French for New-Age Mystics

The most discouraging thing about trying to learn a new language is when you look at your own language and realize how fast you talk and how easy it is for you to discern the slightest utterances at low volumes on crowded buses. As I'm cursing the French language for being ambiguous, I am forced to notice that English has a sound (tu) that means three different things (a number of objects between one and three, also, and a weird yet highly important preposition), all of which are used on a regular basis, and then I think about how it's not really fair to curse the French when my own language does exactly the same thing. Then I marvel about how thorough and complex and amazing the human capacity for language is, and then I forget where I was in the translation passage and get frustrated and throw the dictionary.

Also, the text we're using has the annoying habit of giving us reading passages containing grammatical elements that we aren't introduced to until the next chapter.