School nostalgia

I began learning French in kindgergarten, and attended a French speaking school up through high school. One thing that annoyed me about French is that it often lacks specific terms for certain things, so that to refer to something, you have to use a string of descriptive adjectives and nouns rather than a single word, the way you can in English. I suppose this is because English freely borrows from other languages when it lacks a term for something, whereas French insists on being purely French.

I enjoy being able to speak, understand, and read French, though growing up through school where most of my classmates (including myself) spoke English at home, it was always nerve-wracking knowing that the teachers were paying special close attention to make sure you were speaking French, and not English. They would cook up all sorts of designs to encourage us to speak French outside of class as well as inside. For example, if you were 'caught' speaking French in the halls or at recess, you were awarded a gold star. The person with the most gold stars got some prize at the end of each month. This ploy didn't last very long, but it was a nice try.

But French is a beautiful language with some very logical (though some illogical!) grammatical rules. It's a privilege to be able to understand it.