Sunday, December 22, 2013

on being excited the french way

Now that French classes and freelance deadlines have finished for the semester, I can finally give this blog a little love once again.

(And sleep. And breath. And figure out how to cook once more. And maybe even reply to your email message from early October.)

For starters, here's a link to my guest blog post on the Zestyverse blog, curated by the lovely and talented E. Amato.

On Being Excited the French Way 

by Kami L. Rice  

Yesterday, I tried for the hundredth time to use French to share my enthusiasm about some excitement or other. I have been informally polling the French for the past year, asking how to communicate this sentiment in their lovely language. I’d been told by at least one person that you can get away with saying, “Je suis excitée...” “I am excited ...” if you complete the phrase with a description of what you’re excited about—otherwise, you’re basically saying you’re feeling horny, which apparently is something the French know how to communicate. [Head over to Zestyverse for the rest!]

And speaking of languages
A friend recently (let's be honest, it was sometime back in November and I only just had time to read the article) alerted me to this interesting article about languages and personalities: "Do Different Languages Convey Different Personalities?" The author of the article seems skeptical, but, me, I could buy it. At a minimum there are a whole lot of culturally predisposed mindsets, actions, and worldviews wrapped up in language so deeply that speakers of the language can hardly avoid absorbing them. Discovering what those predisposed mindsets, actions, and worldviews are is one of my favorite (among many) things about learning French in France.