Words in a French Life

Introduction

My children have come up with a new game that sends them into fits of laughter. They ask me to say something, anything, in their native tongue.

"J'adore la couleur rouge," I love the color red, I say, aware that the kids will have a linguistical one-up-on-mom heyday with all those screaming r's: adore-rouge-couleur.

My ten-year-old's face lights up and, with a grin, Max mimics me, "J'adorrr la couleurrr rrrouge!" he says, putting a lot of emphasis on the French consonant that I have mispronounced. My son is only teasing me. These days he is more fascinated by my American accent than embarrassed by it.

Next, eight-year-old Jackie gets the spotlight. "J'adoRRR la couleuRRR RRRouge!" she says, amused to mimic my unrolled (un-French) "r."

When it's my husband's turn, he pronounces the sentence as he's heard it, further twisting my American accent.

"ZHAH DORRRRR LAH COO-LERRR ROOZH!" he says, batting his eyelashes for effect.

Max and Jackie are now snorting. At this point, I'm holding my stomach as well, and wipe my eyes, laughing louder than even my children. Is my accent really that bad? How could that be? After twelve years living in France and conversing with the French it is as unchanged as the day I stepped off the plane in the Marseilles international airport straight from Arizona, to begin my new French life.

But however imperfectly, I can speak French! I can chew out and rattle off; I can small talk, sweet talk, and even talk back; I can crack a joke and, if need be, lay down the law, in a language that once intimidated me to the point of silence.

My love of all things French began sometime around the age of twelve. I don't remember what event preceded it, but I'll never forget my mother telling me, "In your last life, you must've been French!" (This was a remarkable statement considering our religious orientation: though we were Born Again we did not believe in reincarnation.) In high school I struggled through French class, receiving below-average grades. Though I loved French words, I did not like French grammar and rules. I still don't.

When I enrolled in the liberal arts program at Arizona State University, I was required to take two years of a foreign language. I gave French another try. A certain French teacher named Madame Wollam -- who did not mark up all of my papers in red, but corrected the lesson in question -- would forever change my outlook on the language: she assured me that French was something I could eventually understand if I would relax and not get hung up on my weak points vis--vis the language. With Mme. Wollam's encouragement, I signed up for an exchange program.

I spent fall semester in Lille, France. For a desert rat from Phoenix, the northern European city could have been an icy French hell. Thankfully, my host family, the Bassimons, provided a warm and welcoming home and I had another wonderful teacher, this time French. Mme. Rudio wrote out all of our grammar lessons in long hand before running them through the copy machine to hand out. It was she who would introduce me for the first time to French expressions, igniting my love for the language.