Poor guy.

So I'm learning languages, is the plan. I have a priority list of my top five languages I want to learn, in order of how much I want to learn them, and then if I ever get done with them, I will build a new priority list, which will comprise five more languages on which I have not yet decided (but I'm guessing they won't contain German, Russian, Japanese, or Spanish, because I DON'T LIKE FASCISTS, but actually just because I don't know why). Here is my present list:

1. French (to talk with my flatmate)
2. Arabic (because I must finish what I started and then go to Egypt! Lovely Egypt! And see the Pyramids and Alexandria, where I have always wanted to go)
3. Portuguese (Spanish with a French accent)
4. Chinese (finish what I started, and to talk with Diwen! Lovely Diwen!)
5. Italian (because it is pretty and I want to go to Venice)

Anyway, I was working on French, and in the tapes, there's a conversation between an American guy and a French girl, which is all pretty basic, but anyway once you have mastered the words they are saying, the narrator has you do a practice thing, and you have to come up with what the guy will say. And this is how it goes.

Narrator: You see a young woman sitting by herself. Say "Excuse me" to her.

You: Pardon.

American guy on the tapes: Pardon.

(Yay!)

Narrator: She doesn't answer.

(Bitch.)

Narrator: Ask her if she speaks French.

At this point I quit playing and just stared while the narrator marched on without me, because, like, really? That's what you're going to ask a strange woman if she ignores you when you say "Excuse me"? Is that what your mind leaps to, guy? She doesn't speak the language? Excuse me. Snub. Damn, she must not understand.

So I eventually got over it and went back to the original place and said my bit. Me: Est-ce que vous comprenez le francais?

American guy: Est-ce que vous comprenez le francais?

(Yay!)

Narrator: She still doesn't answer.

(Bitch. But I guess she thinks I'm a freak now.)

Narrator: Ask her if she speaks English.

At that point I gave up and threw myself off the battlements because I couldn't stand to feed lines to a guy whose mind would make such a leap. Also, at this point there are two options: a) She understands French, and simply chooses not to respond, in which case, I AM SORRY, but you are going to have to go practice your French on someone else; or b) She doesn't understand French, in which case she's not going to understand your asking her if she speaks English. A surer method would be to ask her in English if she speaks English. I know that wouldn't help you learn French, but it might make her quit ignoring you.

I guess it's also possible she doesn't hear you. But in that case you're probably better off practicing French with one of the dozens of hearing people in France, since it is already difficult to communicate with deaf people, and much more so in a different language.

In other news, I over-think.