Spring 2001 Charles River Review: La langue extraordinaire

Photograph of a teacher and students in a classroom.

I can't put my finger on it. But there's just something about the look of this place that consumes my thoughts. The architecture. The smells. The way the people carry themselves, the crazy way they drive their cars. But especially le français--the language itself--of the French.

Toulouse, France is la ville rose, the medieval capital of France, smack in the middle of Le Pays D'Oc, where French wasn't the only language spoken, but also a patois incomprehensible to uninitiated ears.

I spent nearly a year of my life there. I turned 21 there and shared a couple of glasses of red wine with some friends that early January night, just as I could--and did--every night I lived in France, even when a mere 20 and not yet "of age" by United States' standards. Still, it felt like breaking the law. So, for some reason, did smoking, even though that no longer would have been illegal in the US after my 18th birthday. But I knew it was something I wasn't supposed to do, so it felt daring, fun, and rebellious, even if the taste repelled me. But the buzz didn't.

***

When I'd completed studying for my bat mitzvah, and therefore Hebrew, my parents gave me permission to take a foreign language at school. Spanish--even then, in the mid-'80s--would have been the most practical choice. But there was something about French that drew me to it.

My younger sister and I often spent the night at my grandparents' house when we were little girls. Nanny had kept her only daughter's childhood books; one of them was a brightly illustrated, small square book about a young French girl and her doll. On one page was the story in French; the opposite page had the English translation. It fascinated me that a combination of letters that made unfamiliar words and sounds could be understood by some people, in this case, French-speaking people. I'd stare down at those words, willing them to reveal their meaning to me. Yes, I had the translation on the odd pages, but the length of the sentences didn't match up, nor did the length of the paragraphs. So there must have been something more to that French than a word-for-word swap to the English.

And Mom used to read me the Madeline books. Little girls wearing little berets. No matter that they were Catholic. The wispy, blurry illustrations of Parisian scenes seemed mysterious, yet accessible, unlike similar images from other places, like the Middle East, Africa, or even Mexico, closer to Oregon than the Eastern Hemisphere.

I loved that in French the word "yes" sounded like "wee" and that the "tr" combination had an almost guttural, yet sonorous quality to it. It wasn't like the German from movies and documentaries about World War II. No. French was lilting, though not sing-song like Italian. French people spoke with pursed lips, the only way they could successfully allow the tight vowel sounds and grinding "r"s out of their mouths.

I wanted to sound like them. Then once I got to France, I also wanted to look like them.

***

Never any good at grasping elusive mathematical concepts, chemical formulas, or the workings of the water table (and I lived in a climate where it rains nine months out of 12), I soaked up everything French. Vocabulary words stuck to my brain like insects to fly paper. Irregular verbs never gave me pause. I could retrieve funky vowel combinations in words like heureuse like some people could the quadratic equation; rarely, if ever, did I misspell a French word, a language noted for its difficult orthography.

I went to Jean de Florette and Cousin Cousine when most of my friends went to see Pretty in Pink and Risky Business. Sure, viewing French films merited extra-credit points, but I didn't need them; I just loved watching the French speak, listening to what I perceived as the most beautiful words in the world fall from their lips in a measured, precise rhythm, like spilled milk, pure and viscous, dripping to the floor.

I carried with me to Toulouse the correct sound of French in my head. But though I tried my damndest--for months--to sound like a French person, I'd open my mouth and my accent américain always gave away my identity.

I changed my coiffure in France; my once-straight, tired hair now bobbed about my ear lobes and was clipped higher in the back than around the sides. I bought a sleek pair of black leather shoes with silver buckles like leprechauns wear. Their 3/4-inch heels clicked along the cobblestone streets and alleys of the college town, the fourth-largest city in the country. I abandoned my backpack for a briefcase; the French say Americans resemble les tortus--turtles--carrying their schoolbooks on their backs. I began wearing scarves, for warmth and for the look of them. I met friends at cafés, perhaps for a boule of sorbet before dinner, a tisane mid-afternoon (I never could stomach coffee), a baguette with confiture in the morning. I became accustomed to four-hour dinners, and what used to be the stench of cigarettes eventually became not sweet but comforting in my nostrils, like the scent of my mom's after-bath splash. I even began carrying a coin purse separate from my wallet in which the myriad francs clinked; everyone there carries a small, soft-leather pouch to store coins.

Only when I went jogging through centre ville in the early morning hours did I look American, or at least foreign. I saved my Nikes, college sweatshirts, and white socks exclusively for morning jogs; my daily attire no longer betrayed my country of origin. I'd studied the French and copied their walk, averted eyes, café habits, clothing style. Even the way they eat, with a fork in the right hand and a ripped piece of baguette in the left, used to scoop morsels onto the utensil and mop up an errant drip of sauce or dressing. I looked French. At turns, I even began to feel French, however elusive a sensation that is. Until I opened my mouth.

Comment? What? often was accompanied by a furrowed brow and the unconscious head-shift-and-lean to bring the ears as close to the speaker as possible. I know I do this myself, to foreigners in this country, but, man, how it smarted being on the receiving end of body language that screams, "I didn't (or, worse, can't) understand you."

I'd take a deep breath and visualize my mouth, willing it free of obstacles that would stop a French word in its tracks and make it sound thoroughly American on its way out. I'd repeat myself, more slowly, to ensure tight vowel sounds, the back-of-the-throat "r" and the appropriately higher tone the French employ at the end of most sentences, as if always ending their thoughts with a question mark. Often, I'd try to slip in the twang of the Southern French accent; that effort usually helped mask my foreign one, but when overdone risked sounding like the speech of someone from the cast of Deliverance.

But as with anything I'd ever really set my mind to--even calculus--I also got my "aha!" moments with French. A friend once stopped me in mid-sentence, while we were eating lunch together on the lawn outside a university building, with a look of mock-shock on her face. "You sound Toulousaine!" I tried to appear satisfied, though not ecstatic, at such a compliment. But inside my stomach was convulsing with excitement; I had to catch my breath.

Eventually, people stopped asking me if I was canadienne, americaine, or irlandaise; most anglophones share a common way of pronouncing French words. One time, a man, detecting I had an accent, asked me if I was allemande--German. That is a huge compliment, as Northern Europeans--the Dutch, German, Scandinavian--often learn French as a second language and to my ears--and often to those of the French--could pass as French.

Toward the end of my stay in Toulouse, I no longer had to rehearse asking the pharmacist for headache pills; what I wanted to say originated in my brain in French instead of in English. And I was able to do so clearly and without repeating myself too much, whether in conversation with friends, requesting une baguette, s'il vous plaît, at the boulangerie, ordering at a restaurant, demanding directions from the bus or train conductor and then, eventually, while wowing my history professor during a final oral exam about the riots of '68.

***

Sometimes I hated the French, truly hated them. Why were they so picky about foreign accents? Couldn't they just be satisfied that people were learning their language and making every attempt to communicate with them in it? Sometimes it seemed they purposefully did that head-turn-and-lean thing just to let me know I sounded étrange--strange, a derivative of the French word for "stranger" or "foreigner"--instead of just responding to my question or statement. Some days I tried so hard to trill my "r"s and tighten my "eaus" that by the end of the day I had a splitting headache, one that probably began at the site of my tensed cheek muscles.

On occasion, I would give them dirty looks to let them know how exasperating they were. Once, I told off a postal worker in English; that way, I reasoned, at least she could register the venom in my voice, if not in my words. The French are famous for their bureaucracies and inefficiently run government offices. And the post office--especially the postal workers--seem to epitomize all that is evil in the French system. Rude, terse, and unhelpful, the postal workers seem to be "workers" in name only. I was trying simply to mail a package to the US. The postal employee, a woman, pretended not to hear me when I asked questions. Finally, I got my package stamped and it went over the counter, ostensibly on its way over the Atlantic. While tucking the rest of my coins into my coin purse and readying to make a quick exit, I blurted, "You are so rude!" I sensed the man behind me in line reacted to my rancor. The woman at whom my vitriol was directed, however, did not. Prochain!--next!--was all she said and she glanced past--no, through--me, the look of complacency never fading from her eyes.

But my love of the language never waned. The French could beat me down, but I'd never stop having an affair with their tongue. I was able to separate their incorrigible nature from the sounds that flowed from their mouths. I've yet to have the opportunity to return to Toulouse, let alone any place else in France, since I left eight years ago after my year abroad. And my chances to write, read, and speak French these days have dwindled, along with once-sharper memories of the people I met, places I toured, and argot I had been able to sling with the best of my French peers. But there's still something about the language that chokes me up, literally. I'm always relieved when I go to a French movie and the lights finally dim in the theater. That way, I know no one will see me begin to cry with pleasure the moment the first word of French resonates from the screen and glides into my ears, my rusty ears.