french...

...it's harder than I thought.

Reading and comprehending French is one thing... speaking it (properly) is quite another. My three-week course one year ago might have accomplished more if I hadn't immediately returned to America for three months afterwards. But what kind of language averages three letters per word that you don't pronounce? And what kind of country has not one, not two, but FOUR national languages??

I could make up a whole list of excuses for why I'm not conversational yet, but instead I'm trying to come up with reasons to convince myself why I need to be able to speak French at all...

Reasons to learn French:
1. So I can go to the post office by myself.
2. So I can read my letters from the government and the bank myself.
3. So I can say something besides "Bonjour, ça va?" to the cleaning lady and the postman.
4. So I can order at a restaurant without the waiter automatically switching to English.
5. So people won't be rude to me when I finally go to Paris.
6. So I can watch more than just 4 news channels.
7. So I can impress people when they come to visit me.
8. So when I leave I will have something to show for living in another country for two years.
9. So I can join the rest of the world outside America in which everybody knows (at least) a second language.
10. So I can prove to myself my own theory that there is nothing I can't learn.

You'd think I would love languages, because I so love words. But it might actually be that love of words and my profound relationship with them that makes it that much harder to learn a whole world of new ones.

The English language is like a dear friend I've grown up with -- familiar, intimate, like family. I've known it as long as I can remember, and I know it inside out. I know its nuances and idiosyncrasies and I know how to bring out its best. It's a relationship I treasure and even marvel at, on occasion.

And French -- French is that aloof stranger I'm intrigued by, but resist being forced to get to know. An imposter in familiar letters, taking on suspicious forms and sounds that I don't recognize. I begrudgingly admire the way French looks... even how it sounds... But it just hasn't endeared itself to me yet. I want to get to know it on my own terms, gradually, until it feels comfortable and fits naturally into my life. It seems so forced and manipulative to spend obsessive hours insisting on a relationship, abusing its pronunciation... My passive personality would much rather casually warm up to a language than stalk it.

At the same time, I realize that many of the best things in my life have come completely uninvited. Including people. Random strangers I never planned to or wanted to meet, thrown into my life with or without my consent. But then somehow, through the disarming subtlety of time and shared experience, we connected. And eventually I realized I couldn't remember life before them or imagine the future without them. They added pieces to my life that I never knew I needed.

So I'm making an effort with French. Extending the hand of friendship, and trying not to be too reluctant about it. It helps that I have the world's most interesting and excellent tutor -- Jean-Pierre.

Jean-Pierre is the definition of "debonaire" -- a perfect Suisse-Romande gentleman and an impressively well-read traveller who is on at least his 4th or 5th language. He fascinates me and frightens me at the same time -- a little like the French language. But he's also like my misplaced Swiss grandfather. What could possibly be intimidating about someone who makes me pumpkin soup and listens to classical music and stops our lessons to play with his dog?

Perhaps if for no other reason, I'll learn French for Jean-Pierre.

:: "It is what we think we know already that often prevents us from learning." – Claude Bernard, French Physiologist