Upon moving to Paris I decided that if I wanted to successfully integrate into this new life the first thing I was going to have to do, even before tackling my first novel, was to learn French. I enrolled in the venerable Alliance Francaise. Started by such luminaries as Jules Verne and Louis Pasteur, Alliance Francaise is the language school for French as a second language.
I was in the beginners’ class with 19 other students from 18 different countries: Korea, Japan, Italy, Croatia… Everyone was an absolute beginner, and the all lessons were conducted in French. Needless to say, the going was slow. Too slow for me. A month in, I turned to a private tutor hoping to accelerate through the learning curve… But the reality is, you can only go so fast around a sharp curve, especially with a mind as nimble as a VW bus. And I quickly realized that I would be in for a wild ride, with many, what I like to call, “you’ve got to be kidding me!” moments.
What bone to have to pick with the French language?
Take for instance the annoying rule that all nouns must be either masculine or feminine. This was my first Latin language, and though German has gender nouns, to my mind they don’t get nearly as carried away as the Latin ones. Not only do you have to use the right article “the” or “a,” the adjective modifying it can change to a completely different word. And to my Anglophone mind, many gender assignments are just arbitrary.
The French word for “day” is masculine, but “night” is feminine. “Week” is feminine, but “month” is masculine. And “year” can both ways. What the…?
Some gender assignments are obvious: homme (man) is masculine, femme (woman) is feminine, and some you can determine by the spelling – okay, I get that. BUT then there’s the head-scratchers, one of those “you’ve got to be kidding me” moments: like, vagina is masculine, and at least 2 slang words for penis are feminine. If anyone can explain the reasoning behind that one, please be my guest!
Louis XVI with the Academie Francaise
It appears I can blame the Academie Francaise for this. The institution was started in 1635, and is the preeminent authority on the French language. This august body of 40 members called “the immortals” – yes, you got that right – decide, among many other things, the gender of each noun. They also determine the proper conjugation of every word, including the obscene ones (use your imagination…yes, even that one). I get that these members are highly distinguished and respected individuals (though some are, or have been, politicians), but I still can’t imagine what brought them to determine that certain lady parts are masculine and slang words for the phallus are feminine.
I know… maybe they just wanted to confuse and confound hapless English-speaking students of French.
Here’s another bone I have to pick:
Four months after moving to Paris, we returned to Los Angeles for a visit. One day we encountered a casual French friend who announced that she had become a massage therapist. Anxious to show off my burgeoning French, I remarked that as a happy coincidence I had a pain in my ass. With a scowl, she informed me that she didn’t do THAT kind of massage and stomped off. Oops…
I’ll explain how that happened in a later post.
What’s your worst faux pas when trying to speak a foreign language in the country of origin?
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