Pantalons

I might have learned a little Persian (Farsi)…a tiny, tiny bit…paulo, poco, piccolo, pequeño, peu, wenig, küçük, malen'kiy, Xiǎo de…sparse, little, tiny bit.

Also this week while overhearing a conversation, I picked up pravda, which means to my limited knowledge, Russian is what I’m hearing. The speaker of Russian then teaches me goodbye, and less formal bye bye, buh bye, whatever, in Russian.

Every day I learn something new is a good day.

A five year old enrolled in a total immersion French school, here in the states, helped me with proper pronunciation of chapeau. (We have a lot of hats.) And chapeau I remember, though obviously my French is spoken with a healthy dose of Texan. Little guy was very patient with me. It takes a village.

Which brings me to this…

When learning new languages, why do most all programs teach hundreds of phrases we almost never use? For instance, “These are pants” or “The dress is red.” Or how about, “I eat the fish”, “cows moo”, or Du lässt meine Seele singen, wenn du in einen Raum gehst, “you make my soul sing when you walk into the room”. Why can’t we get on with most used phrases and expand our vocabulary along the way, instead of pantalons rouges?

Seriously.

“Nice to meet you sir. How do you like pantalons rouges?

See what I mean?

Just a few weird disjointed thoughts du jour.