Living in France has meant having to study French. Studying French has meant learning to use the subjunctive, a special type of conjugation that turns up when expressing doubt, sentiment, a personal judgement or a desire.
So “je comprends le subjonctif” is right (I hope), but “c’est important que je comprends le subjonctif” is wrong and should actually be “c’est important que je comprenne le subjonctif.”
With me so far? You’re doing better than I did, or most Anglophones do for that matter. The subjunctive is one of those things that we all struggle with, but which French people use all the time (unless they’re getting it wrong as well.) So far I reckon I have about a 50% success rate.
It is at this point in a class that the French teacher (and many Anglophone students) may nod sagely, and observe that the reason for the difficulty is that we English don’t use the subjunctive. Which is, as it happens, completely wrong: we use the subjunctive in English all the time. It just isn’t always clear that we’re doing it.
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Today was the first day of the @NaNoWriMo’s April Camp. In a blitz of positivity over the weekend, mostly inspired by the thought that Monday would be my last day of teaching, I signed up.
National November Writing Month is an internet based creative writing project. It’s free to take part and your nationality doesn’t matter. It challenges you to write 50,000 words of a novel in one month; you create a user profile, post your word count at the end of the day, and watch as the numbers tick on up towards your target.
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Apparently this is a thing. The terror of the blank page. Staring at the sheet and feeling you have to fill it with profundity, insight and wit. Or just enough words to satisfy your deadline.
To be honest, I’ve always had more trouble with the other part. The closer I get to the end, the harder it is to continue. But writing is hard, start to finish, and there are so many easy ways to stop that it is amazing any of us ever start. I’ve been given some pretty good advice over the years regarding all three stages, beginning, middle, and end, and here at the first post seems like a good place to share them.
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Living in France has meant having to study French. Studying French has meant learning to use the subjunctive, a special type of conjugation that turns up when expressing doubt, sentiment, a personal judgement or a desire.
