language – Mysterium Coniunctionis

After 13 months in France my confidence with the spoken tongue has developed reasonably well. I try to push myself to read French daily, to read literary French and also news media French. But I should listen more to the radio and watch television and films in French because my ear needs work–sometimes I simply don’t hear things correctly, and I need much more facility with he idioms and also the shortcuts French speakers use, their means of simplifying and contracting and making musical the language.

Also–I need to speak French more regularly with locals. I do speak to clients often but these are formal and simple interactions, well-rehearsed host-client stuff, typically very basic. Occasionally a client will have more complex questions, or will venture into questions about my origins or accent or how we ended up in remote rural France from the USA, and I’ll get to push my French a bit. Often I end up in these situations trying to remember the subjunctive form of a verb and stalling out. Nobody cares, however, about the subjunctive and I should simply throw the verb out in any form because the sense will be understood and that’s what matters more than grammatical exactitude and precision. I need the confidence to say something incorrectly rather than the confidence to speak fluently.

I was outside last week speaking to a gite client from England and a small white van pulled over. The driver said something to my guest but he did not understand, and waved me over. There was a woman at the passenger window nearest me. The driver asked from over her shoulder “Is there a store in this town which sells paint and paint supplies?”

I replied, in French, “Yes, there is a store called Brico, and it is about 800 meters up the road on the left at the circle.” The driver of the van looked at me and was a bit confused. Then I realized he had asked the question in SPANISH, not French, so I replied in Spanish as best I could and he smiled and waved and drove off.

It was a weird experience to understand his question and how to answer but to have not realized which language it was. For a moment I was in that zone where instead of thinking about language and response I was simply doing it. But in the wrong tongue!

Recently I’ve caught myself mixing Spanish into French again. At a local flea market yesterday a French woman asked how I was doing (“tous va bien?”) and I replied “Muy bien,” which made her laugh. I’ve also been saying “y” instead of “et” for and regularly–not sure why!

The quest for speaking and listening fluency I suppose will last as long as I’m here. I want to learn some German or Italian also to make things worse.

Pere Goriot took a while. I started reading it over a year ago as we prepared to move from Panama to France. I felt I needed to brush up my language skills, and had never read a Balzac novel.

The French was challenging at first, and I took it slow, reading a few pages a day. Lots of detailed descriptions, often quite flowery, with unfamiliar adjectives and colloquial expressions. Also, the use of the literary past tense which is not typical in spoken French was a bit difficult at first–I’d forgotten some of those forms.

But the last 20% of the novel I blew through quickly. I think my confidence in French reached a level I’d not had in 20 years, and suddenly I could breeze through pages instead of struggling and looking up multiple words.

It’s strange that when I got my degree in French Lit we did not read Balzac. Pere Goriot is a true masterpiece, a document of Parisian culture, a portrait of class divisions and the morals and ethical complications individuals faced when trying to break into the life of the glittering upper crust, or trying desperately to remain there. It’s difficult to say much without spoiling it–but Rastignac certainly learns a great deal about himself and the woman he ‘loves’ (or at least needs in order to ascend in society).

I would like to continue reading the Comedie Humaine, but must be selective. Perhaps Illusions Perdus and a couple others? I’m at the stage of life where I have to decide carefully what reading I want to accomplish, and what I would like to reread. I likely have a couple decades left and I already have 30 years of books I would like to read or re-read, LOL. And trying to complete reading lists in French and English, while hopefully adding some Spanish into the mix–makes me wonder where I’ll find the time.

And speaking of searching for time, I’d like to tackle Proust in French, and fear that might take up more than I have left!