I'm trying to learn some French.

Since I'm going to visit my cousin and her husband in Paris this September, I figured I'd learn a few words so I wouldn't be completely helpless.

The problem with learning a new language, though, is that it's not your language.

Seriously. Sounds pretty asinine to say, but it's the truth.

It's not simply replace-this-word-with-that-word like a puzzle. The grammar is different. The tonality is different. Hell, the hand motions are probably different.

That and French is nothing like English (which I'm pretty good at) and Spanish (which I'm not helpless at).

So when I see the French words, I try to pronounce them like they're Spanish and all goes to hell.

So right now, I've decided to try and just learn to talk. Enough. To survive. My priority is saying, "I do not eat meat."

As for reading, uh, that's probably not going to happen.

But in all of this fretting about writing, I came up with a genius idea.

While in France, if I'm able to blog, I'm going to write my blogs in English. Then I'm going to use a translator web page to put them into French. Then I'm taking that broken French and converting it back into English.

So it will sort of be the reverse of my situation. I'll be trying to speak in horrible French and my blogs will be in horrible English.

It's going to be hilarious.

For example, take this sentence.

"Everyone here smells like a sick dog who's rolled around in garbage" turns into "Each one here feels like a sick dog who's rolled around in refuse."

I don't know about you, but that's comedy.

Bon apre medi.