Franglais

It's a constant struggle for me to improve my French. I take four hours of instruction a week (although I haven't had a class since the end of July and the new term still hasn't started) and I try to get out there every day and practice. Recently, I decided I should also go back to downloading the DailyFrenchPod podcast just to give myself a little extra listening work. The lesson is less than 10 minutes and it's usually drawn from current news, so it can be quite amusing and not nearly so tedious as those fake dialogues in the textbooks. The podcasts are a lot easier for me now than they were a year and a half ago, maybe too easy, but still a good way to increase my vocabulary.

The other day though I burst out laughing upon hearing this snippet, reproduced in its entirety below.

Google a lancé un navigateur internet open source pour concurrencer Internet Explorer et Firefox. Le navigateur est conçu pour être rapide et pour supporter la prochaine génération d'application Web basé sur les graphisme et le multimedia.

It's 36 little words and 15 of them are in English or close enough that you don't need to know any French to understand them. Perhaps I should just consider it an exercise in pronounciation. Pretty soon, I'll be able to say "Feerfox," "Anne-ternet" and "Meecrosoft" without hesitation.