Dear reader, today's post features something new and perhaps a bit ill advised here at Tollipop. While it is not especially unusual for me to talk to myself or even to make friends with girls in mirrors, it is rather odd to tape myself doing so. And then to display it for anyone to see.
In other words, today you are privvy to some top secret stuff.
Whether you do or don't speak French, please allow me to offer a brief translation...since I'm still not sure if even the francophones will be able to follow. It's just that ever since I started taking French lessons, I've received several lovely emails from readers asking about my progress. And I somehow got the brilliant idea this would be a good way to respond.
But it is very nerve-wracking to speak French to oneself in a mirror. Believe me. As it so happens, the situation feels contrived and doesn't exactly lend itself to natural behavior. Hence, I go on to deliver a soliloquy so affected and dry (and peppered with ums), it would have almost certainly been pelted with rotten tomatoes had I been living in the days of William Shakespeare.
The nice thing about being in one's forties is that I don't care too deeply, one way or another.
At any rate, by way of translation, I'm basically saying how much easier it is to understand when the French language is being spoken to me as opposed to trying to speak it myself. It truly is a bizarre discrepancy. How is it possible to understand foreign words and phrases from someone else, yet not be able to articulate them when it's my turn to speak? I wonder if there's a connection between this phenomenon and how scientists say babies can understand a language long before they develop the skills to speak it? I guess I'm just like a little French baby.
Also, I'm wondering if any francophones out there can even understand what I'm saying (I have this weird fear I'm unintelligible and it makes me very self conscious).
How I wish I had some French friends! We would hang out at cafés all day long and I'd sit there devouring pain au chocolat, looking mysterious and unfathomable, the whole time trying to understand exactly what was being said.
I think that would be the best French lesson of all.