(Self-)consciousness
This post is going to be kind of schizophrenic, as I have a lot of very short things to say.
Every day I am increasingly embarrassed by the American reputation abroad inspired by the Bush era and the Iraq war -- and also about our culture's relative disregard for other cultures.
Every exchange student I meet speaks at least three languages -- one of their native country and two others. Some of them speak more. A lot of the exchange students who are studying here will go on to spend another year or another semester in another country to practice their third language. By contrast, our two "mandatory" years of language in high school seem to pale, and a lot majors don't even require college-level language courses if the high school requirement has been completed (Engineers, mainly). It's silly. When I was in the exchange students meeting today, the auditorium was empty of Americans -- mostly because they're all in French as a second language classes already.
One thing that this move has been showing me is the words that I use most often -- although I guess I really only pay attention to the ones I use all the time but can't really figure out how to employ in French. I have trouble with shoulds, woulds, and coulds, and constantly regret that. I think I will be doing some studying on the conditional soon. I also realized how often I use the word "get" in my every day speech. I remember my eighth grade English teacher, Mrs. Butts, (yes, really) lecturing us one day on how the only use of "get" should have to do with conceiving children. It's strange which things you remember, I guess. I can't remember much else from her class, except where I sat, and next to whom -- but it was mostly the same in every class through middle school, where the teachers attempt to control cliques and conversations by forcing you to sit in alphabetical order.
Other things to notice? Pop culture is apparently our principle export. It is nearly impossible to hear music written in the French language here, and there are very few movies that originated in France, or in other countries than the US, when I go to the theater. The "foreign music" section in most of the record stores I've been in have been bigger than the French ones, and mostly full of American music, with a liberal sprinkling of British bands.
Last night "500 Days of Summer" premiered here, and I went, for lack of stuff to do. In France it's called "500 Jours Ensemble", which translates directly to "500 days together". The title lacks something, but how could they get across the sense of the title when one of the main characters is named Summer, and no one in France is named "été"?
I saw it "en VO", which means the original version with subtitles instead of dubbed. Since there is a small portion of the movie that was filmed in French, I was surprised to see that the subtitles continued when the characters were speaking French. Maybe it was because their accents were bad? I'm not sure.
One thing caught my attention. The soundtrack of the movie was really good -- a lot of artists I enjoy were on it (lots of Regina Spektor, some Smiths, Feist's "Mushaboom", which Bright Eyes covered on "Motion Sickness", Simon & Garfunkel and a conversation about Bell and Sebastien's The Boy with the Arab Strap, even though their music wasn't featured in the film) and I heard a few new things I liked. At one point, while the main characters are in the car, "Quelqu'un M'a Dit" came on the radio. It's the first track on Nicolas Sarkozy's ex-supermodel wife's debut album by the same name. The interesting thing was that everyone in the theater started snickering when they heard the song. It would seem they don't take her very seriously? I'm interested to know what was up with this.
Every day I am increasingly embarrassed by the American reputation abroad inspired by the Bush era and the Iraq war -- and also about our culture's relative disregard for other cultures.
Every exchange student I meet speaks at least three languages -- one of their native country and two others. Some of them speak more. A lot of the exchange students who are studying here will go on to spend another year or another semester in another country to practice their third language. By contrast, our two "mandatory" years of language in high school seem to pale, and a lot majors don't even require college-level language courses if the high school requirement has been completed (Engineers, mainly). It's silly. When I was in the exchange students meeting today, the auditorium was empty of Americans -- mostly because they're all in French as a second language classes already.
One thing that this move has been showing me is the words that I use most often -- although I guess I really only pay attention to the ones I use all the time but can't really figure out how to employ in French. I have trouble with shoulds, woulds, and coulds, and constantly regret that. I think I will be doing some studying on the conditional soon. I also realized how often I use the word "get" in my every day speech. I remember my eighth grade English teacher, Mrs. Butts, (yes, really) lecturing us one day on how the only use of "get" should have to do with conceiving children. It's strange which things you remember, I guess. I can't remember much else from her class, except where I sat, and next to whom -- but it was mostly the same in every class through middle school, where the teachers attempt to control cliques and conversations by forcing you to sit in alphabetical order.
Other things to notice? Pop culture is apparently our principle export. It is nearly impossible to hear music written in the French language here, and there are very few movies that originated in France, or in other countries than the US, when I go to the theater. The "foreign music" section in most of the record stores I've been in have been bigger than the French ones, and mostly full of American music, with a liberal sprinkling of British bands.
Last night "500 Days of Summer" premiered here, and I went, for lack of stuff to do. In France it's called "500 Jours Ensemble", which translates directly to "500 days together". The title lacks something, but how could they get across the sense of the title when one of the main characters is named Summer, and no one in France is named "été"?
I saw it "en VO", which means the original version with subtitles instead of dubbed. Since there is a small portion of the movie that was filmed in French, I was surprised to see that the subtitles continued when the characters were speaking French. Maybe it was because their accents were bad? I'm not sure.
One thing caught my attention. The soundtrack of the movie was really good -- a lot of artists I enjoy were on it (lots of Regina Spektor, some Smiths, Feist's "Mushaboom", which Bright Eyes covered on "Motion Sickness", Simon & Garfunkel and a conversation about Bell and Sebastien's The Boy with the Arab Strap, even though their music wasn't featured in the film) and I heard a few new things I liked. At one point, while the main characters are in the car, "Quelqu'un M'a Dit" came on the radio. It's the first track on Nicolas Sarkozy's ex-supermodel wife's debut album by the same name. The interesting thing was that everyone in the theater started snickering when they heard the song. It would seem they don't take her very seriously? I'm interested to know what was up with this.
Comments
Post a Comment