Author’s Note: I am well aware that the following post is probably missing accent marks and cedilles galore. Quelle dommage. I can not, for the life of me, figure out how to accurately type in French. And I’m sure that I have made many fautes. Hélas. Excusez–moi. Allons!
What’s the toughest, scariest, most dangerous occupation you can think of? A job that takes a cool head, fearless single-minded determination combined with nerves of steel. Would you say coal miner? Lion tamer? Rattlesnake wrangler? High ironworker? Test pilot? Marine boot camp drill instructor?
If you ask me, my francs are on the elementary school French teacher. That daredevil occupation makes all others seem like potage de canard.
In Dix-neuf cent soixante-et-un, as a sixth grader at the Avoca school in Wilmette, Illinois, I was introduced to the glories of this beautiful language by Mrs. Martha Wright. (Did you ever hear a name more Anglo-Saxon than that? She was pure Midwest and I was too young to know that her accent was less Françoise Sagan and more Katey Sagal.)
But she was tough-minded and gifted enough to drum the basics into me and somehow, magically, she gave me entrée and I fell madly in love with French. It’s been a grand folie å deux ever since.
Her teaching introduced me to the world of Colette, Baudelaire, De Maupassant, Balzac, Racine, Voltaire, Flaubert, (“Madame Bovary, c’est moi.” A touchstone phrase for me) and la divine aforementioned mademoiselle Sagan elle–méme.
(Another author’s note: Everything I have ever learned about love has been taught to me by les maîtres, Colette, Sagan, and Flaubert. Which might account for quite a bit.)
So, naturellement, when my children were petites, I wanted the same experience for them. And I also knew “the sooner the better” when it came to learning another language.
So while they were both lisping out their ABC’s, I signed up Nick and Natasha with kind, patient (and truly French this time) Madame for once-a-week lessons chez elle.
Madame was sweet and her tried-and-true teaching techniques worked well with Natasha. Nick proved to be more of a challenge. His mind wandered and he spent most of the class time playing with her dog. True, he did learn to say “Give me your paw” in flawless French, but try as she could, Madame could never fire him up for anything else å la français.
Nick’s only interest in things with French accents were French fries, French’s mustard, French onion soup and Mario Lemieux.
Every Saturday he’d whine and beg and plead to ditch Madame. But I held the barricades like an extra in Les Miz , and refused to let him out of the Bastille.
“Why do I have to learn French?” he’d wail. “I don’t even know how to spell in English yet!”
Here were my answers. (Feel free to borrow any/all of them if you find yourself in the same bateau.)
You need to speak French because:
1. So you can read a menu. You wouldn’t want to order tête de veau when you really wanted a hot dog, n’est-çe pas?
2. If you don’t speak French how can you appreciate the films of great cinematic auteurs Louis Malle, François Truffaut, Eric Rohmer and Jerry Lewis?
3. It’s the sophisticated language of love. What little boy wouldn’t want to emulate Charles Boyer, Jean Gabin, Yves Montand, Jean-Paul Belmondo or Alain Delon (sigh)?
4. What if you needed to join the French Foreign Legion?
I’m not kidding about rule 4.
December’s issue of Vanity Fair- the one with the cover of pouty Kate Moss doing her best Brigitte Bardot impersonation (another reason to say Vive La France!)- has a harrowing story about the FFL.
The reporter goes behind the scenes and uncovers the hardships, the cruelties, the intense training, the breaking down of mind, body and spirit that goes in to turning your average depraved escaped convict into a loyal Legionnaire.
And all parties interviewed told him that, by far and away, the hardest part of the regimen was learning French. Sacré bleu! This is incroyable! I bet Mrs. Wright could have whipped those legionnaire wannabes into shape at a drop of a kepi.
So I want to take this opportunity to say merci beaucoup to all out there who toil relentlessly- and sometimes thanklessly- to teach our chers enfants this noble tongue.
And when these kids grow up and spend semesters in Paris, or ski at Les Arcs, or blow a king’s ransom at Hermes or L’Ami Louis, or summer with friends at villas in Provence, or want to honeymoon at the Hotel du Cap, they will think back on their professeurs and be grateful to them.
Your wallet, on the other hand, might not be so comme il faut.
C’est la vie, mes amis.
NOW I KNOW WHY I LOVE SPANISH, EVEN THO BOTH ARE ROMANTIC LANGUAGES
J’ai habitee en Lyons pour trois semaines dans la lycée. And now all I got is soup du jour. Go figure!
“Voila l’arc en ciel.” “La tour Eiffel et belle.” Or words to that effect, are all that remain of my childhood French. Trips to Paris have been punctuated with my frequent Mercis, which are always important on any trip you want to survive. That, and a smattering of menu items and vulgarities, learned in adulthood, are my sum total. But my older sister had to choose among three Fulbrights, finally settling on a year based in Dijon, at about the same time you were at Avoca, so I guess it isn’t genetic.
Enfin, tres bien, mon ami. Vous encore parle un peu de cette belle langue. Et merci poor “le comment.” A bientot.
N’est rien, ma petite chou-fleur.
I am truly jealous! I have always been quite proud of my time at Avoca. I even enjoyed my occasional trips to the principal’s office; in fact, I suspect that it was Marie Murphy who first told my mother that I would be well served by going to NSCDS. However, I know that I would have jumped at the chance to study French had it been available while I was there. For some inexplicable reason (someone’s advice, I am sure), I took Latin my freshman and sophomore years at NSCDS; only beginning my French studies sophomore year.
Yes, I am jealous! What a wonderful range of French literature you studied! Françoise Sagan! “Bonjour Tristesse” made quite an impression on me. And that list of authors to which you were introduced at such a young age! I didn’t discover Baudelaire until 1981, when I my second private tutor gave me a Léo Ferré LP with the song “Thank-you Satan”, where he gives thanks for all the deliciously wicked things in the world, as in the line: “Pour les poètes que tu glisses; Au chevets des adolescents; Quand poussent dans l’ombre complice; Des fleurs du mal de dix-sept ans; Thank-you Satan.”. After Françoise explained the meaning of this to me, I rushed out the next day to purchase my first copy of “Les Fleurs du Mal”, followed shortly thereafter by the four books of the Pléiade edition of Baudelaire’s works and correspondence. No matter where my interests may lead me, I always return to Baudelaire with whom I will likely spend the greater part of 2015.
I have always been conscious of the many advantages of being on the leading edge of the baby boom generation, but there have been occasional disadvantages as well. French at Avoca! I am quite happy for you! And I really can’t complain about the French experiences which have come my way, including “L’Enfant et les Sortilèges” when I was only four. I suspect that listening to that LP over and over again aided my later French studies to no small degree. And then there was the discovery of Edith Piaf when I was 15; a friend’s sister returned from Paris with a 45 of “Milord”.
J’adore “Milord!” Quelle chanson. We will have to discuss La Sagan quelquetemps. Have you read “La Chamade?” Made a huge impression on young, impressionable moi.
I have not read Françoise Sagan in years and just her first novel; her opening sentence, « Sur ce sentiment inconnu dont l’ennui, la douceur m’obsèdent, j’hésite à apposer le nom, le beau nom grave de tristesse. », resonates nicely with my present Baudelairien melancholy. It is amazing and wonderful the memories we have waiting to be reinvigorated by conversations such as this one.
Tu as raison. Elle est une scrivaine de genie. (Is this correct?)
Je crois que tu voulais dire qu’elle soit une écrivaine de génie. Perhaps your computer inserted the “s” when you tried to type an accented “e”. I set my keyboard to “United States – International”, which makes accents fairly easy; I type the accent first and then the character. Of course, if begin a quote with a vowel, I must precede it with a space. I also have spell/grammar checks in French, German, Spanish and Italian in Microsoft Word. In any case, your non-use of accents is in no way distracting.
Excellent! Some of this was a typo and some of this was thinking of the word “scrittore- “writer” in Italian. I’m getting illiterate in every language. Thanks for the tutorial.