Memory Work

[Brent]

I've been teaching myself French, and friends will often ask me, Say something in French for me, and I don't know what to say other than a single French sentence I memorized that was an example given for liaison (J'habite aux Etats-Unis.)

Challenge: Could somebody suggest for me something beautiful, sweet, interesting, famous, poetic, historic or otherwise, something not too, too long, something worth having spinning around a lot in my head till I die? I just need to prove to others that I am indeed studying French.

Merci beaucoup!

[Frank]

Well, the best way to prove that you're talking a language would be to improvize something.

Describe the situation, describe the place, describe your friends, describe what's going on.
Be animated. If you're saying "et Leha a une écharpe verte", show her scarf. If you're saying "il fait beau", show the sun.

Make basic and very short sentences. Don't focus on grammar or on complicated vocab, rather try to avoid pauses and hesitation.

If you can do this, you will wow the crowd. More than if you blindly say something that you memorized. Or it can be a couple of sentences than you actually memorized. But you then change names and nouns in order to fit the context.

My 2 cents.

[Brent]

Thanks, Frank! That sounds like good advice. But still I'm wondering, aren't there some few famous wisdom sayings that every Frenchman knows by heart? Or perhaps a famous nursery rhyme that every schoolchild learns by heart? These are cultural things that I find very fascinating. For instance, every American kid learns the pledge of allegiance to the flag and recites it before each school day together with the whole class. Those sorts of things are to me very sweet and precious aspects of different cultures. Brent

[Brent]

Merci, Stephane! I googled the lyrics and went to a site that had both a translation and a recording of someone singing it to a tune. Very, very sweet...

Merci beaucoup!

Brent