Sunday 15 June 2008

Pardon my French

We're getting close to where the St Jacques' pilgrims will be legion and we have begun to wonder whether the tracks will be worn bare and whether every bed and café table will be filled long before we arrive. But our main cause of sadness that our (mostly) solitary peregrinations are about to end comes from the thrall in which the world holds the English language.

Until now we have resolutely conducted our life - outside of ourselves - in French. Not just me: David has thrown himself into conversations with our hosts or the people we've encountered in the language of the country we're visiting. When waiters, shop assistants or tourist officials reply in English we smile, continue for a few words likewise to show their effort is appreciated then politely return the conversation to French. And by now, indeed, it is easier for us to think and speak in French for such transactions: there is less risk of confusion. Regional variations of accent now throw us only temporarily.

Occasionally David experiences that fatigue from the fierce concentration of keeping up in a foreign language and he'll zone out for a while - keeping just enough of a sixth sense to smile or nod on cue. But then he might do that in English too, when the conversation rattles on to grandchildren or health or hairstyles; and once or twice - but very rarely - walk-weariness makes him impatient with my eagerness to gossip with anyone and everyone, just because I can. Although even I tried desperately to disengage from the discussion of the Queen's fashion sense in one village alimentation.

While my writing keeps me firmly in the anglophone world I increasingly relate our experiences to myself in French. So does David. He'll often break a walking silence to confirm some point of vocabulary or grammar. Back in January I still had to concentrate hard on other people's conversations or on the TV news to grasp everything that was said. Now, I'm in danger of chuckling over the joke at the next table before they do.

I wonder how I got this easy knowledge of contemporary expressions and slang? I remember when I arrived as an au pair fresh from passing A Level French it took me weeks to convert the static, written language of school into something to use in human relationships. And then it turned out most of my conversation was baby talk picked up from the kids. Homesick, I drifted into an English-based social life and at first my language was so bad that I and a fellow student at college struggled on for ages in French, believing each other to be French, before realising that we'd grown up not twenty miles apart in Derbyshire.

Later, teaching outside Paris, my lessons were (in theory at least) conducted in English, as were my off-hours due to the international nature of the teachers there. Only for a couple of months one summer in the Dordogne did most of my life get played out amongst adult-speaking French people.

So it can only be by osmosis - the method of lanuage-learning called "immersion" - plus constant brave attempts, that has brought us both to the ease in French we can claim today.

So why the sadness?

It's sad and seemingly inescapable that if you put more than two nationalities together their only common language will be English. In Prague during my rather more forlorn attempts to learn Czech, my friend Karla commented that she pitied English people and couldn't understand that I felt humble when all the rest of the world speaks English while native English speakers are such bad linguists. "But that means everyday your language is invaded by others," she said, "and therefore weakened, destroyed, made less than it really is." It was a wise comment, coming from someone who loves the beauty of words passionately.

So far the few other pilgrims we have met have been Dutch or Belgian and although we obstinated in French, their blank faces brought us quickly back to English. Even the Belgians. Despite the fact that these people are similarly spending several weeks or months in France and seem to expect to negotiate cheap or free lodgings and food at every turn.

No doubt when we ourselves reach Spain our smug attitude will disappear and we'll fall with relief on any English-speaking Spanish person to get us out of difficulties. But we hope not. We had planned to set aside a couple of weeks between countries to refresh our previous attempts to learn Spanish. That might no longer be possible, but if we can find MP3 versions of Spanish lessons for our phones we will at least try the immersion tactic in Spain too. It's yet another reason to continue to prefer chambres d'hote over the more international (and therefore English-speaking) walkers' hostels.

15th June 2008

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