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alexpgpThe low point of the day involved losing 90 minutes of detailed formatting work on a Word file, for reasons that I have yet to discover. After that happened, I took a little break, returned some overdue books to the library, and then came back and redid the same work in about 40 minutes, so it wasn't all that bad.
Via ConversationExchange.com, I've been chatting via Skype these past few Thursdays with a cardiologist who lives near Paris, so that I may improve my French and he, his English. Yesterday, I spoke for the first time with a fellow from Toulouse, and the subject of our conversation was—not surprisingly—the southern French accent. My interlocutor suggested I seek out clips and films starring Fernandel, a famous French comic actor born in Marseille. As it turned out, I had first run across Fernandel's name when I read Bob Hope's I Owe Russia $1200 back in 9th grade.
Apropos of which, perhaps the one lasting anecdote I retained from that book was Hope explaining how he had attempted to perform a comedy monologue on stage in French, with disastrous results (which is to say—nobody laughed at anything he said). The explanation given in the book for why nobody laughed was that—in that day and age—no self-respecting French audience member would dare laugh at a foreigner who took the trouble to express himself in French, no matter how furiously their funnybone had been tickled. The explanation made sense at the time; I don't know to what extent I believe that now.
And so, returning to our muttons—the translation "haul" for the day has been fairly meager, so far, but another 2,000 words or so have arrived, due Monday. Perhaps I can power through another couple of thousand words before calling it a day.
Cheers...
Via ConversationExchange.com, I've been chatting via Skype these past few Thursdays with a cardiologist who lives near Paris, so that I may improve my French and he, his English. Yesterday, I spoke for the first time with a fellow from Toulouse, and the subject of our conversation was—not surprisingly—the southern French accent. My interlocutor suggested I seek out clips and films starring Fernandel, a famous French comic actor born in Marseille. As it turned out, I had first run across Fernandel's name when I read Bob Hope's I Owe Russia $1200 back in 9th grade.
Apropos of which, perhaps the one lasting anecdote I retained from that book was Hope explaining how he had attempted to perform a comedy monologue on stage in French, with disastrous results (which is to say—nobody laughed at anything he said). The explanation given in the book for why nobody laughed was that—in that day and age—no self-respecting French audience member would dare laugh at a foreigner who took the trouble to express himself in French, no matter how furiously their funnybone had been tickled. The explanation made sense at the time; I don't know to what extent I believe that now.
And so, returning to our muttons—the translation "haul" for the day has been fairly meager, so far, but another 2,000 words or so have arrived, due Monday. Perhaps I can power through another couple of thousand words before calling it a day.
Cheers...
