Foreign languages and I are long-time frenemies. By “foreign languages” I mean languages other than my native of English; by “frenemies” I mean friendly enemies. I claim to speak both French and German, but this is mostly French I am talking about. French and I get on from time to time, sometimes so smoothly as to seem siblings. But most of the time, as much as I want to say I am fluent in any language, really, I’m not. Plain and simple, languages usually hate me. My battle with French was a long one, and it’s one I’m still unwilling to judge. French easily walloped me, but by how large a margin, I’m not sure. Certainly I don’t know French half as well as I’d like, but I have been and can still be a successful tourist in France — thus, did I really get what I needed to out of my language learning? I’m not sure. I’ll never read and wholly understand L’Etranger in its original form, but I can sure as heck dig through it and get quite a bit out of it. When a random French word pops up in everyday use in America, in New York, 9 out of 10 times I know it, and am richer for knowing it. I can pronounce French accurately enough not to embarrass myself. I’m a perfectionist so I always tend to look more on the side of what I cannot do, rather than on the side of all that I have accomplished, but when I try to look on that side I know I’ve accomplished a lot. But is it enough to make me happy?

I was declared “Proficient” in the French language in 8^th grade, when I was thirteen. By fifteen, New York State’s Board of Regents declared me almost perfect on their exam with a score of 98 out of 100. So by high school academic standards, I was pretty good at listening, speaking, reading, and writing French. One of the best experiences I’d had in high school French was the speaking part of the Regents Exam. The teacher read a card with a scenario/question and I had to respond and have a mini conversation. The scenario was, in French, that aliens had landed on Earth and I had to go back to the Important People and describe the aliens to them, to answer their questions regarding the aliens — the descriptions of which I had to pull out of my head. Creatively describe aliens in French? It was an awesome exam question and I was utterly thrilled with myself afterward.

Yes, I got excited regarding an exam. Yes, I have been and am a very large nerd.

College French class, however, was a kick to the teeth. I realized then any sort of fluency I’d pretended to was really my own bloated ego’s desire to be seen as having accomplished such a thing as “fluency”, but it was far from the reality. Fluency means you can carry on a conversation. French sputtered and died on my tongue. Fluency means you can write sentences… without halting every two words and skimming through the grayed recesses of dusty memories for that verb tense or that noun. Really, I was barely fluent.

But the difference, by the end of that semester of intermediate — yes, intermediate — French was astounding… when it came to two things: reading comprehension and writing. I am a grammar whiz, and foreign language grammar is no different. Teach me a rule, its corresponding logic in English, and I’ve got the rule down. Teach me a word, however, and I’ll forget it within a day unless it’s repeated with driven intensity into my skull through a song or repeated phrase. (“Un, deux, trios, pretty mama… quatre, cinq, six, I miss you!” or so sings Bryan on occasion; I’ve no idea where it’s from, but it sticks, even to him, the boy to whom no languages stick.)

Reading comprehension was little different from grammar for me; I’d make a lot of educated assumptions based on context and verbs and grammar rules and, provided some key vocabulary was not above my ability, I’d generally get the idea enough to turn around and argue it in an essay. We read Tocqueville and I read Tocqueville and understood it. I thought I’d finally accomplished something with language learning.

Speaking, however, was and is a different matter.

Forget for a moment that I have bouts of anxiety-driven “stage fright.” (I shook with anxiety through every speech I’ve ever given.) Speaking French was hard for me mainly because I am a visual learner and there is nothing visual in my brain about speaking. Call me crazy but I need to see a word spelled out on the page before I can comprehend it if it’s a new word or a homonym or attempted homonyms.The problem with listening and speaking French is that half the entire language, it seems, can be silent at one point or another, or sound like something completely different than what it is. Les pommes rouges, les jeunes filles — you don’t hear the plural except for the pronunciation of “les” (“lay”) thus without catching the signifying article, you can easily mistake a plural for a singular. That was the absolute least of my issues, but it was a big enough one that when I took the AP Exam in French, I knew it was a doomed endeavor. (Before I was sitting in the room I’d managed to convince myself it wasn’t doomed. Let alone the fact that our teacher for it was more or less a buffoon who toyed around with yahoo.fr instead of actually teaching us…)

So any gains I’d made with my French were always hopelessly torn asunder, in my mind, by my inability to be a well-rounded student. Forever doomed to reading and writing it — and what good, I kept thinking, would that do in France?

A lot, let me tell you.

Traveling to France made me feel a lot better and prouder of my ability with French because I realized that being able to read signs, maps, menus, instructions, and the like is half the tourist battle. The other half is having the gumption to follow through, meaning once you read the menu and understand what’s on it, you have to have the courage to attempt to order it from the waiter. Which naturally does involve some speaking and listening, but hey, it’s contextual after that. Thus I spent a few days in Paris alone, learning at least as much as I had in a year of high school French just by reading everything constantly. Even today, I navigated to Yahoo.fr (which apparently comes http://fr.yahoo.com) and I could read and understand the stories on the main page. If not every single word, enough from context, grammar, and photo to get the article. (Thank goodness, too, for cognates, words that look enough like their English counterparts as to help with vocab — like “célèbre”, “musique”, etc.) Heck, one of the headlines on the entertainment French Yahoo page was “La dé-li-rante parodie de “Twilight”… avec un cheeseburger dans le rôle de Bella ! Regardez !!!” Naturally my interest was piqued and I found this video, which was well worth the time spent browsing. Oh, how I enjoy especially the article, which says,

Avec un gros zeste d’humour, un soupçon de moyens et un plaisir sans borne, l’histoire d’amour entre le vampire Edward (Robert Pattinson) et l’humaine Bella (Kristen Stewart) se transforme en une folle attirance entre un jeune homme gourmand montant aux arbres et un délicieux… cheeseburger !

Which is so much more enjoyable in French than it would be in English. If you can’t read French, it doesn’t matter — the only important part of that whole paragraph is the last bit, how the satire is the story of a young gourmand who climbs trees and “un délicieux… cheeseburger!” Yes, Bella as a delicious cheeseburger. (Twilight now makes sense! Bella was a cheeseburger all along! Who could resist sitting next to that in biology without having a visceral reaction?!)

So in essence, I can’t speak French, but I can read and certainly enjoy it. A victory? Perhaps. Am I fluent? I still wouldn’t claim to be but I suppose I can be satisfied. 

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