I learnt a lot
in A-level French. Indeed, the vast
majority of that which has left my mouth and pen over the past two months has,
in some way or other, been forged by the skilled smiths of Greenhead’s MFL
department. I remember well the hours of
ferocious argument beaten out in one of the college’s many priest-hole
conversation labs: was it possible for a state to remain truly multi-cultural
whilst imposing a litany of secular sanctions?
Was nuclear waste a price worth paying for reliable energy
production? Was Camus using Meursault to
condemn human nature or just social convention?
A-level prepared me to hold my own in a handful of dinner party
staples. ‘Fluency’, however, was (and
is) an elusive beast yet to be poached; judging by my efforts over the past few
weeks, its head shall not be mounted over my fireplace for quite some time.
Occasionally,
it’s what you say that creates the problem.
Every language has a few little pitfalls lying in wait for unsuspecting
foreigners. French, however, seemingly harbours
more pits than did Barnsley pre-Thatcher.
Around every corner is lurking an imperfect subjunctive or a MRS VANDERTRAMP
in disguise. Usually, tumbling into such
a pit is forgivable, or even endearing, but some pits are best avoided.
I was walking
back from Carrefour with a housemate, feeling particularly pleased with myself
as I’d just managed to find a sizey chunk of camembert for an absolute steal. On our way we passed two men who were in the
process of greeting one-another, each by kissing the other on the cheek. I was intrigued; what had happened to the
‘shake for him, kiss for her’ mantra I had so piously practised? I wanted to know more, and quickly began to
formulate a question to pose to my housemate.
Little did I know that the noun ‘un baiser’ (a kiss) could not simply be
‘verbified’ as can so many other nouns, ‘se baiser’ meaning something rather
different indeed…
“Were those two
men just fucking each other?” I asked
with innocent intrigue.
My housemate
turned to me wide-eyed.
“No, no, I don’t
think they were” she said.
Lesson learned
(s’embrasser, for those interested).
Sometimes it’s
your silence that creates the problem. I
was sitting in the secretary’s office at the theological institute where I had
just managed to introduce myself, explain that I was looking to enrol, and
agreed to meet the Directrice. The
secretary (a middle-aged French lady) re-entered the room, assured me that the
Directrice would see me in a few minutes, and took a seat facing me. She smiled.
I smiled back. Silence
descended. And time stopped. I had the distinct impression that I’d fallen
into an episode of Bernard’s Watch. Panic mounted when I realised that she intended
to hold this harrowing truce till the appearance of the Directrice. I willed
her with my all to turn back to her work.
Ignore me! My mind screamed. Please
stop being so bloody attentive! I could not
break the stalemate. I had little to
say, and less language with which to say it.
I could not look away. The abyss
deepened. And then finally, she spoke.
“What’s this
thing about Ireland?”
“Pardon?”
“Ireland. Why do they all hate each other?”
“Right…” I hadn't misheard. This French lady was asking me, a deaf-mute
with all the eloquence of an aubergine, to explain four centuries of Irish
history. Was this the European idea of
smalltalk? What was next; Rwanda perhaps? And just as I wondered how to translate
‘Plantation Protestant’, the Directrice entered, and I nearly hugged her.
And so you see,
a foreigner cannot win. Speaking too
much results in his injury by linguistic landmines, whilst keeping quiet leads
him into the jaws of a hellish silence, or worse, rends him vulnerable to an unsavoury interrogation. So there is nothing else
for it; I will spend the remainder of my year uttering incomprehensible French
noises à la GCSE Oral exam. Thank
God I studied French, eh?
