by Lauren Collins
Libby eBook
Published: 2016
Genre: nonfiction memoir
I borrowed this when I was contemplating refreshing my acquaintance with French. It has taken me a long time and a lot of renewals to finish, but it's a pretty incredible book for language lovers.
The author fell in love with Olivier in her early thirties while in London. The two end up married and living in Switzerland. She chronicles her journey of learning French culture as well as language with honesty, information, and a good sense of humor.
Part One / The Past Perfect: Le Plue-Que-Parfait
Olivier was careful of what he said to the point of parsimony; I spent my words like an oligarch with a terminal disease. My memory was all moods and tones, while he had a transcriptionist's recall for the details of our exchanges. Our household spats degenerated into linguistic warfare.
She is such a wonderful writer! I love how she expresses herself.
Part One / The Past Perfect: Le Plue-Que-Parfait
A flank steak, I would have assumed, is a flank steak, no matter how you say it. We think of words as having one-to-one correspondences to objects, as though they were mere labels transposed onto irreducible phenomena.
Some of her stories are hilarious but also sad. I can so relate to her frustration in asking for something in French and not being understood. The idea that all things have a single word to describe them is an easy fallacy to believe!
Two / The Imperfect: L'Imparfait
"Sonny LaMatina"
When she shared the "words" to Frére Jacques as her five year old self sang them, I laughed! I often mis-hear song lyrics and "Sonnez les matines" (ring the bells) does sound like a guy's name. Funny! I especially loved singing this song when I was little because I had a French uncle named John who was a Catholic priest! Father John . . .
Two / The Imperfect: L'Imparfait
While my bunkmates jotted cheery letters to their families, I whimpered into my pillow, an incipient hodophobe racked by some impossible mix of homesickness and wanderlust.
I noted this for two reasons. First of all, I had to look up "hodophobe" (dislike or fear of traveling) and I love books that push me intellectually. Secondly, I empathized with this little girl who wanted to travel and also wanted to be home. Collins is brutally honest about chronicling her weaknesses and mistakes.
Two / The Imperfect: L'Imparfait
He directed the ROTC, which was supposed to stand for Result of Torn Condom.
I know this is a crude joke, but it's a joke I've never heard before and it made me laugh. I have heard the organization called "rotsy" but forgot that it stood for Reserve Officers Training Corps.
Two / The Imperfect: L'Imparfait
In 1979 a presidential commission declared that "Americans' incompetence in foreign languages is nothing short of scandalous, and it is becoming worse."
The history lesson here was so interesting. After Sputnik, the U.S. government wanted to fund more foreign language programs to help us be more globally competitive. The funding was short-lived, though, and we're back to being English only speakers for the most part.
Two / The Imperfect: L'Imparfait
" . . . And then we go over to Europe and all we can say is 'Merci beaucoup,' right?" President Obama said on the campaign trail in 2008, confessing his monolingualism as a source of personal shame (even if, for electoral purposes, it was likely an asset).
I think this is true of most Americans. It's kind of sad. I wish I had become bilingual and used two languages regularly! At this point, I don't think it's going to happen.
Three / The Past: Le Passé Composé
In college I fell in love with a tall Tennessean who directed his considerable intellectual gifts largely toward gambling on sports. The son of a southern lawyer and a serious-minded northern mother, he was so much like me: a partier and a reader, as introverted as he was sociable, stuck between two parts of himself whose ambitions and desires often seemed to be in direct opposition.
I just like her words and the juxtapositions of concepts.
Three / The Past: Le Passé Composé
The problem of translation is perhaps most acute in literature, to which renderings must be true in spirit as well as letter. Even the most diligent and creative translators find themselves hard-pressed to replicate such techniques as rhythm, assonance, alliteration, idiom, onomatopoeia, and double meaning. (Dr. Seuss books, with their oddball rhymes and invented words, are said to be the Nikita Khrushchevs of the written word.)
This tickled my funny bone, but also made me think about the challenges inherent in translating a work of literature.
Four / The Present: Le Présent
The Académie Française - the world's first national body dedicated to the stewardship of a language - was established in 1635, "to give certain rules to our language and to render it pure, eloquent, and capable of treating the arts and sciences."
Wow! I was vaguely aware of this organization, but hearing about it in the other French language audiobook I read and then in "print" in this book made me do some online reading. The French are incredibly serious about their language!
Four / The Present: Le Présent
Despite its pretensions to clarity, French can be trying. Vert (green), verre (glass), ver (worm) vers (toward), and vair (squirrel fur) constitute a quintuple homonym, not even counting verts, verres, and vers (you don't pronounce the final s in French).
We often hear about how difficult English is to learn, but this example is one of the reasons that I prefer to read and write French rather than listen and speak it! She goes on to talk about Cinderella's "pantoufle en verre" (glass slipper) which might have been a misheard "pantoufle en vair" (fur shoe).
Four / The Present: Le Présent
I often tease Olivier about the way he says "can't remember" - "can tree member," as though he were describing a still life of soup, oak, and penis.
This made me think of my mom and dad and language pronunciations! My dad used to say that my mother taught "turd" grade because he couldn't pronounce "third" correctly. Oh, we were not nice about that.
Five / The Conditional: Le Conditionnel
One French newspaper had a column that recapitulated the best tweets of the week in more characters than they took to write.
Again, this just tickled my funny bone! All that verbiage to express "turducken." Too funny! (And yes, I was too lazy to type all that AND add in the correct accents.)
Six / The Subjunctive: Le Subjonctif
"They're going to go bananas over you, go berserk," she said, overlooking the fact that her paraphrase would probably have been incomprehensible to anyone under twenty-five, regardless of his native language.
This is Lauren's mom "explaining" what she meant by calling Olivier's brother(?) a "huge ladies' man." His confusion over that expression was NOT clarified by the bananas and berserk explanation. Language can be so tricky without idioms, slang, etc. And then the age differences. I still remember my dad trying to use "hip" phrases in the 70s and we disdained his lack of understanding. I often don't understand youngsters' words nowadays!
Seven / The Future: Le Futur
Besides, I was a fiend for birth announcements, wedding announcements, and obituaries, the "hatch, match, and dispatch" trinity that once comprised the only three times a respectable woman's name should appear in print."
I'd not heard that expression "hatch, match, and dispatch" for those announcements, though I have heard about respectable women not being in the paper other than those occasions. That's pretty antiquated, though!
Seven / The Future: Le Futur
Our insurance policy provided for five days at the clinic, a standard stay in Switzerland.
She did indeed have the right room, she explained, and I did have an appointment - each new mother was entitled to a soin postnatal, just a little pick-me-up to help her feel more like herself.
As she describes her experience of giving birth, with the five day stay, the food options, the offer to have a manicure, pedicure, massage, or having her hair done, . . . I wished I were European. American health care is incredibly expensive and minimalistic. It makes me both sad and mad.
This book took me a long time to read and a long time to blog! I finished it at least two weeks ago. I have three others that I've finished and need to blog!
