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| Claude - My French teacher in Paris. |
I turn sixty next month. That’s some large number and I
can’t say that I’ve been handling the impending milestone brilliantly. All the
maths indicates that I’m much closer to the end than the beginning. And that
has caused me some consternation. What it also does is act as a significant
reminder to do things now, because there may not be too many laters. So when
Tori asked me where I wanted to spend my birthday, my spontaneous decision was
to spend it in France. Not content to do things the easy way, I’ve opted to
spend a month doing one-on-one language classes while living with the family of
a French teacher. Well in actual fact, four teachers and three families, in
three different locations – Montpellier, Carcassonne and Paris. After that,
Tori and the rest of the crew will be joining me for a bit more of a relaxing
time that takes in a few places across the country where I’ve never been, as
well as a couple of old favourites. I’m mostly spurning England and the rest of
Europe, with apologies to my good friends there, and as attractive as many of
those other countries may be. I just want to hang out in France for a bit.
So, what actually is my aim here? The truthful answer after
much consideration is, fucked if I know.
I’m now pretty close to the end of the four weeks of classes
and am getting a better understanding of where I am with this language. The
fluency light at the end of the tunnel seems quite a distance away. I’ll likely
never reach it unless I get to spend a significant amount of time living here
and that seems difficult given the various components of my life. I have no
doubt that to the French I sound like an anglophone speaking their language,
but I’m ok with that. It’s pretty clear when the majority of French people
speak English where they are from, however well they speak it. And there’s
nothing wrong with that, so the inverse doesn’t bother me, as long as I can
make myself understood. I feel that I now get where most of the major building
blocks for this language fit in with each other. I just struggle at times to
assemble them, especially in spoken French where the blocks need to be put
together quickly. Some days, the blocks are difficult to handle and it all
resembles a very rapid game of Tetris. On those days I can’t help but feel that
if I haven’t got it by now, at nearly sixty, then perhaps I never will. But
then, I ask myself, does it really matter. And what’s it all for anyway? Maybe
Camus could help me. Or Sartre. They’d probably be satisfied that I’m just
plugging along with this seemingly futile task as if it’s something important,
when in fact nothing really is. And there’s something in that too. Is it about
an end goal or is it the journey? There have certainly been a few very
frustrating days where I’ve been disappointed with myself that I haven’t attained
the level that I aspire to. But some other days have been brilliant where I’ve
had moments of erudition and fluidity. And when it comes down to it, I’ve spent
three or four hours every morning speaking and hearing nothing but French and being
able to comfortably communicate in this fashion with another person. So, that’s
something quite significant. And while doing it, I’ve been in France, staying with
some very nice people, experiencing how they live, eating delicious food and
enjoying the wine.
My relationship with the French language and of its nature
France itself started in my year 7 French class with Miss Hurse. I remember my
excitement when I had to do an assignment on French cheeses. After savouring a
few of whichever cheeses mum was able to procure in Australian supermarkets in the seventies
(I do remember trying and liking Port Salut) I lovingly stuck all the wrappers neatly
onto a sheet of folder paper and notated whatever my 11-year-old mind made of
them. I did well that year in French,
receiving a distinction from Miss Hurse, but the comment she wrote on my report
card still stings. “Greg has produced some excellent work but unfortunately
spoils it at times by chattering like a parrot”. I guess it was a sign of
things to come. My year 8 French teacher, Mrs. Leonard went with the rote
method of learning verbs. If you were caught talking in class, which
surprisingly enough I often was, she’d just turn to you and say “dire and
devoir, five times English and French”, meaning that you had to write out the
conjugations as a form of punishment. Sometimes the verbs were replaced with
vouloir and pouvoir. That helped me learn those potentially tricky verbs well.
Year 9 and it was Miss Hurse again, followed in year 10 by Mr Dobberstein, an
old German guy who universally was known as Dobbo, though not of course to his
face. At this stage, my enthusiasm for learning French had somewhat waned and I
was far more interested in whatever mischief was going on in class. This
culminated in year 11 where it all degenerated into turmoil which among other
things involved a couple of Saturday detentions. I even had one on Grand Final
day where I had to rock up to school on the Saturday morning for three hours to
repeat an exam that I’d responded to on the original day by answering all the
questions in a completely mocking manner, which I found hilarious but
unsurprisingly the school didn’t. When I’d completed the detention, I jumped immediately
on to a tram to the G to watch the Blues sink the Pies, thanks partly to a
piece of Wayne Harmes brilliance from the boundary line. I did pass the subject
that year, but it was conditional on me not choosing it as a subject in year
12. So that was it for me and French at school. Started on fire, finished in
flames.
My next flirtation with the French language wasn’t until
Tori and I relocated to England some 17 or so years later. I’d managed to find
myself eight weeks between work contracts and decided to spend it in Nice,
living with a family and going to French school every day, having a completely
immersive experience. I had a ball. I loved being back in the classroom and
surprisingly had matured enough by then to pay attention and be an enthusiastic
student. My level of French improved to a point where I could communicate in a
basic fashion with my host family. On returning to England, I spent nine or ten
months seeing a French teacher one-on-one in Brighton and even achieved the
basic certificate for language proficiency needed at that time to get a job on
Eurostar or British Airways. I felt that fluency could perhaps one day be in my
grasp. But leaving England and the arrival of children put all of that on hold
again for some years, as my language goal tumbled down the priority list.
Australia is a long way from France, and it is incredibly difficult to learn a
language if you are not surrounded by it. That’s the case for me anyway.
Another twenty odd years passed. How did that happen? My
amount of French in that time was effectively pas du tout (i.e. fuck
all) outside of a couple of brief side trips to France when I’d been in England
for work in more recent years. Before one of those trips, I went and saw a
local teacher up in St. Andrews in a bid to resurrect my latent knowledge. Though
it wasn’t really until last year when Jazzy bought me a Christmas present from
Alliance Française that my learning goal resurrected itself again with
appropriate vigour. Firstly, I had to do an assessment of my level of
proficiency where I was completely flattered and surprised by the result,
coming in at the upper end of intermediate. I then had a term of one-night-a-week
classes, which was also quite encouraging. So I followed it up with another
term. Most days I was able to comprehend what was going on and found my levels
of grammar improving and old forgotten knowledge coming back to me. Though pretty much every week after the two-hour class I
felt completely drained and relieved it was over. I’d also found that on the
days when I was feeling not quite up to par that I was able to mostly hide in
the class and not speak too much. It may have been counterproductive to me
improving my French speech, but it was definitely the path of least resistance
when my brain just couldn’t deal with it. I knew that if I really wanted to
learn the language, I needed to put myself in a position where there was no
escape and nowhere to hide. Which is when I discovered the possibility of
living in France with a French teacher and studying with them one-on-one each
day. I recalled the fun I’d had in Nice and how much progress I’d made. And I do
love the AirBnB experience of staying in somebody’s home and getting to know
them and their town from a local perspective. So, with my upcoming birthday, I
decided (with Tori’s support) that this would be a present to myself.
And now here I am, pretty much at the end of it all. It’s been a bit of a
rollercoaster. My brain no longer fatigues in conversation and goes searching
for the door. If somebody wants to have a conversation with me in French, they
can do so, and I’ll be able to express myself back to them in a reasonable
fashion about most topics. Often though I’ll hear the words come out and know
that I got the gender wrong, or the verb ending wrong, or the relative pronoun
wrong, which really annoys me because I know how they all should fit together.
I understand most of the concepts of how the language works, but I still find
it difficult to put it all together in speech. And still too often for my
liking, people will say things to me that are just too fast and go right past
me, but I don’t freak out about that quite so much anymore. I can watch the
news on TV and understand most of what’s going on. I can read the paper and get
most of the story. I’ve had the experience of watching a Clint Eastwood film
and hearing him speaking in French in a voice that I know isn’t his. I’ve had a
good taste of French life and got to know some extremely interesting and lovely
people. I’ve had the opportunity to see the cities of Montpellier and Paris
through the eyes of a local. To really feel like I was living there, as short a
time as it’s been.
My final teacher, in Paris, was my best teacher. This is not
to denigrate my other fine teachers, but she has undoubtedly had the most
experience, having been teaching diplomats and ex-pats for several decades. She
loves language and the origins of it all. The rare moments when she flicked
into English to explain a concept that I couldn’t get from her explanation in
French showed me that her English is flawless, at a higher level than a lot of
native speakers. She was ruthless in correcting me every time I made an error
in my speech, which was frustrating but something that I needed and appreciated.
She honed in on any weaknesses that I showed in my grammar or pronunciation,
and gave me detailed explanations of how it all worked. She held me to a high
standard. She made copious notes for me of everything we discussed. She was
quite incredible. And at the end of it all she graded me at an exceptionally
high level in the feedback form that she was sending off to the school, which
both surprised and flattered me again. So, while I still can fumble over words
to a waiter and get frustrated, maybe I can actually speak this language better
than I think I can.
But what is it all for anyway? And does it matter? Well, I
guess it matters to me for reasons I still can’t fully explain, but maybe it’s
becoming slightly clearer now. I love this country. I love how entrenched the
enjoyment of life is in their culture. I love the passion that the country has
for sport, in the way that Australia does. I love their outdoor lifestyle and
their streetside restaurant and bars. I love going to a market and buying a
baguette, some fine cheeses, tomatoes, strawberries and a bottle of red wine, and
then supping on one of the finest meals known to humanity. I love the passion
of the people. I love that as a people they stick up for their rights, even if
it means bringing the whole country to a standstill. I love that in their
history they decided to cut their king’s and queen’s heads off. I love the
philosophical thinking of Voltaire, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Camus and others. I
love their appreciation of the arts and the way that they value and support
their artists and musicians. I love their architecture and how many buildings
seem to be works of art in their own right. I love the gritty reality of French
cinema and the fact that however beautiful the people in the film may be, they
look like real people. I love how welcome I’ve always felt in this country.
So, maybe I do know what it's all for. I still feel equal measures of encouragement
and frustration with the language, but I’ll persist. I’ll take some next steps
in my attempted mastery of it on returning to Australia. And I’ll start
planning for how I can relocate my life here for a slightly longer period next time.
Along of course with Tori. In reality, and naturally enough, I’ve already started planning.
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| Clotilde and Anne Elisabeth - My teachers in Montpellier |
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| Eliane - My teacher in Carcassonne |
