the next cup with much less milk. This was way to strong. Anne told me she came down and remade to pot. It was "jus de chaussette" or sock juice. So now she got the much stronger coffee with less milk.
So what do I do after my coffee, I go to the office, pictured below

Spring

So Chocolate of course, it was packed downtown at Leonidas, they are known as the best value in the chocolate business.
Didn't quite get the weather right this year.

Normande

Normande bridge and the town of Honfleur, very nice spot. Pretty little harbor, good fish, nice restaurants.

I'm at SHAPE today, Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe, were in the bowling alley. It's really fun to listen to all the different languages and try to figure where everyone is from. The girl serving us, I guessed Romania, no Poland. Then there is this large group having a birthday party, I listen, they are all speaking Spanish, ok what NATO country speaks Spanish?
Americans of course.

French Logic is like Military Intelligence

I have to start thinking French to speak French. Language is like music, when I play it I don't think about it. A song is like one thing, it just flows out. A friend told me you learn phrases, I do that is music. It has to be like that because French is French it has nothing to do with English, you can't think English and translate to French, you have to think French.
So don't think logic, French and logic have nothing to do with each other, just like military and intelligence. In French "intelligence militaire" they also say "d'oxymore".

French class today was about the infinitive, they have some kind of "logique" for this but I can't figure it out. You just have to think French. The cheese is "le fromage" cheese is "du fromage", more than two cheeses would be "des fromage" but you don't use this formula with everything
One beer or many beers, is "de la biere" singular feminine, also used for plural. In begium there is no such sentance as, " J'ai trop de biere" I have too much beer.

We had a nice visit from a retired Greek General. An old friend of Anne. I thought it would be interesting to hear something about what it was like at NATO back in the 70's. He speaks Greek and English, his friends that came along spoke French and Greek, so for the first time Anne and I both couldn't understand at least some of the conversation, but Anne to talk to everyone.

I asked the General if it was hard to get everyone to understand what people were trying to say at NATO, when English was not the mother tongue of most of the nations. He told me the funny thing was, the Americans and the English had the most problems with understanding each other.

I love my French class. If you are stupid and you only know one language English is the one to know. Everyone in my French class speaks at least two, so someone can help them out in some language.
The Italian guy is helping the Indian guy in English, and the Mexican guy is helping the Brazilian guy in Italian. It makes me laugh. The teacher starts telling us all this stuff and all I can think is "if I understood what she was saying would I be here?"

Perdu?

Lost? Oui! I am always "perdu" whether I'm driving, walking around or listening to someone talk.
So French fries aren't French, they are Belgian as posted on my June 13th blog, what about French toast? Today I found out this is called "Pain perdu" or bread lost. When your bread is old and stale you soak it in milk and egg. Why would someone do this to perfectly good bread what are we thinking? They must think it is really strange that we do this with fresh bread.

Brussels closed the streets to car traffic for the day so we rode bikes downtown. People brought there horses and walked as well, but a lot of bikes. It was really nice to take your time riding around these beautiful streets on a sunny day without the cars Perot, Seb, and Me

Amelie's school "La Cambre"

Stephen Stills "Four and Twenty Years Ago" might have been inspired by his French class. This was written I think before he met his French wife but in french 80 is "quatre-vingt" four twenty. The Belgians say a few numbers differently from the French. 70 in French is "soixante-dix" sixty ten, the Belgians say "septante" more equivalent to seventy.




Now in French class the books have pictures to help you understand what they are saying, there is a page of people in a town, you are supposed to figure out who is discribed by each paragraph.



Freddy Cuvelier, Il travaille dans l'immobilier. This guy is a realtor, no clue in the pictures for this. Il a quarante-quatre ans. Ok that 44 years could be one of 4 guys. Tres ambitieux. Very ambitious, not really seen in the pictures. Il fait de escalade. He mountain climbs. That's the guy wearing the climbing harness. Il est dynamique, travailler. Yeh a guy that rock climbs is going to be a dynamic traveller, he'll go all sorts of places, WRONG. He's a dynamic worker, they faked me out, why would a guy that has better things to do be a dynamic worker? I'd never seen travail, used except as the verb for work, why would I think that?

So, Chinese is "Chinios" so"Chenois" the village we live in, "Chen" is dog so Dogese? Well I was told it might have something to do with oak trees, nice try Ed.

As we are learning to conjugate verbs. "Est" is seen again. meaning "is" . So how do you say "it's east"? "Est est" ? No "c'est l'est" sounds nice. In a sentence, "Oui Celeste, c'est l'est". Kinda fun.

The Roman languages all have a formal form of "you", in French "tu" is "vous" for the formal. It is also the plural or "they". My instructor pointed out English does not have this formal form. I started to think about being in Texas where someone might say to you, "Ya all need anything?". this could be said to a single person, or a group. We wondered if this being the south if maybe this came from the French?

Sebs summer job

Seb worked at "B.D. World "for his summer break. They had an event downtown where all the shops had promotions. Seb and another employee wearing costumes of famous cartoon characters handed out discount coupons. B.D. as they say in french stands for "bande desinee" or strip drawing. The Smurfs, and Tin Tin are Belgian.

http://www.2daysinparisthefilm.com/
This is a pretty funny film, Anne and I really related to all the misunderstanding between language and culture. If your a Woody Allen fan, this is a french female version of him.

Chez Moi

"Chez moi," my house. Easy enough. I've heard this for years. "Moi" is my, "chez" must be house. The judges say wrong. "Chez" translates as "at". Figure that one out. Classes start next Saturday. I'll be going to a Flemish school to learn French, this should be interesting. GLTT is in the next town over. I can take the train very easily.

Amelie's new school, La Cambre, she will go to GLTT on Saturdays with me for German

Antartic scientific housing, made in Belgium

Containers on sleds will be pulled by this turbo snow cat.

This is the building that will be shipped to Antartica to be used to house scientist. Pretty interesting project. The structure will be wind and solar powered.

As they are sitting here the double pane windows with very thick glass on one side, will be mounted with about a foot of air space between. So two double pane windows.

Belgain politics, a note from the "Economist"

TIME TO CALL IT A DAY
Sep 6th 2007 Sometimes it is right for a country to recognise that its job is done
A RECENT glance at the Low Countries revealed that, nearly three monthsafter its latest general election, Belgium was still without a new government. It may have acquired one by now. But, if so, will anyone notice? And, if not, will anyone mind? Even the Belgians appear indifferent. And what they think of the government they may well think of the country. If Belgium did not already exist, would anyone nowadays take the trouble to invent it? Such questions could be asked of many countries. Belgium's problem, if such it is, is that they are being asked by the inhabitants themselves.True, in opinion polls most Belgians say they want to keep the show on the road. But when they vote, as they did on June 10th, they do so along linguistic lines, the French-speaking Walloons in the south forFrench-speaking parties, the Dutch-speaking Flemings in the north forDutch-speaking parties. The two groups do not get on--hence the inability to form a government. They lead parallel lives, largely in ignorance of each other. They do, however, think they know themselves:when a French-language television programme was interrupted last December with a spoof news flash announcing that the Flemish parliament had declared independence, the king had fled and Belgium had dissolved, it was widely believed. No wonder. The prime minister designate thinks Belgians have nothing incommon except "the king, the football team, some beers", and he describes their country as an "accident of history". In truth, it isn't. When it was created in 1831, it served more than one purpose. It relieved its people of various discriminatory practices imposed on them by their Dutch rulers. And it suited Britain and France to have a new,neutral state rather than a source of instability that might, so soon after the Napoleonic wars, set off more turbulence in Europe. The upshot was neither an unmitigated success nor an unmitigated failure. Belgium industrialised fast; grabbed a large part of Africa and ruled it particularly rapaciously; was itself invaded and occupiedby Germany, not once but twice; and then cleverly secured the headquarters of what is now the European Union. Along the way it produced Magritte, Simenon, Tintin, the saxophone and a lot of chocolate. Also FRITES. No doubt more good things can come out of the swathe of territory once occupied by a tribe known to the Romans as the Belgae. For that, though, they do not need Belgium: they can emerge just as readily from two or three new mini-states, or perhaps from an enlarged France and Netherlands. Brussels can devote itself to becoming the bureaucratic capital of Europe. It no longer enjoys the heady atmosphere of liberty that swirled outside its opera house in 1830, intoxicating the demonstrators whose protests set the Belgians on the road to independence. The air today is more fetid. With freedom now taken for granted, the old animosities are ill suppressed. Rancour is ever-present and the country has become a freak of nature, a state in which power is so devolved that government is an abhorred vacuum. In short, Belgium has served itspurpose. A praline divorce is in order. Belgians need not feel too sad. Countries come and go. And perhaps away can be found to keep the king, if he is still wanted. Since he has never had a country--he has always just been king of the Belgians--he will not miss Belgium. Maybe he can rule a new-old country called Gaul.But king of the Gauloises doesn't sound quite right, does it?