I Love French

I know.  You never expected to see that as a post, did you?
It happened yesterday, when I brought Jason Kabel to Family Home Evening.  He'd been speaking Dutch to me all day, and I'd been answering in English or Dutch, depending on which one came to my lips first.  I was understanding everything, but I felt sort of Dutch-stupid with the speaking thing.  I'd say a sentence, Jason would look at me blankly, and I'd have to sort through each word to see which one I'd said in German.  A couple times I felt like tearing my brain neatly in two; for example, when I realized that gekocht in Dutch is the PP of "to buy" and gekocht in German is the PP of "to cook".
o.O
Anyway.  We made it to the institute center, and I said hi to some people in French and introduced Jason in French, but we soon switched into English so Jason could understand.  As we turned to walk inside, I found myself looking forward to more French.  I was craving it.  I walked further inside and the sound of French bubbled up around me.  And it sounded good.  Not the "oh French is a beautiful language! the language of love!"* good, but the "aaahhh, the sound of the language I've been fighting for for so long and which is quicker to my mind that Dutch at the moment" good.   And right then and there, I fell in love.

*  *  *   *   *

I have been falling for a few weeks, now, quietly, unobtrusively.  I have passed milestones in the language that I haven't bothered to report, like when I was able to consistently discern where one word ended and another began.
Like when the sound of French stopped sounding like French; it was just a bunch of sounds I've heard in other languages put together in a different way.
Like the time I followed the Sunday School lesson and answered a question in a complex sentence that I didn't remember afterwards, which means I didn't pre-formulate it; it rolled off my tongue when I needed it!
Or the time I actually followed a Relief Society lesson (those are the worst).
Or at my birthday party, when one of my French friends said to another in French, "You wanna go?", right over my shoulders, and I said "What, are you bored?", and he flipped out that I had understood him (mainly as a cover for his social faux pas).
Or when I went on a date, and we spoke French until dessert.
Or when I could finally say my cell phone number in sets of double digit numbers (there's a 94 and a 77 in there; see this post for my struggle with stupid French numbers).
Or when I sing the hymns in French and my voice carries over all the quiet French singers, but I don't care because my pronunciation isn't that bad anymore.
Or all the times when I concentrate hard, and the language washes over me and sinks in, and I understand without a mental translation (sometimes I find myself nodding at the speaker like a goofball).
Or when I read a scripture out loud and feel pretty good about it.
Or when I actually conducted a phone conversation with a friend in French, just last night.


It is working!  I am getting it!  I am speaking it!  And I love it.  <3

*I have never thought that.  Italian is so much prettier.  The French nasal is bothersome (especially when people do the nasally French equivalent of "ummmm" after every phrase), and French rhythm is annoying compared to the musicality of Italian.