Did you finish your translation of the book?

I have dual British-Canadian citizenship by the way. When I was at school (in England) we were never taught about the expulsion of the Acadians from their homeland. The truth would have been too shocking.

A good point — I remember learning demeurer for “to live,” as in “I live in Detroit.” But my current francophone friends use vivre; the other word is much more like “dwell.” I’m pretty sure I’ve never said “I dwell in Maryland,” at least not with a straight face.

I confess to being wordy, at least on special occasions. I think, though, that the main hindrance on my ability in French was the lack of conversational practice when I was young–they just didn’t have that in my high schools.

I have some regret about not trying to learn Gaelic, but I’d be starting pretty far back. Is e ‘n t-ionnsachadh òg an t-ionnsachadh bòidheach (the learning in youth is the pretty learning).

This was amazingly productive in terms of what they were able to communicate.

By contrast, I studied Russian and Czech at University where we routinely had to study phrases that even Russians or Czechs wouldn’t have known.

We mostly don’t learn language through words but collocations, constructions and phrases. And wordy people like you have the most trouble with grasping this when they’re learning. I saw an interesting study which showed that for many native speakers, a good quality newspaper is pretty much like you reading French. The number of items an even averagely-educated reader wouldn’t get from, say, The Economist is staggering.

My first boss as a language teacher ran some utterly wonderful reading seminars during lunch where he’d bring in things like sci-fi or Iceberg Slim or (and this is why his seminars were utterly wonderful – I can’t even imagine where he got some of the books from) something else. “Why didn’t you use the dictionary?” he’d ask. “Now go and teach them to do the same.”

G. K. Chesterton said that anything worth doing is worth doing badly. To me that means if you’re enjoying the results of your study of French–whether to read, or converse, or learn about your heritage, or study someone else’s–you’re already on the right path.