Yesterday, Adriana over at Indigo Spells wrote about the nine languages that she's studied. Yes, you read that correctly, NINE. Bulgarian, Russian, English, French, Albanian, Greek, Romanian, Italian and Spanish. Yowzah. That's a lot. She's not fluent in all 9 but I commend her for at least tackling all of them.
Recently, I have been listening to Michel Thomas' Method French for Beginners
plan in my car on my morning commutes to work. I picked up this 8-CD course at a Barnes & Noble back in 2000 when I worked there. It was at first to prepare for a trip to Paris which never happened but then over the past 10 years of owning the set I've picked it up with the intention of becoming fluent. But I haven't been learning French off and on for 10 years. Oh no. It's been more like 20+ years. It all started with a big loveable alien named Muzzy.
The Muzzy Language Learning Program for Children is an educational cartoon developed by the BBC in 1986 to teach English-as-a-Second-Language and then adapted by Early Advantage to teach other languages as well. The cartoon has a plot which is very slow and is interrupted by interstitials which take a moment to teach children more vocabulary words. Muzzy, the main character, is an alien from outerspace who visits the Kingdom of Gondoland. Gondoland is run by the King (la rei), the Queen (la reine) and Princess Sylvie (or Sylvia). Sylvie is in love with Jean (or Bob) the gardener (Jean le jardinier) but the King and Queen want her to marry the evil scientist Corvax. Both Jean and Muzzy get in trouble and get thrown in jail. Can Muzzy get back to his spaceship and can Jean rescue Sylvie from marrying the evil Corvax?
Starting at the age of 8 or so, I watched Muzzy over and over and over again and I learned a lot of French by doing so. Repetition is key to learning and there was a lot of repetition in the program and it begged for repeat viewings.
I learned some important words and phrases:
- j'ai (I have)
- j t'aime or j'aime (i love you or i love)
- on y va (off we go)
- bon jour (good day), bon apres-midi (good afternoon), bon soir (good evening), bonne nuite (good night)
- Arrete (stop)
- comment allez vous? (how are you?)
- merci, s'il vous plait (thank you, please)
- grand (big), petit (small)
- voila (look!)
- la (there) ici (here)
- months of the year
- how to count from 1 to 10
- letters of the alphabet
- seasons
- colors
I learned some silly stuff too:
- j'aime les parcmetres (i love parking meters. Muzzy likes eating clocks and parking meters!)
- j'ai un hamburger (I have a hamburger)
- je suis mal a la tete (I have a headache or literally I am ill of the head)
- les raisin et le prune (the grapes and the plums)
- j'ai un ordinateur (I have a computer)
- Je suis Jean, je suis le jardinier (I am Jean, I am the gardener)
- je suis le grand Muzzy (I am the big Muzzy)
Building upon those basics as well as my own understandings of English (which comes from French and German) and Spanish and Portuguese (which are both Romance languages as is French), I am very confident that I could learn to become fluent in French. What helps my confidence is that Michel Thomas' Method of teaching is so natural and fluid that he has you spouting full sentences in French within a few minutes of starting the lesson. There is no vocabulary to memorize, no workbooks, no charts, no nothing. The lesson plan comes only with the CDs and you basically listen and talk your way into learning French. You are learning along with a male and female student (which is important because of gender specific words that men would use versus women and vice versa) and if you pretend you are student #3 you can learn right along with them. This is why the CD set is perfect to listen to in the car (by yourself) because you can say the words, phrases and sentences out loud and perfect your pronounciation without worrying about bothering anyone else.
I am a veritable Michel Thomas fan girl. I love the man. He passed away in 2005 at the age of 90 and had a very long career as a polyglot. He even taught Princess Grace Kelly how to speak French when she needed to learn quickly before marrying Prince Rainier of Monaco. He left us with many recordings in which he teaches students French, Spanish, Italian, German, Portuguese and other languages. I'm hoping that with the help of Michel Thomas that I will become fluent in French, regain my fluency in Portuguese and perfect my Spanish.
The art of speaking multiple tongues is highly valued by many. There is a lot of resistance in the United States to speak anything other than English which I think is utterly ridiculous. Being raised by Spanish and Portuguese speaking parents, I understand the value of speaking multiple languages, being able to help out those learning English and broadening my horizons. I can visit any Spanish or Portuguese speaking country with no problem and can visit a French speaking country just barely get by. Yet there are people who travel who don't even try to learn a few basics. Instead they speak English super slow as though that way people can understand them.
Are you learning a language? Do you speak multiple ones? Is there a language you've always wanted to speak but haven't tackled learning it yet? I'd love to hear your thoughts.
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