About

In style of Julie Powell, my goal is to read all eighteen chapters of Le Petit Nicolas, by René Goscinny, in its original French, in eighteen weeks. Things done slowly turn out more enduring and paced, which is why I’m giving myself over four months to finish this task.

Each post will be a minimalistic note on the vocabulary word(s) learned each day, and you’re invited to join the journey and read along. As the weeks go on, using vocabulary words learned, I will slowly phase the blog into French. Hopefully at the end of eighteen weeks the whole blog will be in French.

“In order to acquire quickly the Greek vocabulary, I procured a modern Greek translation of ‘Paul et Virginie’, and read it through, comparing every word with its equivalent in the French original. When I had finished this task I knew at least one half the Greek words the book contained; and after repeating the operation I knew them all, or nearly so, without having lost a single minute by being obliged to use a dictionary. I learned ancient Greek as I would have learned a living language.”