le cheval saute

So I get asked a lot: Do you speak French?

Answer: Non. Jamais.

Well, that’s not particularly true. For about 3 months before I left for France I religiously studied French via my free version of Rosetta Stone (I have shady Asian friends).

Rosetta stone is divided into 5 parts. Listening, speaking, reading, writing, and a general introduction part where they introduce you to the new lesson. The philosophy behind Rosetta stone is to bombard you of images while saying particular words or sentences. You are meant to figure out what the words mean through the images. Eventually you will have successfully mapped the meaning of words to its image thus helping you learn the language.

It’s good in theory. There are, however, a few problems.

Firstly they are assuming that the image and the meaning are obvious. Sometimes, they are not. For example when I first started there was a series of sentences with their accompanying pictures:

La fille porte de lunettes. (image of girl standing on the beach)
La fille ne porte pas de lunettes. (image of girl standing on a hammock)
L’homme porte de lunettes. (full body image of man leaning against a tree)
L’homme ne porte pas de lunettes. (full body image of a man in a jumpsuit in mid-air jump)

At this point in the game the only word I had successfully mapped were ‘la fille’ and ‘l’homme’ (girl and man). I had not yet been shown what ‘porte’ was, nor ‘lunettes’.

Kelly’s conclusion after looking at said pictures for a while: Porte = stand. De lunettes = ground. (The man/girl is/is not standing on the ground.)

Real meaning: the man/girl is wearing/is not wearing glasses.

Oh, they’re wearing glasses/not wearing glasses… I missed that what with all the beaches and trees and jumping and hammocks. Why they didn’t just put faces of a girl/man wearing/not wearing glasses, I’ll never know.

It was only until much later that I realized I had it all wrong when they eventually had a whole lesson on wearing things. Otherwise I would’ve gone around not making any sense at all when it comes to ground standing.

That’s another thing with Rosetta Stone. The practically of what they teach you is a bit questionable. Like they had some weird fascination with horses. And jumping.

I had many a lessons involving jumping horses. The horse jumps. The horse did jump. The horse will jump.

Why would Rosetta stone focus on such a thing? At the time I assumed there are a lot of horses in France. And they are all jumping.

So far I haven’t seen any horses jumping. But when I do, you can bet your sweet ass I’ll be ready with my ‘Le cheval saute.’

So yeah. Parlez vous le francais?

Non, jamais.