it's like wiping your arse with silk

I loved the French language. Of all of the tongues I combated and failed to conquer, French was my premier and most intense language romance. At the debut of my French lessons, at the commencement of my adolescence, I regarded the illustrations in my text of café tables adorned with floral arrangements in vases and plates of croissants, mustachioed Frenchmen in blue-striped pullovers porting baguettes on their bicycles, and chic dames promenading along a boulevard accompanied by their arrogant canines, with a combination of immobilized fascination and profound desire. 

It seemed to be a world far away from my dull daily life in the hinterlands of Columbus, Ohio.

I hoped that speaking French would liberate me from the boredom of my humdrum neighborhood and would transform me into a cosmopolitan sophisticate. The bullies who taunted and laughed at me would be left behind in their bleak houses while I went on to an vibrant existence full of art, culture, literature, and -- most importantly -- extremely attractive guys.

I dreamed of a young fellow named Guillaume, with dark greasy hair, a black leather jacket, and a facial expression that alternated between a smirk and a pout.

(In fact, that was the name and description of one of the French exchange students we had at my school.)

Because I began my studies at a young age, it was the only language I ended up being able to speak with any level of fluency. My brain was still open to rearranging its linguistic corridors and pathways, and the words just fell into place.

I always had some American accent, but I was able to pronounce French with a considerable degree of success. Especially if I kept my utterances to one or two words, I was complimented by native French speakers (from France) for the verisimilitude of my speech.

I handled the voiced uvular fricative of the French r with no problem (this would serve me later with German, Danish, and Israeli Hebrew). The voiced postalveolar fricative was a great source of joie. The close front rounded vowel of the u was fun: in college my dear friend Nicole attended a lecture given by French obscurantist Jacques Derrida in Paris, and she reported that he had kept on contrasting the word l'un ("the one") with le nu ("the naked one"), and we laughed and laughed as we said le nu over and over again.

I loved the panache of its nasalization, its dreamy fields of elision, its many dangerous liaisons.

I always loved the descendants of Latin, devoting energy and devotion to Castilian, affection and respect to Catalan, and adoration and reverence to Italian. But, in the same way that Paris is both a northern and a Latin city, French, which, is really the language of Paris imposed on the entire territory of France, -- Parisian French seems out of place in Provence (Provença) or Languedoc-Roussillon (Lengadòc-Rosselhon) -- is the creamiest of the Romance languages: Latin infused with Germanic and Celtic elements until it is almost sickeningly sweet and rich. Although it is a cliché to use a simile: speaking French is like gargling with clarified butter emulsified in egg yolks and flavored with herbs.

Like France itself, the French language is highly ornamental, with a delightful number of superfluous letters that do little but provide decoration to many words -- beaucoup de mots. All of those unpronounced rs and ss and ts and xs -- and barely pronounced ds and ns. And all of those hyphens! Mais, est-ce que tu te rends compte? N'est-il pas formidable?

Like France itself, the French language is filled with many false friends for the English speaker.

Actually, the formidable affluence and deception of French, on occasion, or even normally, could derange you, or make you demand assistance, or eventually, if you felt terrible and under siege, a sympathetic blessing from a physician.

Of course, the French desired order and rationality in addition to beauty. After converting the United States to the metric system (a French invention, of course) and the 24-hour clock, I planned on advocating for the adoption of the best thing to come out of the French Revolution: the Republican Calendar, whose names for months were vastly superior to the misnumbered mishmash used by most of the Western world. Vendémiaire. Brumaire. Frimaire. Nivôse. Pluviôse. Ventôse. Germinal. Floréal. Prairial. Messidor. Thermidor. Fructidor. Praise the Supreme Being: pure poetry! I thought. (I wasn't sure how I could make the five to six days of holidays called the Sansculottides work, however.)

Since the English language borrowed nearly the entire French vocabulary in the many years after William the Conqueror first set foot in Hastings, it was difficult to find a French word that looked totally unfamiliar.

You needed to keep your eyes peeled.

I thought nearly all French words were beautiful.

Even the most mundane.

In seventh grade we learned the word for "wastebasket": corbeille. So lovely, I thought.

After spending some time in France, I developed a new set of favorites, although there may have been non-linguistic associations.

The language seemed to me to have elegance, dignity, and other special qualities.

French proper names were also fantastic. There was plenty of immigration to France over the years, so many people had German, Italian, Slavic, Portuguese, Arabic, Vietnamese, or assorted-types-of-African last names. But proper names whose spelling was determined by the conventions of French often seemed magical.

Goulesque. Ghesquière. De la Fressange. Pompidou. Clemenceau. Quincampoix. Poulain. Tautou. Ozon. Rideau. Trintignant. Hubert Bonisseur de La Bath.

And, although there were major cities with somewhat boring names (Paris, Lyon, Lille, Bordeaux, Cannes, Caen, Rennes, Reims), many smaller French towns had names that sounded like they had come from some marvelous mythical epic. Tourcoing. Rueil-Malmaison. Villeneuve d'Ascq. Quimper. Noisy-le-Grand. Fontenay-sous-Bois. Châlons-en-Champagne. Caluire-et-Cuire. Garges-lès-Gonesse. Marcq-en-Barœul. Draguignan. Meyzieu. Vélizy-Villacoublay. (I once visited a girl from my high school who was spending the summer in a small alpine town called Veigy-Foncenex, which sounded like the name of a space alien or a new pharmaceutical product for the treatment of skin fungus. But I still loved it.)

As the stations of the Paris Métro were generally named for the streets or squares above them, and since those streets were generally named after places or people in French history, a subterranean voyage offered an especially pleasant selection of Francophone nomenclature.

I once read an article that compared the names of the Paris Métro stations to the names of angels and archangels. I had wanted to change my last name to Sèvres-Babylone the first time I passed through that station.

Still, nearly every station seemed to have a certain majesty.

The kind of majesty lacking at the Fifth Avenue/59th Street station.

In college, a bearded Gérard de Nerval enthusiast once came into my dorm room (I lived my freshman year in "the French House", for students who wanted to perfect their knowledge of French and who weren't interested in having sex) and started screaming "La Motte-Picquet! La Motte-Picquet! La Motte Picquet!"

There was never a clear explanation for his outburst.

"Oh, comme j'ai souffert!" he said as he left.

I only took one French class in college, however, and then one in graduate school. After two trips in high school, I visited France again a few times in my twenties, culminating in a summer-long stay in Paris after finishing my master's degree. My enthusiasm for French and France and -- especially -- the French cooled a bit. Still, I was excited that, after a 13 year absence, I was going to see Paris again. Asaph and I had arranged an apartment swap with a young French bourgeois gentleman and had redeemed airline miles to book a trip between Christmas and New Year's. The location wasn't ideal, but it would do. Ça suffirait.

I was looking forward to showing Asaph that I could me débrouiller in Paris. I wanted to flâner until my feet were sore. And I couldn't wait to give up my restrictive diet and tartiner as much as I could. À Rome, fais comme les Romains, I thought.

I wasn't planning on smoking, however, but I was prepared to give long, irritating and pedantic lectures on a variety of topics related to France and the French language, and also on other topics of my choosing. And, in addition to Asaph and myself, un troisième was coming from Israel to spend part of the vacation with us, so I would have a new person to ennuyer. I practiced cultivating an air of je-m’en-foutisme.

Comments

[Hugh Elliott]

As someone who also speaks French, one thing you may have overlooked that I found through investigation is that French people often find an American accent to be charming, just as we are also charmed by a French accent.

That said, I find it to be a fascinating yet useless language, like blue cheese.

[Jérôme]

It is so funny/ tellement amusant! And I admire/ j'applaudis des deux mains on your illustrations' choice...
Was Aspah really impressed by his tour-guide?
I hope you show him how the "sapeurs-pompiers" became one of your favorite! I used to live near one of their casernes...

[henry]

the suspense is killing me. Did the Snowpocablizzageddon ground you at JFK and you had to spend the planned vacation at the terminal? Are you now writing your comedie humaine in installments a la Balzac?

[Matthew Gallaway]

My favorite fact about the French language is that it has significantly fewer words than English, which I think is why it's the language of art/philosophy and not commerce. (I'm obv a Francophile.)

[TED]

If this post is any indication, your sex life must involve hours of delightful foreplay, after which you fall asleep prior to consummation.

[Boomer]

Though your post is about the language which I do not speak, it has reminded of my love of France and things French. Paris never fails to thrill me somehow.

It does seem that you have succeeded in your quest for a "vibrant existence full of art, culture, literature, and -- most importantly -- extremely attractive guys." well done!

Also, though I have not seen him in person and while he is not seemingly greasy, in photos Asaf does seem to have "a facial expression that alternates between a smirk and a pout"

So you have that as well. Some guys have all the luck!

[Del]

Voici un autre faux ami: fastidieux.

[Stan]

In all likelihood you were simply mistaken for a Canadian, and for no particularly good reason.

[S]

Do you get like seven weeks of vacation a year or something?

[Matoo]

Les photos sont fabuleuses, et tout autant votre texte !! Bravo et merci ! ;))
Bisous de France (oui on bise beaucoup à Paris)

[William]

I have enjoyed reading your post on the French language; I started reading your blog because of your comments on the Episcopal Church, but I also have found some of your entries on the Arab/Jewish world very informative. As professor of history at a liberal arts college, I wondered if you are aware that French departments are in jeopardy everywhere. Some very prestigious liberal arts colleges and universities have closed French departments because of lack of student enrollment, and I am afraid that the major in French is ending this coming year at my school. Spanish and Chinese are the only languages that still attract students