Okay. That's IT. I'm going to restart my French lessons.

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

…so my brain doesn’t seize up as quickly when speaking to a beautiful Québecoise. (Why, yes, I spent my long weekend in Montréal.)

I went there for a regional gathering of Esperanto speakers. We saw movies, had presentations, went out to dinner, walked all over Old Montréal (which I hadn’t really explored or learned the history of before, though matt_mcl and I did visit it a couple of months ago), visited museums, and picnicked in the beautiful park that covers Mount Royal.

The view is wonderful from the Mountain: the city at the foot of the slope; beyond it a vast green plain with the great river flowing through it; the rounded and forested Montergian Hills (of which Mount Royal is one) stepping off towards the horizon; and far far to the southeast, across the US border and blue in the distance, the outliers of the Appalachian Mountains.

The weather was gorgeous on Saturday and Monday: warm sun and a cool wind that stopped everything beom becoming overheated. (On Sunday, it was colder and it rained, but that was okay, because we spent most of the day inside.)

If there had been the oppurtunity, I would have asked the charming guide at the George-Étienne Cartier museum for a date. But, alas, she was at work, and we were just another group of anonymous visitors speaking some odd language or other. :: le sigh ::

I rode the Metro, spent some time learning about Drupal, and acquired a dictionary. I even discovered interest in solar-powered houses, and may speak about them there next year.

The only problem is, next year, we in Toronto are hosting the regional gathering, and somehow we have to outdo the Montrealers…

2

*Tant pis. Peut-être elle viendra à Toronto l’année prochaine, et vous serez esquissé pour l’aider avec son anglais… *

3

:: swoons ::
:: brain seizes up ::
Ack THUD

*ahem * Er, where was I?

(She was the English-speaking guide at the museum. I understood just enough of the French to get my comprehension into trouble.)

[sub]You try buying something at the store when three languages are fighting in your brain and you don’t know hat’s going to come out of your mouth…[/sub]

4

Ha. I live with a beautiful Québecoise, and I have to get my poor French up to speed in a hurry. (We’re moving to Montréal within a year.)

I’m learning, slowly:

*Je allez à la maison, en train.

Mangerez-tu ma queue?*

Sounds like you had an awesome time!

5

:eek: (combination of envy and "oh boy, do you have a lot ahead of you…)

I am so going back. :slight_smile:

Do they still do the “everyone moves house on the same date” thing in Quebec, or is that just something I read and misunderstood?

And I’d really like to know the origin of the style of using those external staircases to the second floor of houses.

6

Yes, for some practical reason it seems everybody’s leases end on July 1st, so there’s mass movement then. My GF says this drives her nuts, but on the other hand our system here has its drawbacks. (Have to give one month notice to move, but because everyone gives one month notice, new places are not advertised until thirty days before they are available – so you can’t arrange a place in advance.)

We’re not planning to move in July, though - and she says it’s not going to be a problem. I guess we’ll take over someone’s lease. I dunno. I am a disoriented square-head.

I don’t know about the stair thing. This is not for separate suites?

7

Might want to double-check those, unless you’re wanting to sound like the Québécois Borat.

8

I know what it means. (Unless you mean my grammar is bad? I’m fecking awful. Just be glad you’re spared the pronunciation.) :smiley:

9

  1. Yes. I hear it’s hell trying to get a moving van. Also, it’s a conspiracy to keep Anglophones from celebrating Canada Day.

  2. Having seen them (as well as ones that extend to the third floor) iced up in the dead of winter, my only guess is mental retardation.

10

Yeah, I meant there’s a bit of subject/verb disagreement in both. But if you’re asking someone that latter question, it might not really matter that much…

11

Don’t people sublet? I mean, what if you get transferred to Montréal in January?

No, they’re separate suites with outside access. They’re duplexes, one dwelling above the other. (Though many that I saw seemed to have two apartments on the second floor and one on the first, with two separate outside doors on the second-floor balcony, so I guess they were a kind of triplex.

Each apartment had a separate street number too, so what I saw as I walked along the street were street numbers that went something like 8202, 8208, 8212. Looking up, 8204 and 8206 were on the second floor above 8202; 8210 was on the second floor above 8208; and 8214 and 8216 were on the second floor above 8212. And all the odd numbers like 8203 were on the other side of the street.

At least, I think that’s how it went. I haven’t been that disconcerted by street numbering since I was trying to find things in Helsinki.

And the numbers for the upper apartemnts were next to or above the doors on the second floor, not at the foot of the staircases.

12

Actually. it was moved from May 1st

Many third floor staircases are inside on the second floor.

13

That would be French, English, and Esperanto, right? :wink:

Well, then, you’ll have to rely on your knowledge of Toronto to show her around. (“Well, that’s the CN Tower in the distance… yup, over there in that direction… right, so, you want to go out for coffee sometime?”)

14

I used to have fun throwing in a word of French here and there with my English-only housemates until I mentioned on day that I was going upstairs to take a douche. That ended that. :cool:

15

Sort of - as I understand it, people can arrange to have someone else take over their lease.

Another bit of culture shock - rental places don’t typically come with appliances; you bring your own.

16

Perhaps that is what I saw, instead of two apartments on the second floor. It was dark and I was slightly lost.

17

:eek:

There is a good pont about that, though: at least you’d get to clean behind the fridge and stove.

18

Yeah, I was glad to have someone to warn me of that. I can totally picture myself picking out a place and being gobsmacked to find no appliances there when I moved in. “D’oh!”

“Mangerais-tu ma queue?” Is that right? French is hard, damn it. I am going to spend the next couple of years sounding like a complete idiot. (Even when I’m trying to express things aren’t existentially idiotic.)

19

Yup.

I was trying to convince one beautiful woman to visit Toronto*; she’d never been. As I have Esperanto but very little French, she had no English, and she was just learning Esperanto, it was interesting. It ended up being a lot of gestures and pointing at pictures. :slight_smile:

[sub]*With her boyfriend as part of an Esperanto trip, of course. What did you think?[/sub]

20

Yes. Well, grammatically, anyway. :slight_smile:

And je vais à la maison (or je vais allez à la maison or j’irai à la maison).