Fate is interesting. Next day after I posted my first entry, I received an invitation to apply for a residency program I was aiming for. Turns out I have a good enough score! Which is very neat and means I can stop caring about modern French, podcasts, youtube, speaking and writing practice, and focus on reading.
I will continue the series of posts until I am comfortable enough reading Madame Bovary, the previously secondary and now primary reason for me to grind French vocabulary.
Sur des perches partant du haut des greniers, des écheveaux de coton séchaient à l’air. (On poles extending from the top of the attics, skeins of cotton were drying in the open air.)
For some reason, I thought perches meant shores, even though last time I literally translated the word bord. Very conventient that perch is a word in English, though I did not know that. Buffing my English as well!
Partant, in my assumption, was either partir or parter. I looked it up and was right about the former. Thankfully, it’s very close to Spanish, so shouldn’t be hard to memorize. What matters is context though, so I practiced differences between démarrer / partir / commencer / lancer (launch, leave off, start, throw).
Le grenier is just an attic. Nice useful noun.
séchaient is sécher. I already know mouiller, which means I just got a pair! Practicing sécher vs mouiller (to dry vs to wet)
En face, au-delà des toits, le grand ciel pur s’étendait, avec le soleil rouge se couchant. (Across the way, beyond the rooftops, the vast, clear sky stretched out, with the red sun setting.)
This one is a golden mine of new stuff!
En face means what it sounds like, something being opposite of something, or right front.
Au-delà means basically beyond, a very useful find! Though you can somewhat disassemble it and still get the general meaning with the context, even if you can’t look it up. Feels like “At-ofthere” if I replace words mechanically.
S’étendait is a bit crazy, at first I mixed it up with s’entendait, which is completely different. Writing down some practice with s’étendre (strech, spread over) and entendre (to hear). Then I remembered that I actually encountered this stem in the book of Genesis:
Dieu dit : Qu’il y ait une étendue entre les eaux, et qu’elle sépare les eaux d’avec les eaux. (And God said, “Let there be a vault between the waters to separate water from water.”)
Fascinating the fact that it is used to describe the skies as well as in Madame Bovary. Some real cross-reference here. Along the way, with all the practice, I also learn le bâtiment for a building and écarter for spreading open.