Il y a toujours une permière fois...

Aujourd´hui j'ai reçu mon premier e-mail en français - et j'ai tout compris.

Maybe it's time to start learning French again… or maybe not…

I remember my French classes in school; we used to eat chocolate cake (très français), watch the Count of Monte Cristo (the golden locks of Guillaume Depardieu were absolutely enchanting) and get into almost physical fights with verbs. After surviving those six years (learning French was just a tactic to learn other languages more easily) of practising how to pronounce the letter "R"*, this girl moved on to more pronouncable languages.

Now, why would it be a good idea to learn French:

-> I have personally been playing with the thought of working with something related to the European Union. Although French isn't required, it is a major plus if one wants to survive in Brussels or Strasbourg.

-> French literature: the writers of the enlightenment period wrote some pretty amazing things, and reading the original always beats any translation no matter how good it is.

-> Imagine the following scenery: it is autumn and you are sitting in coffee shop in Paris. You can see how the the city is waking up, with the fresh air in your face and you can smell freshly baked bread and croissants, not to mention recently brewed coffee. Well, you want to be able to order that croissant, don't you?

-> Krzysztof Kieslowski made some impressive films in French.

-> You'll need to know French when you move to Tahiti upon your retirement.



*If the "r" sound was complicated, how about the Polish letter combinations cz, rz, sz, ci, si, zi, dz, dzi + various letters with funny little things on them. Now repeat after me: W Szczebrzeszynie chrząszcz brzmi w trzcinie i Szczebrzeszyn z tego słynie. Talk about pronouncable.