The 2nd language problem that doesn’t get easier with time

You would think that after 18+ years in England, I would have pretty much faced all the language issues I ever would and I’d be able to draw a line under ‘English language skills’. I dare say my skills are pretty advanced at this stage (apart from ‘mysterious accent that comes up from time to time’) and yet, I still regularly face this one particular language problem, thanks to the most confounding aspects of language-learning, how to pronounce people’s names. There’s nothing worse than getting someone’s name wrong and having to ask them to repeat it not once but several times over, and yet the pitfalls appear to be endless.

One of my early challenges was when I started to work in a bank’s back office taking calls about account problems, part of my grand plan to tackle big language hurdles in a gradual way. The first stage was ‘learn to understand people face to face’. This stage at the bank was the ‘talk to people on the phone’ (ie when you can’t see their face and body language to guess what they might be saying) and stop getting scared that they’re going to be Scottish and you won’t understand a word. I had to call someone called Thompson, and, you guessed it, made a real hash of it and must have sounded like a complete moron. How was I supposed to know you didn’t pronounce it ‘thump-son’?

At my next job, I had a colleague called Siobhan, who I avoided talking to for ages because I didn’t even know where to begin to try working it out!

Nowadays, you would think I wouldn’t have this struggle any more. Not true. I currently work for a lovely lady called Paula. She’s Dutch. Her name’s pronounced Paola, and I still occasionally forget this. And then there’s this other person that I mostly email but occasionally need to call and her name is Grainne. I can’t remember how to say it from one week to the next, and I’m positive I am actually going to have to make myself a phonetics note to keep for such occasions that I need to speak to her, lest I embarrass myself once again.

I guess the moral of this story is that you never stop learning, neither should you expect to or settle in thinking you have seen it all!

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112 Gripes about the French: a book review

I recently read this little treasure of a book, and I loved it so much I took photos to remember its fabulousness. You just know it is is going to be full of gold with a title like ‘112 Gripes About the French‘. It is a book that was, according to the introduction, given to every American soldier who came to France during World War II as a means to educate them about what to expect in France and when dealing with the local French people once they landed there. It was first published in 1945 by the Information & Education Division of the US Occupation Forces in Paris and intended to respond to questions and difficulties raised by the US forces on the ground.

‘112 Gripes about the French’: a story of cultural shock in time of war

Written in the form of questions and answers, it is informative, entertaining and occasionally jaw-dropping. It tells a story of culture shock, with its assumptions and misunderstandings; it tells of friendship and respect and humanity at its best and worst. I highly recommend it as an insight into the European and American mindset of mid-twentieth century, and into the very human dilemmas and difficulties soldiers face at any given time (be it then or now) when they are dropped into a foreign culture in the midst of traumatic circumstances. It highlights the complexity of human interactions and how much work is involved in trying to understand one another.

A quick look inside the pages of ‘112 Gripes about the French’

Of the above pages, question 3 and 5 are the most fascinating to me. Gripe number 3 is especially interesting, because it highlights just how easy it was for misunderstandings between soldiers and local people to arise, and how little knowledge of the local situation foreign soldiers must have had for the issue to even be raised.

3. “The French don’t invite us into their homes”
They don’t have the food. (the Germans took it). They don’t speak English and we don’t speak French. It’s hard to extend hospitality under those conditions.
Ask those soldiers who have been invited into a French home what it was like.
How many American homes were you invited into when you were stationed near a ‘soldier town’ in the States?

5. “I’ll never love the French.” “I hate the French!”
You don’t have to love the French. You don’t have to hate them either. You might try to understand them.
The more important point is not to let how you are feeling blind you to the fact that they were and are our allies. They were in 1917, too.
The most important question any people can ask itself is this: ‘Who fights with us? Who fights against us?’

 

Basically, this is a fascinating short read that is worth checking out if you are interested in history, particularly WWII and French/US relations, and cultural differences.

 

Please note that this post contains affilliate links. If you choose to buy the book through the link, I will receive a small commission which will be used to fund this site, at no extra expense to you.

Are French spelling changes a sign of the apocalypse?

In case you were wondering, a heavy dose of sarcasm was used when deciding on the title for this post… We may have some time to go yet before the apocalypse is upon us, but I think it’s fair to say that almost nobody likes change and that people love to overreact on social media. When a French spelling reform was announced in early February, the reaction to the news that appeared on my social media feeds and elsewhere online kept me entertained for a good few days. No one gets more irate than a French person faced with the suggestion that the French language is less than eternal, timeless and a beacon of light in a world full of savage languages that dare evolve because what is at stake here is the survival of France as we know it, the very foundations of the world. Will no one think of the children?????

The Independent and the Guardian were two among many to publish a nice little report on the scope of the reform and included some of the reactions, which were indeed enlightening, and by enlightening, I mean I rolled my eyes so much I feared I was going to lose my contact lenses inside my brain. It led to an interesting discussion with friends on Facebook, as English people were understandably befuddled by all the fuss (as English is one of those wild languages whose evolution is left at the mercy of the masses) and my attempts at enlightenment less than stellar.

I have always been very good at grammar, spelling and the French language in general, I always did well at dictations, and I can appreciate a nicely put French sentence. I’ve always found a great deal of satisfaction in being able to write properly. So I understand the value of having and following set rules for how language should formerly be written, and I understand the dismay of suddenly being told that your efforts to learn how to put the flipping ‘accent circonflexe’ in the right place was for nowt. I bet there hasn’t been a change in the French spelling curriculum in decades. The Académie Française, that illustrious gathering of old-fashioned French minds that dictates what is and is not acceptably French, is not exactly known for being responsive to change, and yet it is them that pushed these changes forward. It is not like the English language is without rules either. Some are quite convinced that English is very difficult to learn because of the sheer number of irregularities; I mean, do try to pronounce cough, plough and tough without getting a headache.

What I mean to say, is that there is most certainly beauty to be found in complexity, but it is simply wrong to imply that there can be beauty only in complexity, that simplicity cannot be beautiful, or that simplicity is a sign of paucity or ‘dumbing down’. That, is most definitely an overreaction.

French people keep saying that French is a ‘langue vivante’, a language that is alive, whilst all the time looking at every suggestion of its evolution as a sign of, well, the apocalypse. It’s not even as if it hasn’t changed before. The poor accent circonflexe that is being removed from so many words, this little hat sign ˆ that has been put at the forefront of the discussion, wasn’t always in use. It used to be that hôpital was spelled hospital, and château was spelled chasteau, and the sign was added to remove the silent ‘s’. Yet it is possible that some French nationalists would like us to revert to speaking like the playwright Molière did – can you imagine having to go back to speaking Shakespeare’s English? Yeah, me neither.

This said, I know that I am going to struggle mightily with many of the spelling changes when they come into effect in September, not least that of the humble onion. It is going to go from ‘oignon’ to ‘ognon’, and I won’t lie, it looks weird to me, and I doubt that it will ever look anything but weird and misspelled. It may take a generation for the change to embed itself but to say that it dumbs down language? Ridiculous.

Are French spelling changes a sign of the apocalypse?

 

In case you were wondering, a heavy dose of sarcasm was used when deciding on the title for this post… We may have some time to go yet before the apocalypse is upon us, but I think it’s fair to say that almost nobody likes change and that people love to overreact on social media. When a French spelling reform was announced in early February, the reaction to the news that appeared on my social media feeds and elsewhere online kept me entertained for a good few days. No one gets more irate than a French person faced with the suggestion that the French language is less than eternal, timeless and a beacon of light in a world full of savage languages that dare evolve because what is at stake here is the survival of France as we know it, the very foundations of the world. Will no one think of the children?????

The Independent and the Guardian were two among many to publish a nice little report on the scope of the reform and included some of the reactions, which were indeed enlightening, and by enlightening, I mean I rolled my eyes so much I feared I was going to lose my contact lenses inside my brain. It led to an interesting discussion with friends on Facebook, as English people were understandably befuddled by all the fuss (as English is one of those wild languages whose evolution is left at the mercy of the masses) and my attempts at enlightenment less than stellar.

I have always been very good at grammar, spelling and the French language in general, I always did well at dictations, and I can appreciate a nicely put French sentence. I’ve always found a great deal of satisfaction in being able to write properly. So I understand the value of having and following set rules for how language should formerly be written, and I understand the dismay of suddenly being told that your efforts to learn how to put the flipping ‘accent circonflexe’ in the right place was for nowt. I bet there hasn’t been a change in the French spelling curriculum in decades. The Académie Française, that illustrious gathering of old-fashioned French minds that dictates what is and is not acceptably French, is not exactly known for being responsive to change, and yet it is them that pushed these changes forward. It is not like the English language is without rules either. Some are quite convinced that English is very difficult to learn because of the sheer number of irregularities; I mean, do try to pronounce cough, plough and tough without getting a headache.

What I mean to say, is that there is most certainly beauty to be found in complexity, but it is simply wrong to imply that there can be beauty only in complexity, that simplicity cannot be beautiful, or that simplicity is a sign of paucity or ‘dumbing down’. That, is most definitely an overreaction.

French people keep saying that French is a ‘langue vivante’, a language that is alive, whilst all the time looking at every suggestion of its evolution as a sign of, well, the apocalypse. It’s not even as if it hasn’t changed before. The poor accent circonflexe that is being removed from so many words, this little hat sign ˆ that has been put at the forefront of the discussion, wasn’t always in use. It used to be that hôpital was spelled hospital, and château was spelled chasteau, and the sign was added to remove the silent ‘s’. Yet it is possible that some French nationalists would like us to revert to speaking like the playwright Molière did – can you imagine having to go back to speaking Shakespeare’s English? Yeah, me neither.

This said, I know that I am going to struggle mightily with many of the spelling changes when they come into effect in September, not least that of the humble onion. It is going to go from ‘oignon’ to ‘ognon’, and I won’t lie, it looks weird to me, and I doubt that it will ever look anything but weird and misspelled. It may take a generation for the change to embed itself but to say that it dumbs down language? Ridiculous.

Napoleon Bonaparte: friend or foe? {day twenty-eight}

When you’re an expat, people always want to ask you questions about things that you have literally never thought about before. That is, unless they just say things like ‘your accent is so cute!’, which may be well-intentioned and meant as a compliment but actually sounds SO patronising. Today’s just a fun post about this one thing that people will ask you when they find out that you are French.

How do French people feel about Napoleon – was he reviled or revered or both? What about Louis XIV?

I tell you what, I have, on the whole, no feelings whatsoever about either Napoleon or Louis XIV. Now, ask me how I feel about the current French president (or the previous one), and I may have a couple of things to say. I am, of course, polite enough to consider the question I have been asked (see, I have learnt something from living in England all this time!) and answer something.

French people don’t have deep emotions in relation to Napoleon I. Everyone knows his Russian campaign was a disaster of his own doing and yes, he lost the war against the British but honestly, no one cares. It is quite remote history, and unlike the Brits who love to remind me how Napoleon lost at Waterloo (yes, really, it’s a thing), honestly, I don’t care; I had no idea that Britain lost against him at Austerlitz either (that’s despite the fact that Napoleon commissioned the Arc de Triomphe following this victory). It’s not remotely relevant to anything and we NEVER think about it.

On the other hand, Napoleon left a positive legacy that lives on today, so it’s difficult to feel hard done by him. Despite his overblown imperial dreams, of which no-one disputes the catastrophic impact, he was an inspired innovator who did a great amount of good for France and Europe. He reformed the education system, which at the time was under the monopoly of the clergy, and pretty much founded modern education by creating a standardized system across the country that was both secular and public and not just open to the aristocracy and the super rich. We also owe him Le Code Civil, which is basically modern French law and was so revolutionary at the time that it was adopted by many other European countries.

Louis XIV, le Roi Soleil – the ‘Sun King’ – admired for his lavish lifestyle, and of course to whom we owe Versailles, is another kettle of fish altogether. He was a despot who despised the poor and ruined the country. He also persecuted the French Huguenots (protestant Christians) by revoking the Edict of Nantes that ensured religious tolerance, leading to massacres and daily persecution to such a degree that they emigrated en masse (up to 400,000 or even 500,000) to England, Northern and Eastern Europe and the US, taking with them their trade expertise. The loss of talent had a significant economic impact on the country. The interesting thing about French history lessons on Louis XIV is that most of the focus is on his personal life and achievements, notably the building work, his grandiosity and his court, his ‘L’Etat, c’est Moi’ (I am the State) but not so much on the impact on his subjects and the country of the drastic hemorrhage of money and talent caused by his hatred of non-Catholics. Sure, the massacres are mentioned but they are largely overshadowed by his ‘great’ successes, which are taught with rose-tinted glasses, or with the kind of objectivity that seems to simply brush over the salient points.