Learning French

When I staggered off the plane the morning I arrived three months ago, my French vocabulary consisted of three words: "bonjour," "si vous plait," and "merci." "Au revoir" cannot be included because I couldn't actually say it; while I find the French 'r' sound quite fun to practice, it is not easy to use, and that word has two of them. I had known I would be moving to France/French Switzerland for several months before I actually did so, but taking a class in French did not work out, because of the combination of my university's rather crazy French department/graduate school course-taking policies and my unwillingness to haul myself across town to the community college. Hey, my car had been quietly declared about to die by the mechanics, and I had other things that needed my time. Like research.

Besides, working at CERN does not require foreign language abilities (programming languages excepted). All of the physicists working here know English to some degree. Virtually all of the secretaries, security guards, and other CERN staff do as well. In fact, the only places on CERN that insist in operating in French are the restaurants, and I'm pretty sure everyone there speaks English, too. They understand English questions and references; they will just insist on talking to you in French, first.

However, living in France without knowing French is a different story. While I've never met anyone particularly snotty about their language, everything is labeled in French. My bank statements are in French. The instructions on how to set up my internet router were in French. Announcements over the loud speakers in stores and on trams are in French. Everything at the grocery store is labeled in French. If nothing else, I needed to learn enough French to know what foods I was buying; there are some things for sale in French butcher shops I would not want to accidentally purchase. Besides, it is highly demoralizing to walk around a city feeling like you are deaf.

So learning French climbed my list of priorities with alacrity. I had brought a teach-yourself-French book with me, inherited another from an intern who I met here, and started attending some language classes hosted by my church. My vocabulary began to grow. It was about a month after my arrival when I had my first break-through. I was riding the tram into Geneva and staring out the window when I saw a McDonald's sign with the slogan "la bonne prix pour les bonne amis." I thought to myself, "hmm, that means the good price for the good friends." Then I skipped my way around town for the next two days because I had read a phrase.

Learning a foreign language teaches one to appreciate anew all the milestones that meant so much to one as a child.

However, I found that learning French comes with two struggles. The first is learning the words and grammar, the struggles common to learning any language. That takes motivation and memorization, which I could handle. The second struggle is parsing the French accent itself as an English speaker. French has several sounds that don't exist in English, and those sounds correspond to combinations of letters that are pronounced completely differently in English. While my ability to read French grew with reassuring speed, my ability to comprehend spoken French lagged. A lot.

This morning, I betook myself to a garden store in the course of some frantic errand-running. When I got up to the cash register, the cashier rang up my items and then asked me for my postal code. I kind of stuttered, because that is not what they normally ask for at the cash register and how often do I need my postal code here anyway, but I managed to get out the correct string of numbers.

Now, don't ask me exactly what she said, because it was in French and I didn't catch it. But she asked for my postal code in French, and I responded in French. Je peux apprendre le francais!