There I lay, my PJs drenched with overnight sweat, dwelling romantically on my relationship with the difficult concept of France. From the first visit (a few days supervised by my father of Paris's three-star restaurants: "the last part of your education"), to the tours by car, to the scruffy falling-down house we owned for a decade in Loire Atlantique, to the lusher holidays spent in rental villas. Running in parallel with years spent vainly looking for fluency in the language, knowing it would never happen.
The brightly attractive young woman in St Chinian's cave des vignerons, spoke of schists and bottle aging as I tasted my way through half a dozen whites and rosés. She spoke in English and I in French, our competences roughly equal. As I left she paid me what she imagined to be the ultimate compliment, that I spoke good French. Other French citizens have said it too; it's not true. My French is non-idiomatic but what I say strives to be interesting, if possible funny.
The dentist who ministered to VR described his manual skills and I commented - "A sort of carpenter, then." He grunted his approval, but at the idea not the language.
Early morning at the supermarket, the middle-aged women, facing a long day, whipped our purchases through the bar-coder. Quelle vitesse! I said. What speed! She laughed, despite her awful job and my foreignness.
Language is human to human. One is obliged to do the best one can.
Yes -- so true, and I totally relate to both the challenges and the attempts.
ReplyDeleteBeth: Holidays are all very well but the experiences tend to be repetitive as does the language. I made best progress when we owned the house: discussions with the builder about other people in the village, with the mayor when he explained that our lavatory (based on a fosse septique) was to be replaced by a connection to the systeme d'assainissement des eaux and what it would cost.
ReplyDeleteBest of all were the conversations with the plumber and the menuisier, both heroes of mine but given to tightly compacted patois. In each case they had wives who expanded their most impenetrable passages, like two personal sub-titling services provided only for me.
I envy you the fact that there are periods of your life when the need to speak French is combined with the rehearsing of music.
I always love it when visitors - esp. Englis speakers - make a proper attempt to speak German. I don't mean reenacting those "funny" Faulty Tower's bits (which all have their place and time) but a more genuine approach. Of course, there's always the wish to impress one's versatility and extraordinary skill - and for reasons you maybe can explain, Englis-speakers occasionally seem to believe that speaking another language besides English is a massive and impressive skill. No, I find it admirable when I come across a person who has carefully read his guidebook or smartphome app nefore asking me for the way to the toilets or the name of that very dark looking bread or strangely shaped cheese etc.
ReplyDeleteAll acts that show me that there is an *interest* in the scenario they find themselves in.
As for me, I am hopeless with modern languages and I only speak English because the man I fell in love with had no German compared to my poor English.
When we were living in this tiny African country we call paradise, we soon found out that the locals all spoke three languages as a matter of fact, switching from one to the other at will.
But that is nothing compared to the hill tribes in PNG where - as I was told by a linguist friend - speaking up to 10 completely different and complex languages is nothing unusual.
I hope I haven't taken the wind out of your sails now, do speak French at every opportunity please. I admire your skill! I failed French three times at school and once at university. I hide behind my man and daughter (who of course are show-off fluent) when someone speaks French.
Sorry for typos, it's too hot here (37°C)
Sabine: Never in this world, my sails are filled to bursting with wind. I love speaking about languages - all sorts - with someone who understands the mechanisms, the emotions, the immediacy and the risks as well as what is said. And yes I do believe that speaking another language is impressive - in me! I came into this world with only one genuine skill and that was an ability to mobilise my instinctive curiosity. To ask questions - the sort that are intended to result in useful answers - demands a certain degree of articulacy. Later I thought how neat it would be if I were to do this in another language. Two or three years after I found myself interviewing the catering manager of the World Health Organisation in Geneva. In French. We got on well and I thrilled at the realisation that I had turned this whim into something that worked. I can't remember my question but I do remember one of her answers:
ReplyDeleteIl faut garder la gaieté de la cuisine."
Nothing profound, you understand. Slightly but not overwhelmingly French - perhaps French-Swiss. But halfway to being an aphorism. In writing the subsequent article I translated it into English but couldn't somehow nail down its simple artlessness. Had to leave it as it was.
My German is almost non-existent but I compensate by singing in German. Nothing else is quite as explicit or as eloquent. Which has led me into one of the most delicious of dilemmas. Shakespeare wrote the lyrics of Who is Sylvia? (Two Gentlemen of Verona). Schubert wrote an accompaniment to a German translation. Which is the greater achievement? You're a smartyboots. You tell me.
How could I decide? Shakespeare came into my life after Schubert.
ReplyDeleteThe only comment from me is that translations always fail, one way or another. That doesn't mean they fail but it's never the real thing. And I say this in the nicest possible way, since I have been translating for money for the last 49 yrs of my life.
Sabine: Chronology shouldn't decide our tastes and our appreciations. James Joyce came into my life after Hank Janson (Torment for Trixy, My Gun is Quick) but Ulysses helped me grow up.
ReplyDeleteI question "fail". I accept that the last jot of quintessence doesn't make the transition from one language to another but surely that's because the reader of the translation isn't German, French or whatever. Language is the aural expression of a culture, not just a simple means of communication. One of the (many) reasons I'll never be fluent in French is because I haven't grown up in a republic, experienced invasion and occupation by a neighbouring power, lived in one of the world's greatest wine-growing areas, and been educated in a way that demonstrated education matters.
War and Peace is still a masterpiece in English whatever its linguistic shortcomings. I've read it in the original (Constance Garnett) translation and in the the post-millennial version by Anthony Briggs. Garnett was born in 1861, Briggs is presently a senior rearch fellow at Bristol University. The two translations differ, how could they not? To my mind Briggs is better but that doesn't make Garnett a failure. Autre temps, autre moeurs.
And when we come to Proust (again I've read both translations and I don't mind boasting about the fact) the differences beween Scott Moncrieff and Kilmartin are huge and significant. As one critic pointed out SM is "florid" and Proust wasn't a florid writer. Even so if I'd had to depend only on SM I wouldn't have felt undersold. And "A la recherche..." remains a great novel.
But nicht diese Töne. To Hell with "I only speak English because the man, etc, etc." You speak English, period. Or at least you write it without let or hindrance. I may live in a predominantly monoglot society. Linguistically my head is barely out of the primordial soup but I can recognise a well-constructed sentence and a rhymically assured paragraph. No more mock modesty - as with this above. Greetings from another R.