Mondo potatoes!

And other cultural learnings

Another reminder not to order grocer delivery of potatoes, so often monstrous in size when someone else chooses them.

On a recent morning, I woke from a dream in which I was speaking French with two strangers.

They stood near me hospitably, this young boy of around nine years old and a brunette woman maybe in her early 40s, who looked a bit like Julia Ormond.

They kept things slow, and I kept thinking at the proper pause in the conversation of a one to four-word reply I could make. I was aware I wasn’t exactly discussing philosophy or an advanced topic, but I also felt proud to be participating at all — while also aware that the two other speakers were being patient with me.

Every time I opened my mouth, words emerged in the accent I had learned in Madame Rosenthal’s classroom as a junior and senior in a public high school, in classes smaller than 15 students, where we all knew one another’s faces and habits.

Having been lifted as a child over a wall in Vichy France into, I think, Switzerland, Mme Rosenthal had escaped with her parents. Recounting that story in our classroom brought into our late 1980s capitalist-American minds the darker realities of the century whose end we were nearing.

These days, Mme Rosenthal often visited France during the Houston summer and carefully coached us in a correct accent and shortening phrases. For instance, we made “au revoir” into “oh-vwah”. As in other language classes, we listened to endless phrase tapes beginning with “Bonjour” each morning.

Waking with my particular “social studies” thrill, one that I’ve felt since learning about cultural and language studies in the third grade, I vowed to listen to a foreign language each morning.

This morning I did that, logging into my public library system website and accessing the Mango Languages app.

I’ve used Mango Languages in the past and liked its old-school format. It reads aloud several phrases using two voices for “conversation,” then explains the phrases.

Although I’m farther along in Duolingo French, in Mango I decided to start at the beginning, just for nostalgia’s sake.

“Comment allez-vous,” said the app, explaining the more formal inquiry into how someone is doing.

After 10 minutes, I emerged more alert, feeling a mental zing that I associate with the thought, “Maybe this means I’m fending off neurodegeneration!”

It’s the kind of alertness that mind workout that also improves my work of the day, I think.

Planning to brush up my earlier high school Spanish as well; I’ll keep you posted on that. Learning any languages lately?