Speaking French

Originally published in the Ketchikan Daily News, July 2019; written by Lisa Pearson.

My first year of college I took a trip to Montreal where – using my high school French – I asked a museum attendant a carefully composed question about the exhibit. Assuming I was fluent, she answered me back in rapid Quebecois and I then had to ask her to repeat herself in English because I only spoke French “un petit peu”.

I don’t know what it is about the French language that makes English speakers try so hard to learn it and feel so insecure about actually using it, but there must be something inherently amusing about the translation missteps because so many authors have written about their adventures trying to assimilate into French culture. The most recent of these books is “Monsieur Mediocre: one American learns the high art of being everyday French” by John von Sothen.

Von Sothen is not only a columnist for GQ, Esquire, and Slate, he is also does stand-up comedy and has been living in Paris with his French wife for 15 years. He covers a wide range of his experiences with humor and insight: he attends uncomfortable weddings in the countryside, learns that French schools do not encourage parental involvement, practices the art of hosting a dinner party, and discovers that when everyone in the nation has the same 2 weeks off in August, you don’t wait until the week before to book a hotel.

Throughout the book, his most amusing anecdotes have to do with his inexpert use of French slang, verb tenses and articles – even after years of living in Paris. My favorite example was his statement to a startled woman that his apartment was previously a warehouse of urine (entrepôt de pisse) instead of a warehouse for spices (entrepôt d’épices). As he freely admits, his wife spends a great deal of time clearing up the confusion his malapropisms create with friends, neighbors, teachers and shop owners.

Subtle pronunciation differences like this should make people like me leery of showing off their high school French. And if examples such as the spice warehouse don’t make you nervous enough, he writes about Verlan, a Parisian slang which not only inverts syllables (much like pig Latin), but has morphed over generations so that today’s youth invert the inverted syllables of their grandparents. And as an extra layer of confusion for those American tourists toting their little phrasebooks around, modern French speakers include words with African, Arabic, and Spanish origins.

Some of von Sothen’s anecdotes are a little blue – he is learning to speak slang, after all – but he writes everything with a sense of humor and manages to nicely blend self-deprecation with an honest look at French culture. He loves the country and her citizens, but he sees some of the goofiness and inconsistencies that make his Parisian neighborhood a living, breathing place and not just an artificial setting for a romantic movie.

Another author who brings out the hilarity of mispronunciations and cultural miscues is David Sedaris. His book of essays - “Me talk pretty one day” - includes a French language class with a verbally abusive teacher and a prolonged stay in France where he happily discovers that his level of proficiency has risen from that of a 2-year old to that of a 4-year old. I would also recommend A Year in Provence, by Peter Mayle. Nearing its 30th anniversary of publication, Mayle’s book launched a flood of “expat dealing with language barriers and quaint locals” memoirs. Its age and glut of imitations make it no less entertaining. Even if you haven’t booked your flight to Paris yet, you can still enjoy that sense of trepidation that comes with trying to communicate in another language.