The Philosopher's Demise: Learning French Review

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The Philosopher's Demise: Learning French ReviewWhat I particularly love about Richard Watson is that his francophobia has the breadth to include the French language itself: "The poem played on tape was about how to paint a bird. First you paint a cage, then you paint flowers and plants around it, a beautiful sky, and so on. You wait. Your painting is bad if a bird doesn't come and land in the cage. If one does, it is good and you can erase the cage and sign your name to the painting of the bird. Putting aside the cuteness of all this, what made me realize how much I disliked the sound of French was the continual, unctuous, caressing repetition of 'l'oiseau' ('the bird'). It is a word the French believe to be one of the most beautiful in their language. It is a word that cannot be pronounced without simpering, a word whose use should be restricted to children under five."
Confere Anthony Burgess's hatred of the consonant deficiency of French: "The French seem determined to destroy their Roman inheritance by chopping up words until they become as short as possible, and as capable of being confused with other chopped-up words as only a genuinely morbid condition of language can allow. Even when a French word or name bears some visual resemblance to its classical original, the spoken form submits to the axe. I can never grow used to pronouncing 'Jesus Christ' as 'Jezu Cri', and I feel that if the French could cut the holy name down to something like 'Je Cr', they would."
The Philosopher's Demise: Learning French OverviewRichard Watson, scholar and spelunker extraordinaire is back. Having told how to win the fight against fat in The Philosopher's Diet, and having painted the definitive portrait of philosopher René Descartes (Cogito, Ergo Sum), here he confronts his most difficult challenge: how he learned to speak French.
Already an accomplished reader of French, Watson found himself forced to learn to speak the language when he was invited to present a paper in Paris in French. A private crash course and lessons at the Alliance Française only served to point out how difficult it can be to learn any foreign language, especially later in life. As he confronts his own national prejudices, Watson weaves in digressions on the contrasts between France and America, on the mysteries of French engineering, and on eccentric French cavers. This wry, witty book is not just for anyone who has ever tried to learn another language, but for anyone who has yearned desperately to learn something and worked to the limit to achieve it.--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

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