Lost in Translation

While I have written a lot about travel, food and culture in France, I have not written much about the most important thing of all: learning the French language.

I have quickly discovered that there are good and bad moments for communicating in French. Sometimes I am able to communicate exactly what I would like and really understand a conversation in French. Other times, not so much.

I always knew that I was better at reading and writing French than I was at speaking it, but actually coming to France has brought me to a full appreciation of the challenge of learning another language. To become fully fluent in another language now seems to me to be nearly impossible.

One of the biggest differences I noticed upon my arrival in France is that the process of communicating with French people is much different than communicating in French with American French professors.

In the U.S., when I said something in French that was a false cognate or an "Anglicism," my French teachers always still knew what I was trying to say. Here in France, I am not understood unless I say something correctly, as the French would say it.

My daily life in France requires oral communication much more than it does reading and writing. Just when I found myself frustrated with my inability to orally understand and express the same amount of French that I know how to read and write, I stumbled upon an editorial in the French newspaper.

Written by Christian Lequesne, the director of the Center for International Study and Research at Sciences Po in Paris (which, if you are unaware, is one of the most prestigious universities in France).

Lequesne essentially argues that there are not enough French students studying in foreign countries and learning languages. He proposes that French schools should teach foreign languages based more on oral comprehension, so that students will be able to travel and communicate more easily.

He writes:

Un professeur de collège me dit un jour: « Vous voudriez donc que j’enseigne l’anglais d’aéroport ! » Je ne pus m’empêcher de lui répondre : se seulement tous nos élèves, au sortir du brevet, pouvaient comprendre les annonces en anglais dans les aéroports !

Yes, I will translate this passage for my English speaking readers, even though I am currently writing on the importance of learning foreign languages.

(Translation: A middle school teacher said to me one day: "So you would like me to teach "airport English!" I couldn't stop myself from responding: If only all our students, when they got their diplomas, could understand the English announcements in airports!)

In other words, foreign language teachers must not brush off the importance of simple oral comprehension - something that is certainly true in my attempts thus far to survive and communicate in France.

He continues with a thought about the importance of study abroad experiences:

L’expérience, dans sa jeunesse, de la différence culturelle est le meilleur moyen d’apprendre à être à l’aise devant le changement.

(Translation: The experience, in one's youth, of cultural difference is the best way to learn how to handle change.)

I completely agree with Monsieur Lequesne. This is exactly what studying abroad is all about. I am learning to communicate beyond cultural and language barriers, at the same time as improving my ability to understand and communicate spoken French. By doing so, I am gaining a great appreciation for the broader world.

With the exception of Latin, the languages that we study in school are living, with living people and cultures attached to them. The French grammar exercises that I mastered throughout middle school and high school did teach me a lot, as have the works of French literature I have read in college courses. But nothing compares to living in France and experiencing everyday life in a typical French city.

Perhaps our system of teaching foreign languages could be modified to emphasize oral expression and comprehension, but to learn about the world one must live abroad.

Sometimes I do just wish that I had the words to say something to my host family, or that I didn't have to concentrate so hard to understand even a small part of the plot of a French TV show. But that does not make me regret coming here. Rather, it makes me wish I had come sooner or that I could stay longer. Four months is not enough time to learn a language.