France Log 2: Non, je parle pas français

Being in France is really a very humbling experience for me. If you study French and you think you can speak it, go to France.
It’s as if you forget everything you have ever learnt about the language upon approaching the French airspace. In university, in oral practice sessions and oral exams I could hold my own in Spanish (not as much in French), but my grades were well above water and I thought I was a certified Francophone. Being here has erased all those delusional notions. Ask me if I speak French and my response will be a resounding “no”.

I have so much more to learn. But that’s okay. Suuuuuuuuree, it’s a bit embarrassing sometimes (9 times out of 10 if we’re being really honest) and yeahhh I do have a crippling phobia of speaking to customer service personnel, especially on the phone. Perhaps at the end of my 7 month program here, I’ll be able to ask the price of a pair of boots without forgetting how to form a coherent sentence.

Anecdote Alert!

I walked into a boutique with the express purpose of buying boots. Since I knew beforehand that I was going to buy boots, I practiced my 5 word speech well in advance (Je voudrais acheter des bottes). That, it appears, was a colossal waste of time because it seemed my Jamaican accent masked all my good efforts and I ended up pointing to my feet anyway. Lesson learnt.

At the moment, being fluent really seems like a pipe dream. I remember being very hungry and walking towards the centre-ville; staring famished at all the food items in the boulangeries, pizzerias, cafés and supermarchés and being deathly afraid of entering to buy something because I had long accepted the fact that I really didn’t know French.

However, after weeks of unending starvation and feeling like a mime, I am able to ask the price of something even if I don’t know the French word for that something. And if that doesn’t work, pointing saves the day. Pointing, by the way, is a universal language in which I am completely fluent.

Talking to my flatmates, however, continues to be a struggle. Simple questions such as “Have you seen the remote?” and “Did you leave something in the sink?” or “Is the tap water here good enough to drink?” arrive at the same level of difficulty as decoding hieroglyphics. After 3 weeks of miming the word for tap, we finally found it and now we try to drop it in as many sentences as possible. You never really realize how often you use or refer to a particular item until you have to search for that word in a fog of words from a foreign language.

Simple responses like “I’m feeling nauseous” require as much concentration as operating a Turing machine. One day, maybe not today, tomorrow or even next month, I’ll be able to string French words together without having to pause for air or without taking a few seconds per sentence to ensure that the noun, verbs, 5 million pronouns, articles and other unnecessary French additives are standing at attention in their correct places. One day I will be great, before the end of my life, hopefully.

Until then I shall be Ik ben Groot-ing my way through every conversation.

Until next time!!

( À bientôt!!)