Ben Murrell

I spent a few hours typing out the journal entries leading up to Barcelona last night. Phew… almost done! I decided to hold off on Barcelona because my interest was waning and I didn’t want it to bleed into Barcelona’s entries – I loved Barcelona and I really want to leave you with that impression. Once I’m done typing all of the posts up, I’ll go back and add pictures to them – that’s another time consuming process, but worth it. It really makes some of those boring, short entries worth looking at at least (I’m looking at you, Berlin). Also, if you’re friends with me on Facebook, you should be able to see the pictures I have put up on there. Even if you’re not, you should still be able to see them… it’s just a matter of finding them. I’ll post links to the albums once I’ve put up pictures from the whole trip (I’ve done pictures on Facebook up to and including Prague).

And the French bit from the title – about half way through the trip, I decided I wanted to learn another language. I was split between Italian, French, and German. I’m hesitant to say I “know” Spanish, but I can definitely hold my own in a conversation… this pushed me towards the romance languages. I knew my knowledge of Spanish would help out with Italian and French, and I decided I wasn’t really that into German… so I had it narrowed down to French and Italian by the time I got back into Germany when I visited Munich.

When I landed in Spain, I was elated to finally speak the local language. For a while, I resolved to just improve my Spanish and not pick up a new language. Then a flurry of things happened that lead to French. On my first day in Seville, I met two guys from Paris – they were really cool guys. By then I was used to being told that I don’t come off as the typical dumb American, but hearing it from two Frenchman (from Paris at that!) came as a surprise. Anyways, the conversation eventually got around to women, and women loving French accents in English. Thihaud and Matthew then dropped this one on me: French girls love American accents in French. On my second night in Seville, I ended up eating dinner in the middle of a French conversation between a large group of people. So here I was eating shrimp with their heads attached… and listening to French. I felt left out, for sure, because they were speaking way too fast for me to be able to pick up anything – even the words I could usually pick out because of Spanish. I gave up on understanding and just listened. I decided then that I really liked the way French sounds.

In Granada, I met Margeaux from Paris. She didn’t really speak any French in front of me, but she had a cool accent. On my second night in Granada, there was a group of three French Canadians staying in my room – two of them barely spoke any English. That was interesting, but then I met another French Canadian couple when I went out that night. Again, really cool people. I had a great time with them and everyone else that went out for tapas and sangria that night.

Finally, on my second night in Barcelona I met two awesome Quebecois girls. I ended up spending two more nights with them after that – at one point I brought up my interest in learning another language, and how I’d narrowed it down to Italian and French. Audrey had plenty of practical reasons for learning French over Italian, including that Italian is only spoken in Italy whereas French is spoken in Black Africa, France, Sweden, Belgium, and Quebec. Then she went on about how I should learn French because France played a huge part in the settlement of the Americas – she couldn’t believe I didn’t know about Jacques Cartier… among other things.

So, on top of all of the immediate reasons for learning French, there are some fundamental reasons for learning a new language. I like languages – I think Elliot rubbed off on me. I’m having a great time learning French. The trouble with Spanish is that I don’t ever see myself living in Spain or Mexico (perhaps there are more promising countries further south…) so I don’t ever see myself using Spanish more than for basic travel communication. The thing with French now is that I could see myself visiting France for an extended period of time, and having the ability to adventure into Africa is also intriguing. Finally, there is just some intrinsic value to knowing a language. It makes me more happy and satisfied with myself – probably because I’m picking up more than just a language, but a whole new culture and set of possibilities. In a sense, I’m expanding my view of the world, and I like this.

Anyways, French is coming along nicely. I feel like my French after three weeks is comparable to my Spanish after three months. I think my attitude and motivation behind learning the language is probably partially responsible for this, and already knowing another romance language is definitely helping out. I’ll throw up another post with my methods later for those interested. I’ll just let you know for now that I can speak with (in my opinion) relatively good pronunciation and speed, I can kind of read, and I can hardly write. I’ve been avoiding reading and writing in French for now because I have a feeling that seeing the words is going to poison my pronunciation… which in my mind was going to be the big sticking point for French.