losing my voice

🤗 hi.

people frequently ask what i miss most about the united states. there are the obvious answers of my friends and family, then comes mexican food and easy access to the great outdoors (hi utah, rhode island and california!) but recently another, more surprising, answer came up—i miss small talk. 

i miss asking the waiter what they *really* think about the special, the obligatory yet enjoyable exchange with a trader joe’s cashier or catching your neighbor in the hallway to quietly gossip about apartment 34 and her new multi-level marketing scheme. I miss being able to easily chitchat about minutiae. 

in french, i still struggle to find the words to accurately describe my emotions and sometimes stumble asking simple questions. while i wish i could communicate more clearly, i really miss having a personality, my personality—dry, funny, sarcastic, clever. while i'm functional in french, i’m certainly not myself, or at least not the same self.

“this american life” made an episode almost twenty years ago with david sedaris, exploring his new life in france. while there are *so* many gems there, i felt most seen when ira glass summarizes sedaris' favorite haunts as simply locations where the interactions have been kind, rather than cruel, due to his command of the french language. 

when asked if his experience in france has been more "adventure" or "humiliation" sedaris quickly replies humiliation and reminds us that it's, “worse than planet of the apes, to be a foreigner is the lowest kind of life form” and there are days i admit my experience hasn't been much different. 

french, might I add, is really difficult. this assessment is coming from someone who truly tries, i worked with a private tutor for two hours a day, four days a week, for an entire year. but every single time i level up, there’s an exception to the exception, another consonant i shouldn’t pronounce or the classic gender mix-up waiting to knock me back down to débutante.

as an english speaker, i can’t wrap my head around the idea of sacrificing clarity for “beauty” in a language but the french love to do just that. they have an unrivaled pride and reverence for their language, so much so, that almost 400 years ago they created a council called "the immortals" (V harry potter) and these 40 members hold the keys to the french language—they literally write the dictionary (sidebar: listen to this great podcast on how two words concerning identity but engrained in history were recently challenged and successfully changed)

add to that, the french willingness to correct your mistakes, loudly and publicly. i’ve heard it’s because there’s no other way for children to master the language as there are too many nuances. i’ve been told corrections shouldn’t be considered rude but rather "an act of good will" to help you improve. whatever their intention, if you open your mouth and say more than bonjour, expect to be “enlightened” via french grammar firing squad.

but as a grown-ass woman who would just like to get through daily tasks unscathed—who also occasionally dares to dream of being seen as the smart, clever and funny person she sometimes believes herself to be—french is fucking the whole thing up. 

internal monologue examples: 

at a bakery - "but do I pronounce the x (like a z!) in tarte aux abricots?" 
well, yes, you do for an apricot tart, but if it’s an apple tart the answer is non, madame
in a café - "i can’t remember, what’s the difference between an allongé or an americano?"
if it’s 9AM you’ll end up with a watered-down espresso either way, but after lunch that coffee might magically turn into a cocktail of campari, sweet vermouth, and club soda
out for sushi - "why are they asking me to choose if i want a baguette or fork with my rainbow roll?"
oh, cute, you thought baguette was just a word used for bread, while in fact it means stick, so they're actually asking if you can use chopsticks
at the wine bar - "how in the world do I pronounce B-R-O-U-I-L-L-Y? why cant i just say gamay? that’s the grape after all! wait is ‘a glass’ masculine or feminine? une verre ou un verre?"
then just tell yourself it doesn't matter because you’re going to take 'une bouteille' anyway 🍾


while i no longer make *these* mistakes, i'm constantly reminded that learning a language is basically just looking like an idiot and taking grammar corrections from the six year old eating a kinderbueno at franprix. this will quickly undo the decades of work perfecting your virgo "i have my shit together" façade.

a few weeks ago, with my earth-angel/sacrificial lamb of a boyfriend (who has dutifully taken over the role as prof de français—imagine saturday night grammar charting 💕) we were reading about the food in jordan for our upcoming trip, and my jaw dropped upon reading about chicken cooked in a “marmite” (a new-to-me word for covered cooking pot) as I’d confused it with “marmotte” the word for groundhog. i thought we'd be dining on a jordanian tur-duck-en delicacy, the little known middle-eastern tradition of chicken cooked inside a groundhog 🙃

so turns out i can be funny in french, just not intentionally. 

-x