On language

My month in France has provided me with a lot of time, and experiences, to think about languages, relationships, and the truth of the old adage that life is what happens when you're making other plans.

Language seems to me to be a slippery concept. I have been in France now for a month, and I don't actually feel like I know much more French than I did before I came. Try though I might, I just can't get to a point of feeling comfortable speaking it, and I certainly can't understand anyone when they're speaking it. I keep thinking about the Malcolm Gladwell claim that it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert at something, and if that's true then perhaps it's a hopeless case for me learning French: I only had five weeks here, and most days I feel like I get less than ten minutes practice. Even then, often times I'm only saying things like "Merci beaucoup" and "Oui, s'il vous plait", which doesn't really count as practice. In order to get the kind of experience I need speaking the language and learning it, what I really need is... traction.

Traction is a concept I have been giving a lot of thought to lately. More and more I think of it as an essential component of a lot of things in life: sometimes I really crave traction in a conversation with someone else -- anyone else -- after I have spent too much time by myself, as a component of my social health, the way I crave going to the gym when I've been eating too many sweets (traction against a treadmill). Something more than "Hi, how are you?" or "I'll take six bananas please." A real conversation. I think it's impossible to maintain a romantic relationship without traction, a sense of give-and-take between two people, a willingness to share and a responsiveness to each other's ideas, thoughts and feelings. And most of all, to learn a language with any degree of competency requires verbal traction, conversations where you don't know what will come next and the pieces are not the rehearsed phrases you learned from a textbook, but a frantic compilation of words you piece together one by one and have to search for in depth before they come to your mind, and each response is based on what preceded it, not what words you know how to say. Without this, language is slippery: you can rev your engine as much as you want, trying hard to listen to the conversations around you and read the posters on the Metro, but your wheels will just spin and you get nowhere. Without traction, there is no progress and only frustration.

All of this is to say that in my final days in Paris I am trying very hard to seek out opportunities where I can get traction, have real conversations in French where I can practice what I know, be forced to find words that I haven't remembered since seventh grade, and learn new words and colloquial phrases. I love the French language. I love the way it sounds, I love the way it feels to speak it, I love the way people look when they are speaking it -- I think I could identify someone speaking French from thirty feet away across a noisy, crowded restaurant simply because of the way their mouth moves, the facial expressions and arm movements that accompany it. For a long time I have been finding it offensive that I will speak French to someone here and they will automatically respond to me in English. So condescending! Frustrating as well, since on the one hand I wanted the practice of speaking and listening to the language, but on the other hand had incredible difficulty understanding it spoken. I compromise by just continuing to respond in French. I've since realized that, most of the time, French people don't actually speak English all that well, and they respond in English because they too like having the opportunity to practice when one arises. And if there is bitterness there, it's not towards me as an American per se. I have come to see that, over the last century, as the world got smaller, it was always going to be necessary for one language to become universally known, or it would be impossible to get anything done. And the fact that we all speak English is not, exactly, because of the cultural tyranny of the United States, but because there just needed to be a common language. As a coincidence of the circumstances following World War II, it just so happens that the language that came to the fore was English (I think the Marshall Plan takes the blame for this). It could, with different outcomes, have been German, or even Russian. But what really bothers the French, what breaks their heart and engenders such bitterness, is that it was almost theirs. If it is indeed true that the language of diplomacy before World War II was French, than I can imagine that they feel as if this honor was outright stolen from them! Perhaps had their victory been more secure in 1919, or their defeat not been so brutal in 1940, today all schoolchildren would learn their national language, whatever it may be, and French. I think they wanted it so badly, and believed so strongly that they deserved to be the universal linguists, that they still feel sad at having to speak the much cruder, much uglier, English.

I also figured out eventually that they weren't speaking English to me because they thought I was an obnoxious American. They spoke English to me only because they could tell I wasn't French, and to make it easier, reverted to what they knew was our common language -- whether I was German, Saudi Arabian, Brazillian, or Kazakh, they could be sure I would speak English. I have, on several occasions, been asked if I was Danish, and once had a couple begin speaking to me in Russian because they were sure from looking at me that that's what I was. (I can understand that my aristocratic paleness would be confusing).

Overwhelmed with all these thoughts about language, especially after seeing my first French action movie on Friday afternoon, that evening I went out to see an opera at the lavish 19th century Palais Garnier. On the Metro were dozens of enthusiastic rugby revellers, off to see the Six Nations tournament game against Wales that night at the Stade du France (I tried to get tickets, but they were €263!) who spontaneously burst into singing Les Marseillaise on the train. It made me incredibly happy to hear them (finally, something other than apathy from the French!); it is, after all, truly the best national anthem in the world, or at least the most militant, and I couldn't help but feel like I was in Rick's Café Americain after Victor Laszlow strikes up the band. Alors, when I got to the opera I learned that it was sold out, even for last minute student tickets. I didn't want to feel like it had been a waste to trek all the way out to the 9e, so I decided to spend my opera money instead on dinner at a nice theater district restaurant. I also decided to start trying to be more adventurous when ordering food at restaurants so I could experience more of French cuisine.

The elderly waiter who greeted me was characteristically cold and snooty, and, as one would expect, replied to me in English when I spoke in French. I ordered the poulet roti (roasted chicken -- kind of boring, but the only other options on the prix fixe menu were steak frites and pasta carbonara, neither of which seemed very French) and he brought my entree extremely quickly, which I assume was because it looks bad for a restaurant to have a lonely diner sitting in the window. I resisted the temptation to follow up my meal with a tarte aux pommes, and instead, for dessert I had... cheese. With bread. And tomatoes. Which will never feel like dessert to me. When he brought me my hot chocolate, the waiter asked where I was from (having thought, like others, that I was from Denmark), and engaged me in a really friendly conversation about the cold weather and travelling in Europe -- unexpected, to say the least, considering the extremely cool reception, but really nice all the same to have some traction. He told me my French was very good, and that I spoke much better than the "infernal students" who came in all the time.

I started to think -- maybe it wasn't always the French that were being so cold, but maybe they think I'm the one being distant and rude and quiet. After all, I'm trying so hard to think of the right words all the time, I don't smile, and I could see how nervousness could be mistaken for indifference. Or maybe they too are nervous, because they want to speak and be understood, and it makes them come off as being less than friendly. I vowed once again to start smiling all the time, at everybody, no matter how they act towards me. God knows my parents paid enough for these teeth, I might as well get something out of it every once in a while!

As I sipped my hot cocoa in the window, grinning madly to no one in particular, two young professional guys walked in and sat at the table next to me to have drinks. I guess a single girl sitting at a table by herself seems like a pretty inviting situation, and I shortly found out that these two guys, Julian and Tanneguy, were investment bankers, having just gotten off work, who were very happy to give me more of an opportunity to practice speaking French. They thought they were so smooth... they complimented me on my "superb" French, which I denied, and then said "No, ree-ly, your French eez better zan our Eenglish!" (All French people are Fleur Delacour, I should point out). This was actually true, their English was very bad, and it made me feel better about constantly making up adverbs by adding -ment to everything: probablement, actuellement, prochainement (the latter translates to "nextly" which I'm pretty sure can't possibly sit well with the Academy). They invited me to come with them to their next bar, and, feeling game for another adventure, I accepted, if for nothing else than another hour of language practice and another free drink.

(NB: It is an extreme privilege in this world to be a young woman. I don't take it for granted. It opens up a world of opportunities that are afforded to almost no one else. Who would talk to a middle aged guy sitting by himself in a restaurant? Or even a young guy? I recognize the vulnerabilities of this position, but, being as I am quite aware of my surroundings, mostly for me it means free drinks. Personally I'd rather have free chocolate cake, but I guess I'll take what comes).

French men will never cease to amuse me. On the way back to the sixieme and another café, Julian took an important call on his Blackberry... from his mom.

What a baller.

Also, Frenchmen always want you to come with them for a drive in their car, and when you conscientiously refuse, they are extremely offended. This has happened to me on a handful of occasions. I think partly it's because they understand the implication that you don't trust them (and that you don't really "love taking the Metro"), but also because, if they actually own a car (as opposed to a Moped), they are really proud of it. They always want to try to impress you, although their two-door Citroen hatchbacks are hardly enough to take a girl's breath away. Maybe it's not French men specifically though. As my friend Valerie from Saint Merri would say, les hommes sont les hommes...

I stayed for one drink and then decided it was time to go home, politely declining the offers to take a "promenade around Paris" with the boys, which probably made them realize I was only using them for their French; I think Frenchmen are imbued with aggressive enough egos though that they can handle the rejection, so I don't feel badly about it. Despite having missed the opera, I was pretty happy with how the night turned out.

After an evening of solid French conversation, and having had a couple others like it, I feel like I have made progress. I had been imagining myself, trying to learn French, clinging to a rocky cliff, trying to grasp a rope that was dangling just out of my reach. And every time I touched it, it would swing further away again. Finally, I feel like I have a hold of the rope. I still have a long way to climb up, but I think I got a hold of it at last. With traction, and a lot of effort, I might get further still.

On Saturday I continued my efforts to pursue adventurous French cuisine, and ate at Café du Metro near my apartment. I had a Southwestern Style salad -- served hot, with prunes, ham, walnuts, tomatoes, gizzards, and a poached egg. I'm not going to lie, it was pretty gross. Especially the gizzards. But I tried it -- right now, I'm game for anything once. I continued my culinary daring and for dessert asked for the Baba Au Rhum, which was described in English as "a traditional Baba with rum". Not very helpful, I thought. But I tried it. It turns out that was actually a really accurate description. They could have just said "rum." It came out as an angel food cake, shaped like a giant muffin and embedded with raisins, and soaked -- I mean, seriously, soaked -- in rum. It was strong but tasty, and I ate the whole thing; when I got up to leave I found myself walking home drunk as a sailor and using building walls to steady myself. I staggered into bed and passed out, fully clothed, although it was only 8 o'clock, and slept for a solid twelve hours for the first time since I got here.

And so I continue to seek out opportunities for traction, when I can. Although I'm self conscious about my French, I try to tell myself that French people are flattered that I'm trying, and if I smile enough they will just think I'm cute and not take offense. Perhaps it goes without saying, though, that few opportunities seem to exist to talk to French women here. Alors... c'est la vie. Les hommes sont les hommes...