I haven't written a post in ages, yes, yes, I know. I'm a horrible person. Or perhaps it's just that I keep getting distracted by other things when I sit down to write a post. Whatever the reason, my apologies and I'll try to do better. At any rate, thank my lack of knowledge that my Medieval Occitan course had gotten canceled this morning for the post. Otherwise, I wouldn't have had three hours to kill before my Academic Writing course.
So, what is there to say? Université Paul Valéry remains as disorganized as ever, leading to never ending bouts of amazement that they get anything done. My classes are going fairly well, although I'm not necessarily thrilled with how I did on my first Southern Civilization exam. Then again, I'm told that nobody is thrilled with how they did on that exam, so at the very least, it's not just me. Fortunately, I think the professor liked my group presentation on the Cathar heresy and Albigensian Crusades, so that should work out.
My Occitan classes are going... well, my non-specialist (i.e. people who have never taken Occitan before) course is going well. I've made my first friend here in France thanks to it as well. Her name is Renata, and if the name wasn't a bit of a tip, she's not French either. She's German and is studying here as an Erasmus student. Still, she's really nice, and we commiserate about the random things about French culture that just don't make sense to us. My Modern Occitan Literature class is also proving to be working out. It's a liiiiiiittle tricky to follow the class sometimes, because it's a bilingual class, but that means that it's half taught in Occitan. For those of you who weren't sure, I don't speak Occitan beyond a couple of short phrases including, but not limited to "Mi appelli Ginny", "Veni de Estats Unis", and "Agachi le can" ('My name is Ginny', 'I come from the United States', and 'I see the dog'. We're studying pronouns under the pretext of studying animals at the moment, which explains why that last isn't quite as random as it seems.) Thus, listening to explanations of Max Rouquette's Vert Paradis in Occitan can be a bit... interesting. As Occitan seems like a strange mix of Latin, Italian, Spanish, and (of course) French, and I have a bit of Latin and Spanish capability in addition to my French, I can follow the general idea of what's going on. Do I understand the details? Heck no. Fortunately for me, the professor is very good about explaining things so that I can understand them as well, and I'm starting to figure out how to take notes in very badly spelled Occitan for further study later. Which then brings us to the problem of my Medieval Occitan course.
Medieval Occitan and Modern Occitan are actually two halves of the same class. By taking them both, I'm getting three credit hours of Occitan Literature. Never mind that they are taught by completely different professors on completely different periods of literature. Not the point. My problem in Medieval Occitan is that the language is, well, Medieval. This problem crops up in English, too. Ever taken a good look at the opening lines of Canterbury Tales in the original? If you have, then you know that "Whan that aprill with his shoures soote, The droghte of march hath perced to the roote" is not what most of us would call normal English. Guess what? Medieval Occitan is similarly not Occitan, maybe even a little worse as they still use Latin word order. This, added to the fact that I don't speak modern Occitan, and don't have a vocabulary basis, makes translation assignments rather difficult. As an added bonus, the professor doesn't really want to teach in French, arguing that if we're studying Troubadour poetry, we should be studying it in the language of the Troubadours. That means Occitan, in case you were curious. Well, at least at the end of this I'll be able to spout off rhetoric terminology vocabulary in Occitan by the time I leave. Perhaps I'm just feeling a bit bitter towards the subject at the moment. After all, I did stay up later than I should have to finish an explication of a poem (something I don't like to do in English) in an old version of a language I don't really speak.... only to discover that I didn't have the class. It's just not fair, I tell you!
And now, I've got to run. My next class starts in 30 minutes, and I'd like to grab some lunch before it does.
So, what is there to say? Université Paul Valéry remains as disorganized as ever, leading to never ending bouts of amazement that they get anything done. My classes are going fairly well, although I'm not necessarily thrilled with how I did on my first Southern Civilization exam. Then again, I'm told that nobody is thrilled with how they did on that exam, so at the very least, it's not just me. Fortunately, I think the professor liked my group presentation on the Cathar heresy and Albigensian Crusades, so that should work out.
My Occitan classes are going... well, my non-specialist (i.e. people who have never taken Occitan before) course is going well. I've made my first friend here in France thanks to it as well. Her name is Renata, and if the name wasn't a bit of a tip, she's not French either. She's German and is studying here as an Erasmus student. Still, she's really nice, and we commiserate about the random things about French culture that just don't make sense to us. My Modern Occitan Literature class is also proving to be working out. It's a liiiiiiittle tricky to follow the class sometimes, because it's a bilingual class, but that means that it's half taught in Occitan. For those of you who weren't sure, I don't speak Occitan beyond a couple of short phrases including, but not limited to "Mi appelli Ginny", "Veni de Estats Unis", and "Agachi le can" ('My name is Ginny', 'I come from the United States', and 'I see the dog'. We're studying pronouns under the pretext of studying animals at the moment, which explains why that last isn't quite as random as it seems.) Thus, listening to explanations of Max Rouquette's Vert Paradis in Occitan can be a bit... interesting. As Occitan seems like a strange mix of Latin, Italian, Spanish, and (of course) French, and I have a bit of Latin and Spanish capability in addition to my French, I can follow the general idea of what's going on. Do I understand the details? Heck no. Fortunately for me, the professor is very good about explaining things so that I can understand them as well, and I'm starting to figure out how to take notes in very badly spelled Occitan for further study later. Which then brings us to the problem of my Medieval Occitan course.
Medieval Occitan and Modern Occitan are actually two halves of the same class. By taking them both, I'm getting three credit hours of Occitan Literature. Never mind that they are taught by completely different professors on completely different periods of literature. Not the point. My problem in Medieval Occitan is that the language is, well, Medieval. This problem crops up in English, too. Ever taken a good look at the opening lines of Canterbury Tales in the original? If you have, then you know that "Whan that aprill with his shoures soote, The droghte of march hath perced to the roote" is not what most of us would call normal English. Guess what? Medieval Occitan is similarly not Occitan, maybe even a little worse as they still use Latin word order. This, added to the fact that I don't speak modern Occitan, and don't have a vocabulary basis, makes translation assignments rather difficult. As an added bonus, the professor doesn't really want to teach in French, arguing that if we're studying Troubadour poetry, we should be studying it in the language of the Troubadours. That means Occitan, in case you were curious. Well, at least at the end of this I'll be able to spout off rhetoric terminology vocabulary in Occitan by the time I leave. Perhaps I'm just feeling a bit bitter towards the subject at the moment. After all, I did stay up later than I should have to finish an explication of a poem (something I don't like to do in English) in an old version of a language I don't really speak.... only to discover that I didn't have the class. It's just not fair, I tell you!
And now, I've got to run. My next class starts in 30 minutes, and I'd like to grab some lunch before it does.
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