The Premise: La Premisee

I leave for France in two weeks, and will use this blog to document the whole five-month experience. That is, assuming I can stop having fun long enough to make regular posts. Hopefully my perennial longing for attention will motivate me to be diligent in this undertaking.

Those of you lucky enough to subscribe will be graced with weekly - perhaps monthly - insights into my trip; the food, the surroundings, the twins, and - most importantly - the language.

For example, today I introduce the following french word: Premisee. It means: Premise. This will be easy to remember if you use the following memory trick: When you think of the english word "Premise," you think "A supposition." You immediately remember that "Premise" rhymes with "Grimace," which is the face you make when someone suggests eating sheeps brains. You recall from World Cultures in 9th grade that French people simply ADORE sheep brains. They think it is tres bon. And then you think: "Ah, French. The french word for premise is 'Premisee,' which I remember because its essentially the same as in English but with an extra e."

See?

As my trip approaches, I wonder just how different Paris will be. Having travelled to the remote Tibetan villages of the Himalayas, I feel prepared for the culture shock: in fact, I'm fairly convinced that any place where the language has the same basic elements of sentence structure cannot be a place so entirely different from my home. On the other hand, even travelling to Dallas is like going to a whole new time and place. (In the words of Linda, Codey's mom: "Dallas! Shit, that's so far north they may as well be yankees!") So I have to assume a trip across the atlantic will be more culturally shocking than a trip three hours north in Texas. Maybe. Maybe not.

Maybe the differences will be subtle. Maybe Paris will be exactly like Austin, but with an extra e. And while on the surface the difference will seem negligable, perhaps the nuanced variations in pronunciation, and meaning, will be harder to navigate than they will be to perceive.

Having not yet gone, I can't predict what the differences between Paris and Austin will be though I premise (v - to take for granted) that there will, at least, be some.