Hockey!

Yes, I'm a very happy girl now that the NHL season has started. Even though the Blackhawks lost yesterday.

Tonight I was listening to play-by-play of the Montreal Canadiens-New York Rangers game online at nhl.com. They had 3 feeds: NY, Montreal English, and Montreal French. I chose the French feed. I minored in French during undergrad, and have since forgotten much of it. I'll be in Paris in a few weeks, so I'm taking every chance I can to practice understanding French.

I impressed myself with how much I was able to understand. I couldn't understand every word, but I was able to follow the game, including the score, penalties, when a goal was scored, etc. I was annoyed that they used the English word for "goal" instead of the French word, but whatever. Unfortunately, understanding hockey play-by-play is probably not going to help me get around Paris.

Interestingly enough, some of the first French words I learned were hockey terms. You know how at night you can tune into AM radio stations from really far away? Back when I lived in the suburbs I was able to get a French Canadian radio station. I would listen to the hockey games. I was able to pick up words just by their context. The first word I learned was but, "goal". Also, I was collecting hockey memoribilia at the time. I would often get hockey cards from Canada that were printed in English and French. I was able to learn the terms for the positions that way. So before I started learning French for real I had learned enough French hockey terms to follow a hockey game on French Canadian radio. It's nice to know that I can still do it all these years later.