Parlez-vous français?

December 2019

It seems to me that the only things that I do well are those things that I learned when I was very young.  Malcolm Gladwell refers to the 10,000 hours needed to fully master a skill and I believe there is something to that.

French is one of them.  I have always loved the French language: the very soul of it, the variety of accents: Parisian, Norman, québécois and the southern French twang when they say bouillabaisse. I love how I feel when I speak French, read in French, dream in French.

You see, I had some help learning it. My mother, Mamín, was born in Nice, in the south of France in 1921. Despite having escaped it in 1941 as the Germans advanced, first for El Salvador, then Washington, and later Canada, Mamín always loved France and was determined to impart that love to me. My mother was a very determined woman.

From a young age, I would make the trek from school home for lunch.  Mamín would prepare a typical 1960s lunch of Campbell’s soup, a small tuna or ham sandwich, with the crusts removed, a few celery or carrot sticks and Jello. This modest repast was often followed by my private French lessons.  We sat at our dark, gleaming mahogany dining table, which moved with us from home to home every two to three years, following my dad’s military postings.

Mamín’s bible for these lessons was a slim blue book entitled Premier Livre by M.D. Berlitz. It had tiny print, black and white illustrations of glamorous foreign people, and small drawings of L’Arc de Triomphe, Notre-Dame and Les Invalides.

“C’est M. Berlitz. Il a un crayon”, referring to a polished looking gentleman in a double-breasted suit and moustache.

“Cest Mme Berlitz. Elle a une clé.”, depicting an elegant lady in a hat with ostrich feathers.

“M. Lefèvre ouvre la porte avec la clé”, again that dapper suit, with flared pants, vest, hat and walking stick.

All this could not have been more remote from the reality of my life in Shilo, Manitoba, a military base on the Canadian prairies, where we were more likely to see tumbleweed and gophers than grand cathedrals and monuments. There were no hats with ostrich feathers or debonair suits. Pastel polyester pants, baggy snowsuits and brown galoshes, adorned with a hideous buckle, formed the uniform of choice. And yet, this book was not so different from our drab school textbooks, with their blocks of small, dense black print, relieved by the occasional dull illustrations or map of Canada, with perhaps a small touch of red.

My mother’s lips, always painted with red lipstick, articulated the French words and she carefully corrected my pronunciation. She spoke of the pink villas of Nice, of trips to the beach in Juan les Pins and of her school in Monaco. The music floating through our house was of the French chansonniers my mother missed: Edith Piaf, Charles Trenet, Maurice Chevalier.

Thanks to these private lessons, my hand was always up first in French class.  My accent was complimented; my grades excellent, and I won a provincial prize for one of my presentations in French, a recital of a rather forgettable poem called “Un chat”. My mother beamed with pride that afternoon as I was awarded my prize. This would not always be the case in later years. 

As I grew more confident, this led to French immersion experiences, long before the introduction of such a policy. At school, I was tested and streamed into a small class with native French speakers. I was completely lost, drowning, and cried for days. But eventually I was able to perfect the dictée, and my confidence grew.

I recall a summer in Turkey when I was 15, playing tennis with French friends at the Embassy of France, where I willingly immersed myself and played with two girls from Paris: Sylvie and Sabine, but much more importantly, with three handsome brothers: Bernard, Patrick and Laurent Mantel. They were much older than me and one attended medical school in France. At the end of that summer, I was no closer to a French romance, but my grasp of the French language had greatly improved.

At Queen’s University, I majored in political science and French literature, and spent my third year studying at the Université de Paul Valéry in Montpellier, France, enrolling in the regular classes for French students.  My learning was augmented by playing cards on the beach, learning the history of the Languedoc area, tasting its local specialties, perfecting French argot (slang) and picking grapes during the vendange, labour for which I was paid in wine.

I was shocked when a paper I wrote on the author Georges Bernanos was awarded the highest mark in a class of over 100 French-speaking students. One of my French friends, Patrick Josset was so surprised and proud of me that he designed an elaborate menu for a celebratory dinner in my honour and uncorked a bottle of wine he had been given years before for a special occasion in his own life.

My reading ranged from Le Figaro to Beauvoir, Sartre, Jean Genet, Rimbaud, Verlaine to Le Canard Enchaîné. Poetry, news, novels, in cafés, on trains, in parks.  All of it, and I loved it.

I seized upon every opportunity to speak French, and inhaled French films, which often involved long scenes of intense discussion while smoking or drinking, not unlike my year in Montpellier.

French was not something that had to be drilled into me as an aspiring federal civil servant, forced to pass French exams to keep my job or secure a promotion. I couldn’t understand why my colleagues were so against learning French, and resented being sent away to study it.  I would have loved nothing better, but my fluency put an end to that.

My daughter Marisa moved to Paris in 2009 at the age of 24, determined to use her European passport and immerse herself in French language and culture, building on her French immersion background.  Within six months, her French became rapid, fluent and Parisian, with a fashion sense to match. And now she delights in reading French books to her own young children.

Marisa and I have both had our 10,000 hours of French; Gladwell would be pleased.  Yes, I believe I do best what I learned young - “Mais oui, je parle français”.