Now Playing in Paris

by Dorty Nowak

Several years ago my husband and I moved to Paris.  Although I was an avid student of French culture and cuisine, my knowledge of the French language was minimal.  Freshman year in college I dropped out of French 101 because partying was much more fun than memorizing vocabulary, a decision I’ve regretted ever since.  Over the years I had accumulated several “French for Travelers” texts, some Berlitz tapes, and enough rudimentary vocabulary to get by on my occasional vacations in France. 

photo via Flickr.com by Luca OrsiConsequently, I arrived in Paris with the linguistic skills of an eight year old.  During the next two years, I attended classes at the prestigious Alliance Française de Paris.  Although a diligent student this time around, I was at least thirty years older than most of the students in the class, and proof positive that older brains are slower to learn new languages. I filled a bookshelf with grammar and vocabulary workbooks in my quest for fluency, and another with novels in French aimed at the pre-teen market.  I also acquired a very active inner critic.

My critic was right there with me every time I spoke.  I felt his grim presence from the time I opened my eyes in the morning until I closed them at night.

“No, no, you idiot,” he would shout in my ear. “You should have used the passé compose, not the present!  Why can’t you remember the word for ‘idiot’?   How many times do I have to tell you to use “vous” instead of “tu” when you answer me?” 

As a consequence of this constant barrage, I became almost tongue-tied.  There were long painful pauses between my words as I frantically ran their “rightness” by my critic.

According to one of my teachers, to become fluent I needed to develop a “French brain.” 

“How will I know when I have one?”  I asked. To which she responded, “When you dream in French.”

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French Camp Failure

by Jules Older

As Effin and I left Vermont for French Immersion Camp in Quebec, I felt scared.

I had reason for fear. I nearly flunked French in high school. I did flunk Latin, got a D in German, just squeaked by Spanish. I kept switching languages in the forlorn hope I'd find one I was good at. I never did.

So why was I voluntarily leaving for seven days of French immersion in La Belle Province? Two reasons.

The most pressing: I edit Canada’s biggest ski magazine, a Quebec-based venture, where every one of my colleagues is bilingual. And while they generously switch to English whenever I'm there, I'm tired of being the only single-language idiot in the room.

The second reason is a fond hope I've clung to since my less-than-stellar experience in high school French/Latin/German/ Spanish. I've always said that the problem wasn’t me; oh, no, the problem was the way language is taught. I claimed (and almost believed) that if I were thrown into an environment where, say, French is spoken—as opposed to parsed, declined, memorized and chopped into small bits—I'd soon be speaking it like a native.

So. Alors. It’s crunch time for my dignity and my theorizing. On to Quebec!

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