No Opstakels

I have been listening to my French lessons on my Ipod.  It is funny for many reasons but to name just a few.....

A) It strikes me as hilarious that my "Instructor" seems to get impatient with the students on the recording and I feel happy to be invisible. As they halt and stumble I feel impatient myself..as if I'm not as bad as them...when actually I'm getting nowhere fast.  I feel like the instructor wants to shout, "No, you idiot!!!" and that makes me crazy-chipmunk-laugh, as if I'm any better.  At least the voice in my head is doing pretty good.

B) As I listen it seems easy to remember....but sadly I am lost at each complete sentence and this makes me laugh. I'm a block head...I'm never going to learn anything.

C) I think the voice in my head is getting more and more French. Meaning that my inner voice has serious BO and refuses to bathe more than once a week, it has begun to smoke and eats only the freshest cheese. I can't reason with my inner voice, I have lost all control!

I have only been listening to this "class" for an hour or two today while I cooked lunch and dinner (no elevenses here) and yet, shock of shockers, tonight when my husband told my mother-in-law that tomorrow he and I are going into Menton to watch the firework competition, she said "not for me" in French and ....gasp...I understood her.  Three little words...but she wasn't speaking slowly to me directly, and I totally got what she said, without even thinking.  Tres excellent!!  I was so proud of myself I was driven to write a second blog in one day.  Forgive me for overwhelming my audience.

This reminds me of a list I have started to compose of funny pronunciations of English words by our French friends.  Having endured mockery for my accent for my entire life and no doubt about to face even more ridicule as I stumble through French...I take this moment to poke good natured fun at these botched words.  I will attempt to write them as I heard them....

First there was OBSTACLES which sounded like  OPSTACKELS

Also we heard PURPOSE came out more like PORPOOSE

The Bible book of Exodus was called XUDIS
The nation of ISREAL is actually IZRAEEL 

and my all time favorite was STIFLE which when used in one sentence came out like this>

"Husbands, do not STIFFEL your wife. When your wife is STIFFELED, she will become unhappy"

I love love love this country!! I don't feel stiffeled one bit!