Best Season by a Large Marge
Montreal autumn is a strong contender for "best season in the world" next to Seattle summers. It's beautiful and, occasionally, warm as heck.
As opposed to the summer - which I frankly found a bit too hot for my liking - and winter, the variability of autumn means there is a kind of scarcity for the best days that might line up with time you have off. Because of this, you are highly motivated to get out (while the getting is good). Two examples can illustrate this well:
For the last session of the class, our animateur[[1]] insisted we take it outside to benefit from the weather. On our walk I realized our building was right next to a statue of the absolute GOAT of the 18th century. Chumps go with Washington, haters go with Lafayette, nerds go with Tallyrand, capitalists that have read zero of his works of course go with Adam Smith, but the real 18c heads go with Toussaint Louverture.
Badass art abounds. We need more caricatures of US politicos that look like the terrifying puppets from the video for Land of Confusion.
It was the last warm day for a spell, so I took to the park and stumbled into a protest (manifestation) in favor of increased funding for public transportation and making it free - insane utopian ideas that are consistently supported by a wide swath of the population in virtually every city in North America[[2]]. It wasn't extremely large - maybe 150 people, a smattering of politiciens from the left wing (read, social democratic) party Quebec Solidaire, at least one transportation worker union, and the folks from Rage Climatique.
Each group had a speaker and it was fascinating, now that I can understand a lot of what is being said, how the manner of speech naturally varied between, say, the professional politicians and activists. The use of slang, how and what manner they used the sentence constructions with conditions [[3]], the frequency of the conditional forms (marking uncertainty, or the lack there of).
The content of the speeches varied too of course - with the former talking about the concrete steps they have or intend to take with a focus on the positive and the latter talking about the deep necessity behind getting away from cars [[4]] and really laying into the current government.
Anyway, the most recent session of my French course has been completed. One more 8 week session remains. Towards the end of this session, we got to watch some folks finishing their final session present a small spectacle (show) in the form of improvisation. The Quebecois fucking love improv.
And they take the improv seriously - note the referee (not a Halloween costume), the team shirts, and the audience voting by cards corresponding to the team colors. This was scored, there were rules, winners and losers.
I was frankly not feeling great about my progress before starting this session. I couldn't understand anything but the most simple conversations and I definitely could not have a genuine back-and-forth at anything resembling a normal speed. I was translating everything in my head.
What a difference this session made. We are actively watching some extremely good local television series[[5]] and picking up most of what is said without the need to rewatch every scene. Some fine books are also now accessible, such that it isn't a great struggle to understand all but the most dank turns of phrase. All this material is of high quality[[6]], so it doesn't feel like homework. I could fairly easily have written this post in french. Speaking french with my partner can now effectively be the default for situations where the ideas we mean to express are not extremely complex/subtle or there isn't a pressing need for speed. If anything, for my part, I need to practice slowing down to try to make fewer errors. It's a good feeling.
[[1]]: I've mentioned this before and I though I could do better when I understood more of the language but no, this really is one of those words that lacks an exact translation in English. What can I say? They are there to animate people
[[2]]: I almost just wrote "America" because the common usage of "Americans" here (and, as I understand it, good portions of the rest of the world) include everyone on the continent and sometimes both North and South America
[[3]]: Your brain eventually gets used to stuff like the subjunctive because the whole language is structured in what I would consider a similar fashion. It feels like it has an aristocratic air if translated verbatim. It's never "Jeff's dog" but rather "the dog of Jeff", so hearing something that would translate to "It is important that she speak" just feels right by the time you start seeing/hearing it
[[4]]: Interesting Quebecois-ism here - the common word for car is "char" - but in France that word exclusively applies to battle tanks (char d'assaut). Everyone understands the more universal word "voiture"
[[5]]: I want to talk about a couple of these, because even with subtitles they are worth a watch. The media environment here is interesting to say the least
[[6]]: Among the best parts of the most recent session was the professor introducing us to a bunch of local work that is of pretty damn good quality. I'm particularly impressed by some of the television, which is remarkably good given the absolute shoestring budgets they are playing with
