Muttering, sputtering, and trying again anyways
A week in French
I’ve spent the past week muttering to myself and replaying conversations in my mind.
Behavior that’s not so different from a typical week in New York, but this time around I’ve been in Provence muttering French.1
The last time I visited a French-speaking country was a few years ago, and I hadn’t really spoken or studied the language since college. I was in Montreal for just a weekend, and I leaned on the bilingual nature of my hosts. Like a lot of situations that don’t favor hesitation, not jumping into that first conversation hellbent on mauling some French made it harder and harder to give it a real go with each successive opportunity.
I didn’t speak much French that weekend, and I regret it. A month later, the possibility for experiences like that dried up overnight.
When I got to my destination this time around, rather than wait for someone to speak to me in English, I took my first chance to dust off my French. I needed to catch a bus that was leaving soon, and it seemed like interacting with the teller would be the fastest way to get a ticket and make sure it was for the right route.
Maybe it was the dreamlike state I found myself in or maybe I was heartened by the fact that “bus” and “ticket” are English cognates, but I said bonjour, and despite having to act out a few other words in English, I came away with a ticket for the right destination.
The rest of the week has been a less straightforward swirl of rehearsed questions, a spray of semi-intelligible French back, some dancing, haggling, and sweating in Fre-nglish, and, thankfully, no major faux pas.
The listening has gotten slightly easier over time as more vocabulary comes back, but it’s a constant effort not to tense up and worry about all the words I might miss instead of actively listening for the ones that are being spoken. It’s a good reminder that listening requires effort in any language and that presuppositions can get in the way of what someone is actually saying.
As much as I’d like to go back and redo those conversations where I forgot a noun or verb I once knew, that’s life. We seldom get a second chance at something as trivial as ordering breakfast let alone the more consequential conversations with our families, friends, and coworkers. We have to feel our way through it, give a little, take a little, and react as it plays out in real time.
I don’t know when I’ll next be in a village where my French is the best way to get around, but I do know that the directness and attention that this week required is a good lesson for communicating in our first languages, and I hope that travels back with me.
Instead of declaring my intentions, I asked the host at a vineyard if she was the one who wanted to taste some wine.
Tres bien, Jacques. Very kind of you to think of the host before yourself. You really should learn the trick of speaking louder and louder, though. I hear that it works wonders.