I am back in French class again
and so far so good! I'm starting a program in environmental studies/sustainable development at Université de Sherbrooke but first, I have to take their French for University classes to sharpen my skills.
I went through the various stages of grief when I learned I had to take two terms of French language and writing courses before starting in on the subject matter. I have a BA in French, for goodness sake, but it's not from a francophone institution and bureaucracy wants what bureaucracy wants. Plus maybe, despite living and working in Montreal for over 10 years, I have gotten a little soft. Whatever the case, I have reached the point of acceptance and am taking pleasure in (re)learning the formal rules of French.
These are online, distance-learning courses and the tests are open-book but during the exams online resources are unavailable. Paper reference material is a must. This should be no problem for me - I went through my BA in French, then my MA in Translation Studies, and I still do translation work for a select group of clients. I have bought and used hundreds of dollars - thousands of pages - of reference books over the years.
But I have also gone through Francine Jay's Joy of Less decluttering system. That is, I got rid of all but my most treasured books. Reference material, which is easily available online or at the library and which I consulted infrequently at best, all had to go. Adieu, French-English pocket edition. Goodbye, enormous hardbound dictionary. Dear thesaurus, it has been a treat, a delight, an absolute pleasure to work with you.
And so I found myself, a student once again, in front of the French reference book section at Indigo downtown facing the same dilemma as in 1997 and 2002 and 2007 and now 2018 - which dictionary to buy? Do I take a Bescherelle too? By the way, did you know that now Bescherelle is not just the handy little red volume? It is a multi-part series that will give you not only conjugation, but also grammar rules and spelling. It is all too much, if you ask me.
I opted for the Larousse Maxipoche+ 2018 (there was a similar Robert product, but Larousse is classic). Poche has nothing to do with it. There are few pockets in the world that would fit this dictionary. Hagrid's, maybe. For the sake of completeness, I just now tried to slip it into my big comfy hoodie pocket, but the opening is too small. Pocketable or not, this dictionary includes grammar rules, some verb conjugation (115 words), and proper nouns. Perfect. I don't want to end up with a shelf full of reference books again!
So far I am enjoying it, with one exception. The conjugation section does not include an alphabetical list of the verbs it includes. After trying the flipping-through method for two weeks, I had enough and made my own.
Here, for quick verb-finding in the conjugation section of the Maxipoche+ 2018 (special Pierre Larousse édition anniversaire), is my handy index. I'm going to print it and use it to bookmark the conjugation section in my dictionary.
Bonne conjugaison les ami(e)s!
