The ear in your brain (English tips for French learners)

If you have ever been to an international conference, you probably couldn't have helped noticing how much the grip on English of a speaker depends on the country where s/he comes from. Folks from the Netherlands and Sweden would usually give a very decent performance. You would recognize French speakers among all by their accent, obviously; while the worst of them all are arguably the Japanese.

One explanation I have heard is that, after a while, you somehow become 'deaf' to the sounds that your mother language misses. The example I have most frequently come across is the Japanese that supposedly cannot differenciate between the 'r' and 'l' sounds.

According to my personnal experience, this does not make sense at all. Ok, I cannot pretend to clearly distinguish between the three (1, 2, 3) different ways of saying the word 'donkey'. But most of the time, when I am presenting two words, I can spot the difference, even how subtle it might be.

It seems to me the problem is not really that I cannot hear features that my own language does not have, but that I don't pay attention.

It's best illustrated with Chinese. Chinese has tones, which means that syllables are only part of the story; if you voice stays steady or falls sharply while you pronounce the syllable ma, you are either saying 媽 (mother) or 罵 (to insult), which obviously you don't want to mix if you still care about some potentially valuable inheritance. Now, everybody would agree that the difference between a steady and a falling tone can be heard by anybody; and yet, paying attention to this damn tones is one of the most difficult things to the students in Chinese.

I guess what I am trying to say is that, no matter how difficult it is to pay attention and to mimic new features of a foreign language, it is never, ever, impossible to. Your ear is not deaf to these sounds -- your brain is just too lazy to process them. Good news: the brain can be taught better.

One of the main difficulty when learning English is how to pronounce things. It has always striken me how English is so far away from all other European languages in that respect. German? You have to know how to pronounce those 'ch', and to make your p's and your t's stronger, and that's pretty much it. Spanish? The rolling r's are actually quite easy to master, as well as those funny z's and gutural j's. Italian? You get the weird gl's right and you're all set.

English? Well, forget about the alphabet. Actually, I've always thought that knowing how to read and write has been the main reason why learning how to pronounce English right took me so long. The relationship of English to writting is pathetic, if not pathological, and you just have to have a glance at the famous poem entitled 'This phonetic labyrinth' to have a pretty good understanding of how dramatic the situation is. (Note that this poem was written by a foreigner living in the UK. Quite a few of the spelling and pronouciation curiosities listed in this poem relates to British English. American English, thankfully, is considerably simpler and more consistent).

As for me, the first sparkle was made by one of my English teachers, who decided to lecture us about the phonetic writting of words. Of very, very basic words we thought we knew -- but we didn't, because again we didn't pay attention, every time we heard them, to the difference between what we thought those words are pronounced, and how they actually are. And this excellent teacher had shocking news indeed. He asked us to open our dictionaries and look at the pronounciation of this tiny, innocent, familiar word: of.

I coudn't believe my eyes.

The official pronounciation of of, in my dictionary and in all of my classmates was not 'OF', but 'UH-V'.

From this very moment, I suddenly realized the extent of all I have missed by sticking to the word spelling and my mental interpretation thereof. It's not that I couldn't make the distinction between 'of' and 'uh-v' -- it's just that I wasn't aware that I should in the first place. I just had to unlock the ear in my brain, to let loose any logic between writting and pronounciation, and let me relearn English. I also realized that this i that you find, say, in bit, is actually very easy to mimic if you think of it as a sound midway to the French i and é. (Give a bét of a try, you'll be surprised!).

From this very moment, I was also angry at all those useless English teachers I have had so far.

Thank you, dear English teacher -- you are one of the very few good English teachers France can be proud uh-v. Too bad I met you when I was already 20.

Having an accent; being fluent

I have this Russian colleague of mine who has been living in the UK and then in the US for the last past 6 years. No need to say that by now, she is quite fluent in English, and doesn't have a problem neither to understand nor, more importantly, to express herself. But she has this one hang-up: she speaks with an accent.

What's the big deal. Even France, which is not especially a large country, has a fair share of regional accents (e.g. Paris, Lille, Toulouse, Strasbourg) -- and I am not even talking about other French-speaking countries or regions, where accents are even stronger for us. Now, when we talk about English at large, does it make any sense to try to speak English without an accent? Who speaks English without an accent? English? Irish? Americans? Indians? (More than one billion of them --if size matters, they ought to be the standard). And then again, where in the US: New-York? Boston? Austin?

But that does not matter to her. She does not have the accent of any of these native-speakers, so this ought to mean that she is not fluent. And that's how she spends her days asking people around her to correct her pronounciation and to repeat words endlessly until she thinks she got it right.

While chatting with her, though, I learned that even though Russia is so large, people speak the same Russian with the same accent from Saint Petersburg to Vladivostok. They do not even have Russian dialects, whereas tiny France is packed with local languages like breton, provençal, basque, alsacien, corse... Could that explain her monotheist attitude towards what a language should be?

Some people didn't get the picture yet, and still tease her sometimes because of some mispronounciation. The latest one was a 'they want more presence' that apparently sounded like a 'they want more prisons'. That obviously did not improve her hang-up; she shamefully asked the guy to repeat and correct her, as she has done since I know her. Just to make a point, to both of them, I ask her to be cautious: the other guy being Indian, I warned her about getting the Indian accent, which certainly would sound much weirder, coming from a Russian, than her pure and fully functional Russian accent. For different reasons, none of them laughed, though.

I understand her, somehow. During my first internship abroad in the UK a while back, I was trying hard to get rid as much as I could of my French accent. But although I could distinctly perceive what made my French accent -- no pronounciation of h's, weak p's and t's, i's pronounced like ee's -- London was not the best place to understand what would make me sound really British, because there is no such thing. You have to choose your side: cockney, or Eton, or whatever.

What really changed my mindset, though, is when I met that girl that found my French accent 'charming'.

Charming, eh? Well, as long as you can understand me, and even if from time to time you will have to ask me whether I meant to share presence or prisons with you, that will do it for me.

Knowledge is frustration

According to one theory, a language tends to reflect the concerns of the people who use it through the diversity of its vocabulary. A famous example, that I am sure you have heard of because my readers are all so cool and clever, is the Eskimo language, which over the centuries, and given the icy environment the native speakers live in, has gathered more than a hundred words for snow and all the subtle variations in texture, color and taste these people came to recognize in it (for example, a large patch of yellow, melting, salty snow at the base of your igloo is called the Husky-pack-gonna-get-shit snow). Believe me, don't play a game of 'Spot the difference' with them if plain white pictures are involved.

Well, if that theory is true, how can you still believe that French people are romantic and Paris is the city of love? French has no word for 'boyfriend' or 'girlfriend'. French has no word for 'date'. French has not word for 'spooning'. French has no word for 'santorum', but well, so did English only a year ago.

Thankfully, this theory is complete bullshit, including the Eskimo language hoax, but I am sure you knew that because my readers are so cool and clever (at least, you can show off to the few other billions that do not read this blog). Hey, after all, for all I know, Americans have only one word for SUV. More relevant is the frequency at which words are used. I have heard 'I' and 'dollar' are the most frequent words in English when people talk -- but interestingly, when they google, the word 'sex' comes first. My two-penny explanation: people talk about what they know, they look for what they don't.

Ok, so the lousy theory is out, but the frustration remains. The lack of a French word for 'boy-/girlfriend' is actually a continuous source of confusion and headaches, because since 15 years or so, people are simply using copin(e) ('friend') instead (before that, we were using petit(e) ami(e), 'little intimate friend' -- cute and much less ambiguous). Yes, it's absurd. Just imagine what mental processes parents have to go through everytime their kids mention that their 'friend will come and stay overnight'. In France, be sure to always invite more than two friends at the same time, the plural will disambiguate the situation -- mostly (we are still in France, remember?).

Studying foreign languages is frustrating at times, because you retrospectivelly realize all the features your mother language is missing. There are plenty of English words, idioms or expressions that I am now used to, and that I struggle to translate when I have to switch back to French, either because their French counterparts don't exist, I never knew them, or I simply forgot. Like 'toddler', 'townhouse', or 'averaging out' -- random examples taken from the recent past. Living here in the US for several years now, and although my English is far from perfect as you can notice, there are times when I speak French, I just cannot come with the French translation of what I have in mind. And to the fellow French I am speaking with, it is just weird that what comes to my mind is in English in the first place. Some even think I am an arrogant, showing-off jerk , when I stumble and pitifully ask, "Oh, how do you say that in French? I forgot."

It's even weirder, though, when that's Americans that do not understand why sometimes French comes out first. Today at lunch, a guy asked me if courses I had at the university back in France were taught in English. I told him, no, they were in French (if they always should is another topic). He looked surprised, and told me, 'Oh, really? But what about the books? Do they translate them as well?'

Well, I have news: French people can write books, too.

Pardon my French

The other day, I was chatting with American friends. Someone was speaking about her boss, and at some point, as you can imagine, a bad word materialized in the middle of the conversation. For the record, it was 'bitch'.

And what came immediatly after this? Well, yes, you are right, and the title probably helped: "Pardon my French".

But then, some folks realized I was French, and started apologizing. They thought this was very offensive to associate French with bad words, and some even went as far as expressing their disapproval for that expression.

That was one of these moments when I am left dizzy thinking of the extent of the gap between our cultures.

The fact is that French does have a lot of slang, and that we are proud of it. It seems to me that we are one of the most active language on that front, and one hint is the rate at which French slang becomes obsolete. If you go to France, don't throw in some of the French slang words you know if you learned them some 20 years ago, because you will sparkle some heavy laughter and get severly taunted in the current French slang.

Now, their is a huge cultural gap between American and French people as to what slang means and is used for.

In a nutshell: for Americans, slang is used by people to sound either cool or offensive. Most slang words are sexual in nature. The cornerstone word here is obviously 'fuck': a English to slang English dictionary would read: car = fucking car, nose = fucking nose, foot = fucking foot, boxer short = fucking boxer fucking short.

For French folks, slang is just a set of alternative words for every day, casual conversations. They are used by mostly everybody (and notably by our dear president), and yes, even by my mother, and if you have to know, even by my mother's mother (although the 20 year rule I mentioned implies that I am left mostly blank when she curses). And although we certainly have slang words for all sexual topics, as I guess any other language in the world does, French has the particularity of having slang words for virtually anything else -- and these words would not necessarly have an offensive implication. Sometimes they even sound cute, or just funny. By contrast, then, a French to French argot dictionary would read: car = bagnole, caisse, nose = pif, tarbouif, foot = panard, peton, boxer short = calbute.

And as a disclaimer, I would stamp this slang with a 'circa 1990' label. As for wine, don't trust French slang without a date label.

Slang is definitely an important part of the French language. My mother, for instance, is a slang encyclopedia on her own. From early morning, when she gets out of the pieu, till the evening in front of the téloche, the day with her is a continuous and charming display of a French you won't find in your language book. Being a teacher, it has always been a mystery, and quite frankly, a source of concern for me how she could switch back to textbook French twice a week in front of her students. But then again, we don't have that much slang for chemistry.

Growing up in such a vocabulary-wise diverse environment, I naturally caught up most of the slang. And that's were the cultural gap is: if asked, my mother would tell you she is proud of me.

I could not speak about French slang without mentionning particular one, the verlan, which stands for (à) l'envers (meaning 'backwards') when read... backwards. Indeed, the rule of this particular kind of slang is to speak words backwards, syllable-wise. So, Français (French) becomes Céfran, méchant ('mean', or 'cool') becomes chanmé, lourd becomes relou, etc. Sometimes, verlan holds on words that are already slang words, like keum, which is the verlan of mec which is the slang for 'guy'. I even heard people talking about feumeu, which turned out to the verlan for meuf... which is already the verlan for femme (woman)!

And of course, slang comes with different regional flavors. Marseilles is known for having quite a few slang words of their own, for instance.

At this point, and since you are a regular reader, you are now thinking: "Hey! Slang being so extensive and popular, that's certainly something that should piss the Académiciens off!".

U-hu. Don't underestimate a bunch of old folks with nothing better to do than reading teenage girl magazines. Plus, remember that before being old, everybody has been young once. Believe it or not, slang is actually listed and updated in the distinguished encyclopedia they edit. I told you slang is part of our language.

Personnally, I grew up with a copy of the Bouquets des expressions imagées in the living room, a book entirely dedicated to wild slang words and expressions through the ages (yes, that's about 1400 pages of fine prints), which probably made me the slang poet I am now. (You will find it amusing that the author of this book taught English as a living. I am convinced he wrote this book because of the same sense of frustration with English slang, and the esteem of French slang that consequently arose, as the one I am experiencing now).

So next time you curse, don't apologize. And if a "Pardon my French" inadvertently slips between your lips, I will consider that as a tribute to our ingenuity and creativity in that domain.