Learn French?

Pourquoi pas?

When I was nearly finished reading The Iliad recently, I had a passing thought: maybe I should learn to read ancient Greek?

Passing is the operative word here.

I then I thought, what about Latin?

I toyed with that idea for a moment or two and then drifted on to something a bit more practical: Spanish.

I’ve taken a few online lessons in Spanish over the years, but I must confess I don’t find it as interesting as the food.

German crossed my mind. I took two years of German in college. I was tempted, but when would I ever use it? I do like German food, however.

That’s when I had an epiphany of sorts. What about French? Sandy, my wife, knows some French. So does our oldest son, Sam. Back when he was worrying about what foreign language to take in high school, I assumed that he would be interested in learning Korean. After all, that’s where he was born and lived the first few months of his life. If I’d taken the time to query Sam, I would have learned that he had little interest in Hangul

So, the more I thought about it the more sense it made to learn French. I even had a partner ready and willing to help me practice.

As it turns out, Sandy has a family connection to Quebec. French is one of the two official languages of Canada. I also have a family connection to Canada, as well, but I think the stronger French connection is more of the Cajun variety thanks to my second great-grandmother, Mary Polly Ballou.

This was starting to sound fun. Once I was good enough to hold a conversation, Sandy and I could designate one day of the week as French-speaking only day. That would be great practice. And when we were out and about, we could even mock people in French. Of course, we would be careful to only mock those deserving of our mockery (plenty of those running around). I imagine they would think we were saying something suave and sophisticated about them. Not that I’m averse to mocking people in English, but doing so in French would, you know, give me another opportunity to practice.

I was beginning to imagine endless possibilities.

So, there you have it. I’m paid up for 12 months with Babbel. I have a few lessons under my belt and I'm already hearing hints of an underlying rhythm to the language that oddly enough is reminding me of one of the movements in Bach's Brandenburg Concerto that I'm currently trying to master on my horn.

En avant!

Thanks for reading.