A Conversation Initiated by my French Book

It was one of those nights: up way past my bedtime, struggling to keep my eyes open, I opened my French book, determined to finish my assignment by tomorrow. As I stared at the lines I was supposed to be transcribing, visions of IPA symbols danced in my head. I started at the first line. /il plœʀ dã mõ kœʀ/… No, that couldn’t be right. /il pløʀ dã mõ køʀ/… I muttered the sounds to myself, trying to make sense of them, resting my head in my hands. My eyes were so heavy…

“Ahem.”

I jerked my head up. A strange green face was glaring down at me from midair, with the words FR 3038 written across it, and one wiry curl across the top of its head. Come to think of it, that curl probably was a wire.

“Sleeping on the job, are we?”

“Uh… what?” I tried to rub the sleep out of my eyes. “Wait a minute… you’re my French book. You can levitate?”

My French book laughed. “So it would seem. More to the point, I can talk. And one thing I can tell you is that you’re struggling with your homework.”

I sighed. “After five months in France, my pronunciation is halfway decent. I know how these words are supposed to sound; it’s just that the symbols all get jumbled up in my head. And sometimes, my French prof says something should be pronounced a certain way, when I’ve heard it pronounced otherwise.”

“Ah, well, you of all people should know that there are many different ways of pronouncing things. France has as much dialectal variation as an area of comparable size in America; say, Texas. And most professors are only concerned with what is considered the standard dialect.”

“But I don’t care about the standard dialect!” I said, eyes closed in exasperation. “I don’t want to sound like a walking, talking, college essay; I want to sound like a real person on the street! I want to shorten words; run sentences together; use the latest slang; speak with a southern accent! That’s what I love about living languages: that they’re always growing and evolving with the people. I want to be able to express my true self through my words, and understand the nuances and inflections well enough to understand the expressions of others. I’m not in it for the grade.”

My French book made a condescending sound, shaking his head. “Yes, that much is clear. But don’t you see what your attitude reflects? It just shows why you’re a linguistics major, not a French major. You would rather learn about the way people really speak and why they speak that way than how they should speak.”

I sighed. “Yes, and that was kind of the whole point of my going to France, to learn more about the way French people really interact linguistically. But I don’t feel like I made very much progress, really. I found it much more difficult to make friends in France than I do back home, and I don’t normally have the easiest time making friends.”

“Oh… I think you made more progress than you think,” replied my French book.

“Really?” I asked, skeptically.

“Yes,” he stated, “For example, how often did you participate in social interaction that required you to have some form of conversation, however long, entirely in French?”

“Oh, on a daily basis,” I replied.

“Well, there you go, that’s no small thing. And that’s just a start. How often did you have conversations, entirely in French, which challenged you intellectually because of content rather than verb conjugations?”

I thought for a moment. “Well, those sorts of conversations generally occurred with my classmates between classes, or during classes. The conversations between classes were fun and engaging, especially because I was able to talk to a wide variety of people. My classmates were from all over. But the discussions in class were much more stressful, because my French professors were much more prone to publicly criticize than my American professors. So it was much more difficult to think of anything to say when I was afraid that anything I had to offer would be shot down. I work pretty hard to ignore social anxiety in many group settings as it is.”

“Understood,” he replied, nodding gravely. “But recall, though: did anyone ever actually outright laugh at something you said?”

“Oh, only once,” I said nonchalantly, “but that was nothing. They were little kids, and if I were them, I would have laughed at me too. I actually loved to see them laugh. It was great to see little kids interacting and playing; it reminded me that all people, no matter where they’re from, start out exactly the same: as a baby, with no language, and no cultural presuppositions. Kids are kids.”

“Indeed,” my French book said thoughtfully. “You probably would have had a much richer experience had you stayed with a French family rather than by yourself in a dorm.”

“That’s for sure,” I replied.”

My French book paused, creasing his forehead in thought (I hoped the crease wasn’t permanent): “So, do you think meeting with that French family helped you feel more culturally integrated?”

I thought for a moment. “Yes, to an extent,” I replied,” “but it was partially the way I met them. I met them through church, and I think going to that church helped me a great deal to feel slightly more culturally integrated. I knew enough French to be able to get the gist of most of the sermons, and follow along in the Bible. And because that particular protestant denomination was somewhat liturgical, it wasn’t long before I could follow along in the prayer book and familiarize myself with some of the hymns and prayers, which of course helped with my French.” I paused. “It was also a good place for me in that it was a sort-of cultural safe haven. Having been brought up in the church, and having been a Christian for as long as I can remember, I am very familiar with the basic tenets of the Christian faith. And, despite some minor doctrinal differences, Christianity is basically the same from people group to people group, which is easy enough to see once you understand the sermon. I was worshiping the same God; my God. That was my respite; my breath of fresh air, and sometimes it was what kept me going when I felt like I was going insane or losing my sense of identity in the mad rush of understanding the French culture.”

“Yes,” My French book said as soon as he could get a word in, “but you said it helped you to feel integrated. You still haven’t explained how.”

“Well…” I reflected for a moment. “I think, if I had chosen to stay longer, that it’s a place where I could have made some kind of contribution, and been a valuable member of a group rather than just a leech. I think contributing to a group is really the only way to feel integrated into it. For example, I noticed that the tiny church I attended had a desperate need for better children’s programs. In the family I got to know, the parents would take turns staying home with the baby on Sundays because there simply wasn’t anyone to look after her during the service. I know enough about childcare to have helped, if I had chosen to stay longer.”

“If you had chosen to stay longer. That seems to be a recurring theme. But I’m curious: did you ever dream in French?”

“Yes… just once, a few weeks before I left. In the dream, I still stumbled for words, but it was definitely in French.”

My French book looked smug. “There, you see? That’s tangible evidence of progress, even if it’s just a milestone on the road to fluency.”

“So… basically, I was on my way to making significant progress towards fluency. If I were to go back, do you think I could pick up where I left off?”

He smiled. “I think there’s only one way to find out.”

Slowly, a strange buzzing noise filled my head, and I realized my eyes were closed, only I felt like I was levitating, much like my French book a few moments ago. Then I realized half of my face was squished against something smooth and hard, and I opened my eyes. I had fallen asleep on my French book. I sighed, and pushed my hair back out of my face. Time to finish my homework.