Achievement unlocked: Beginner French

As of a couple days ago, I have completed Rosetta Stone's six-week lesson plan for beginning French. (Alert readers may note that it's been less than six actual weeks, but Rosetta Stone counts in weeks of five days.) I can introduce myself, count to 20, describe family relationships and several rooms of a house. I... have a long, long way to go before I can read a book on medieval Africa.

My copy of Soundjata, la gloire du Mali arrived a couple weeks ago to motivate me. It appears to be a collaboration between a griot (an oral historian of a tradition specific to West Africa) and an academic, with one providing quotes from the Epic of Sundiata and the other filling in historical context. I found the page with the map the librarians found on the Web, and was able to decipher it with a combination of my random vocabulary, a French-English dictionary, and the SO's recollections of French military terms from studying the Napoleonic Wars. So, a teeny bit of progress towards my miniatures scenario.

I'm planning to poke around in the "Extended Learning" section of Rosetta Stone the next few days, and then get back at the planned lessons.