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You could say the French house lacked presence. No problem, I was there for what's spoken |
The house we owned in France in the nineties was old,
thick-walled and dilapidated, on a noisy main road and in an unfashionable and
somewhat charmless village. By unfashionable I mean a million miles from being
a resort. To me resorts are typically by the sea, the residents are greedy and
the visitors whine a lot.
Unfashionable suited me fine. For one thing the house was
cheap, very cheap. For another nobody there spoke English, there was no need;
great, since I wanted to practice my French.
How does one practice a second language? Simple, you
initiate conversation. The easiest way is to ask questions.
I was tidying up my wretched garden, fifty metres away from
the house down the noisy road. An elderly man stopped by and said something
bland. Perhaps concerning the weather, a subject I refuse to discuss at any
time and in any country. Instead, I said, “Hey, did you watch yesterday’s stage
of the Tour de France?”
He nodded and I was away, chattering breathlessly. A
terrific result! French racers doing better than expected! Such steep
gradients!
I was an Anglo who spoke about the Tour in French. He
listened, commented, I responded. Then he asked me if I’d like to watch that
day’s TV coverage of the Tour in his house. Obviously he was lonely but not
many previously unknown Anglos receive that invitation in France.
Another trick. Talk conventionally then add something
unexpected at the end. “In France the French are so good at giving directions. Geographically
knowledgeable. Very precise, very concise. But I have to be careful when I
speak to French women. Given I’m such an unstylish Brit.”
The French like to hold differing opinions. So you can guess what their reply to that is. What it has to be.
I used to live in Québec City, the very heart of French language and culture in Canada, and I worked in French every day. My daughter was born there and now lives in our nation's capital, Ottawa, a bilingual hotbed, with the city of Gatineau where my oldest grandson lives, right across the bridge that spans the Ottawa River (or Outaouais if you prefer). So I speak French fairly frequently and enjoy the experience. I suspect that the French speaking people here - Canadiens or Acadiens - would seem quite different from your experience of living in France. While they are unquestionably and fiercely proud of, and protective of their French heritage, they are in many respects typical North Americans who happen to speak French, and the degree of slang in some areas is appalling, and sometimes the heavy accents are difficult to follow. Too bad you couldn't pay us a visit sometime when I could introduce you to the culinary splendour of a hot dog steamé with poutine. You've never lived until you have had that, Roderick!
ReplyDeleteDMG: As. I have said before, my French is non-idiomatic; I can commuicate the sense but not in way the French do. To do idiom would require a longer period in France than I've ever been able to manage, preferably with a French family. I'm fairly sure about this because I spent a fortnight back in the fifties (when I was much much younger and my mind more absorbent) with a German family and quite quickly I was hardly aware I was speaking German. I was even interviewed for an article in the local newspaper.
ReplyDeleteAs a result I have had to devise my own stratagems, notably adding an unexpected twist right at the end of a sentence. Also, where possible, I have sought to make French people laugh. Again, it's the unexpected that works; the joke may be quite modest. Another stratagem: to apologise for my "bad" French. This almost always results in the French person saying I speak excellent French which is patently untrue. But with an underlying truth - that I have "communicated".
Canadian French was completely beyond me; there is something about the North Ameriacan accent which seems to be at war with French French. But then English French is no better.