Mittwoch, 11. Januar 2012

Elephant-eating boas, talking roses and French grammar: My personal tour de force

Today I am going to destroy the result of fifteen years of extremely hard work for ever.
I spent all my life carefully avoiding  The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry and miraculously I always got around reading it or seeing any of the hundreds of movie adaptations. Okay, not all my life, to be honest, only the last nine or eight years, but certainly every day since my mother gave this "masterpiece of French literature" to me when I was a little girl.
Even then I was reluctant to read it, simply because everyone loved it and I never trusted things which were said to be oh so great, but my six- or seven-year-old self made was curious enough to try it nonetheless.

Oh, how I hate this guy...
I made it through the first 20 pages, then I put the book back on my mother's shelf to never take it out again.
I know you will probably think I am lunatic now, but I never liked this worldwidely well-loved story and I used to avoide it like the plague, until today.

My French teacher (whom I hate because she's a horrible teacher and thinks there's nothing more important in the world than grammar) made my whole class read this children's book, but I somehow got around it again, except for some excerpts which we used as grammar exercise.
Unfortunately I am writing a huge French test on Friday and my techer came up with the great idea that it would be all about Le Petit Prince today (Two days before the test! I told you she was a bad teacher.)

So instead of curling up with A Tale of Two Cities or Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale I am now going to deal with the absurd vocabulary and brutal grammar structures of a surrealistic French children's book I already hated in German for the next two days.
When I am finished you can expect a proper review and I will try to be objective, although it will probably be angry cynical nonetheless.

3 Kommentare:

  1. I had to rewrite Anne of Green Gables to French last year. Yikes! It was fun though -- and abridged! :P

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  2. LOL, I'm sorry all this hard work is about to be destroyed. I hope it isn't too bad for you.

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  3. Jillian, that sounds like you either have a very good French teacher or are a really enthusiastic student! I can't remember the last time anything I did for French class was fun...

    Caro, you wouldn't believe how difficult it was!
    All adults here in Austria are crazy about this book, they treat it as if it was the Holy Grail :P

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