Sunday

Not much happening today. I sloughed off most of it. We had a decent Sunday brunch, then my wife and daughter went off to meet my wife's mother and her aunt at a place about an hour from here.

I did a little reading, then corresponded a little with a woman I know on Forvo -- she's one of the French editors; she helps me with French and I help her with English -- took a nap, and then did a little web surfing. I had been moping around the other day, thinking I really need to practice words like quelconque and lequel and bien sûr, but what can I use to..... when it hit me that I have this tool, a really nice freeware flashcard program called Anki, already loaded with a deck called French Linguistic Glue. Oh, yeah! So I did a little of that. And I finished translating a single French sentence. That may not sound like much, but the sentence is from Les aventures du roi Pausole, which I had picked up last year when I was looking for a book in French to try to read. I didn't realize how old this book was, or how complex the sentences! Every night, more or less, I break out the dictionary and I take the next sentence and try to understand it. Last night -- and the night before, for that matter -- the sentence was il repondit aux voix en agitant devant son visage, comme un mouchoir d'accueil, une main molle et amicale. I found that partially easy and partially impossible. At least I was better than Google Translate, which rendered a gibberish sentence -- "he replied to the vote, waving before his face, as a host tissue, a soft hand and friendly." I finally concluded that it was supposed to be He responded to the voice by waving a handkerchief of welcome in front of his face in a soft and friendly hand. Not all that sure, though, so I sent it off to my French instructor with a request for her to evaluate my performance.

And then I made tacos for dinner.