First Language: Geek

It’s been a few years since I stopped writing this blog. Obviously there have been a lot of life changes, including the death of the beloved MirandaCat who graced these posts so often. Now I have two siblings, Don Diego de la Luna and Noisette. Diego is featured here looking at the world with his usual confusion. When I last updated this blog, I was studying education at a French language…

Grammar and the French education system, the Bescherelle, and linguistic snobbery in the story of Emilie Bordeleau

Photo taken on the metro the first week I was in Montreal Dear reader, you may ask yourself what the 2010 metro poster next to this text has to do with the story of a turn of the twentieth century school teacher in rural Quebec. After all, if they used capes back then to play make believe it was more likely for a game of musketeers than super heroes, a concept which I think dates a couple…

I got in to education at the French language university! I’ve been working towards this day for years. I can’t believe I passed my language exams. I found out this morning and I’m still beaming.

Kids, you can learn any language and it really is magic. Use it.

Here’s a story that I told kids in a classroom I was working in the other day: When you are little you get a special kind of magic where you can learn ANY LANGUAGE in the world perfectly and quickly. Nobody understands quite how this magic works, but it has to do with your brain being open and your mouth being able to make any word that there ever was in the whole universe. All human beings can…

Being tia Daniela Kinship, language, and some truly adorable stories about my niece and nephew

Tía Daniela and the niblings (featured with the permission of their mother) There is nothing quite like kids to force you to question your innate assumptions about things. Right now, I’m observing my child friends relate to other languages and the whole thing is fascinating. Trigger warning: if you are one of the many parents and guardians forced to watch Encanto a zillion times, this blog post…

An analysis of the education system Emilie Bourdeleau works in versus the one I do. Le chant du coq - Arlette Cousture

Full disclosure: I have read this book before and written about it on the blog. If you look up the tag “Arlette Cousture” you can find previous entries. What made me want to go back and read it again is pretty simple. First of all, I like rereading books and I remember really liking this one. Also, I’d like to finish the trilogy and it helps to refresh your memory before going back.…

Somehow I've accidentally stumbled into living a huge part of my life in French. This is me reflecting on it.

There are many kinds of everyday magic you can experience in this world. One kind is getting what you want and set your heart on. It’s a great feeling, no doubt about it. But sometimes, once in a while, you get the gift of getting something that you never knew you wanted. Today I realized that French is one of those things for me. This thought process started simply enough. The other day I was…

Just a heads up for other language nerds out there: working with kids in another language is a whole other experience. Recently I started doing some substitute work in a French school. I think I’ve mentioned that before. What I might not have mentioned is how much I love it. I love the commute to work. I love that it’s a small school. I love the work culture. I really love watching the kids play…

Language and rest - resorting to your native language when exhausted and strategies to overcome this personality defect

One perception I’ve noticed from my unilingual friends is that they have a very linear understanding of linguistic knowledge. When we talk about languages understood or spoken, they see language acquisition on a sliding scale between knowing none to being completely fluent. This is reflected in those self-evaluation forms on jobs where they want you to rate your fluencies by “little”,…

The absence of French language dragons Where I discover genres don't always translate between languages

Dragon tooled and painted on leather for my friend’s son by me An important part of being a reader is always being on the look out for books to read. Sometimes this means frequenting bookstores, sometimes it means relying on what you can stumble upon through circumstance. Everyone has their strategies for finding new material, and my usual one is to browse through bookstores by genre. My…

A Chilean acclimitizes to life in Montreal and fictionalizes it. No, not me. Another one.

To be totally honest, it feels like a really odd coincidence that I had to read this book in my French writing class. It’s by a Chilean who came to Montreal and grew up to become a sociologist and writer. As a Chilean who lived in Montreal for a long time, there is a lot of connections. I walked in inclined to like the book, and I did, but I was also left thinking about a lot too. That’s not a…

Language and Everyday Use. The place where Spanish lives in my life

There:s a story by Alice Walker called “Everyday Use” which I was thinking of the other day in relation to languages. Bear with me, I’ll get to how further on. The story is told from the perspective of a mother of two daughters, one who stayed in the rural southern USA with her, and the other of whom left to go to college, ascend the social ladder, and distance herself as much as possible from…

Libro 33: Mujeres del Alma Mia - Isabel Allende Give this one a pass

Confession: while reading this book I was pretty focused on how many pages I had left. That is not generally a good sign with a book. It wasn’t a good sign with this one. My friend has a rule about drag queen performers where he doesn’t think they should bother interpreting a song unless they are dedicating as much energy to the performance as the original singers. I feel the same way about…

Libro 32: Largo Petalo del Mar – Isabel Allende

The premise of this book is really interesting. After the Spanish civil war a boat full of refugees were brought to Chile. In a strange coincidence, the name of the boat is the Winnipeg, which is also the name of my hometown and where I currently live. Chile was not a wealthy country at the time. The whole project was spearheaded by the poet Pablo Neruda, who chose to select for artists and…

Libro 31: Cuentos de Pedro Urdemales - Gustavo Roldan The Chilean trickster character who my dad told stories of is actually a real folkloric character people write books about!

Pedro Urdemales is a trickster from the hispanic world. Since I grew up with a Chilean father, I knew of Pedro as Chilean in the same way that I grew up believing empanadas are Chilean. Of course, like with empanadas several other Latin American countries also claim him as their own. They probably also insist that everyone else copied them too. From the little research I’ve done on line, he…

Livre 25: Legendes manitobaines – Louisa Picoux & Edwidge Grolet

This book is the textbook for an upper level French course I wanted to take at Universite de St-Boniface on oral culture in Manitoba. Storytelling and folklore are two of my oldest and deepest obsessions. I loved the idea that I could study folklore in French and see if it offered a different perspective. Unfortunately, I need prerequisites to get into that course so it will probably never work…

Libro 30: Mas Alla del Invierno - Isabel Allende Legal and morality are not the same. Forgiveness is necessary but sometimes hard.

Before I start talking about the text, I’d like to mention that I really like this cover. It’s clean but graphic. It fits with the feel of winter and of life thriving underneath it all. Also, I love her scarf. It holds the right vibe to match the text. Well, this was another compelling read. It didn’t feel life changing, but it was a good solid story that had me earnestly flipping pages and…