My roomies and I have started a new activity for our time here in France. We're going to keep a running list of our new words of each day. The first few days we had only a few words because they were ones that we picked up in coversation or had to ask about while we were trying to explain something. But, in the past few days we have accumulated an abundance of words. We've gotten them from reading the paper, from trying to decipher syllabi and from attempting to understand what our teachers are saying in class. We now each have extensive lists, but we are going to have to cut the lists down significantly to be able to remember what these words mean.
On another note, the percpetion that the French speak fast is certainly true, but I'm not sure that English speakers are much better. I did learn the biggest problem people have with the way Americans speak English and it is that we use contractions. Who knew? It completely makes sense. Mushing all the words together would definitely make them harder to understand. As does abbreviating the words. My strategy teacher wrote on the chalkboard, pretty much completely in abbreviations. Not helpful when I don't even know what the word is she's abbreviating! Alas, the language education continues...
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