One of my favorite French teachers is Pascale Ducros, the daughter of our friends, Jean-Marie and Monique. Pascale is a beautiful young woman, who could charm the pants off of Ebenezer Scrooge. She is bright, animated, and, incidentally, deaf since birth. As a result of that challenge, Pascale’s communication style is very straightforward. She doesn’t have time for fawning fanfare or diplomatic correctness. Next to me, she’s the most direct person I know, and I love her for it. I tell her parents that she’s the only person in the entire country who understands me.
Pascale has taught me a great deal. First, she has reminded me that the art of conversation is a rarity—in any country. Whether French or American, only a few have the skill of looking someone in the eyes and posing a thoughtful question. Nor do they know how to listen—not really.
During my stay in France, I was rarely asked about my American heritage—other than the obligatory “What part of the United States do you come from?” And when I responded, I was seldom heard and hardly ever asked a follow-up question.
That is not a French fault; it is a human fault. Americans do no better on that score. Very few Americans know what it means to enter the skin of another person and explore his or her experience. What Americans call conversation regarding our French adventure could be captured in one sentence. “Oh, you were in France for a year. That’s nice.” Period. End of discussion. Then, in the time it takes to inhale, “So how about those Seattle Seahawks?”
In contrast, the most intimate conversations I have had in France have been with Pascale. She looks straight into my eyes when she asks questions—and she asks plenty, which I adore. And when she listens, she is, of course, riveted to my lips. And then, to make sure that she understands, she follows up with a question for clarity.
When in discussion with the family around the dinner table, I always know when Pascale wants to say something to me. I can see her in the corner of my eye, her entire face turned toward me. I love that feeling.
“How do you like France?” Pascale asks, looking so intently at me that I feel like a newborn baby seen for the first time by adoring parents.
“There is so much to say,” I begin.
“I’m listening,” Pascale says.
“First there is the history: the centuries of kings and kingdoms.”
“What is it about our history that you find so intriguing?” Pascale asks.
Now that’s a question—a question that demonstrates a true interest in my experience, a question that requires some effort on my part to respond. That is the art of conversation, which, of course, is only complete when I return the favor and ask about her experience.
Isn’t it ironic that a deaf girl would teach me what it means to be truly engaged and truly heard? Both Americans and French have much to learn from Pascale about the gift of intimate conversation.
“Do I have an accent when I speak to you in French?” I once asked Pascale.
“Yes,” she said. “You speak like this.” Pascale mimicked my fashion of speaking French: mouth wide open with teeth and tongue flapping in the wind. Then I remembered something I had read: The French hardly move their lips! It was something I needed to learn: to allow the words to flow naturally, without tension or grimace. That was a challenge for me because at that time some combinations of French sounds—like the curious cacophony of “s’s” in the French pronunciation of the word association (ah-so-si-ah-si-on)—are like trying to deliver a Shakespearian soliloquy with a mouthful of escargots, shells and all.
Now when I speak French, I pretend to be Jean Gabin, a famous white-haired French actor (the French equivalent of Spencer Tracy), who was so laid back in his delivery that his lips hardly moved.
So, I am most grateful to Pascale for helping me with my French diction, but, even more, for being an ideal model in the art of attending to another person.
Learning a second language as an adult can be infuriating. How can I describe the feeling? It’s opening night at the theater, and no one comes. No, that’s not right. It’s opening night; the house is packed; you have the lead and can’t remember a single line. No, no, that’s not it either. It’s opening night; the house is packed; you have the lead and know all your lines, and the reviews are unanimously unkind. Worse than unkind. They are brutal. That’s the feeling I had my first two months in France. I had practiced my lines for over two years, and I still was not understood.
One day, a French tourist was driving slowly down the street, in the way people do when they are completely lost. He pulled off to the side of the road where Jean-Marie and I were standing. The driver had that where-the-hell-am-I look in his eyes, so I said, “Bonjour.”
That’s all I said, one perky “bonjour.”
And, immediately, the driver turned to Jean-Marie and asked for directions.
Mon Dieu! My American accent could be detected in one lousy word. Jean-Marie and I laughed about it later.
“Is my accent that strong?” I asked Jean-Marie.
“I don’t know,” Jean-Marie said. “Say ‘bonjour.’”
“Bonjour.”
“Yep, it’s that strong.”
That’s frustrating. For two years, I had studied French every morning for two hours. I used every method conceivable: textbooks, literature, audiotapes, videotapes, and a weekly French club meeting. I really did work at it. But there is no textbook written, no videotape recorded that can replace the power of living in the country.
But being in the country is no piece of cake. My first two months in France were particularly humbling. In addition to dealing with French traffic, bureaucracy, and nonexistent housing, every sentence I spoke was peppered with errors. I was corrected moment by moment. Sometimes, with the best of intentions, the French would try to rescue me by offering a word or phrase in English. And sometimes … oh, baby, sometimes my wife would correct me. After sixty days of French immersion, I was feeling a little undone.
And on top of that—although I knew better—I was feeling a bit competitive. Nita had not studied a lick and never bothered with the oddities of French grammar. But, having grown up in Guatemala, she spoke Spanish like a native, and that base gave her a huge head start. She rattled along in French without thinking once about verb tenses or the antecedents of personal pronouns. And she was terrific! So, when she (like the well-meaning French), chose to help me by providing a word when I was stuck mid-sentence, I wanted to leave her barefoot and penniless in a tiny village in the Pyrenees and let her find her way home on her own.
Finally, one morning when we were both in the bathroom getting ready for the day, I rehearsed my speech in my head. When I was satisfied with my choice of words, I looked at Nita.
“Honey,” I said. “I’m really frustrated. And I’m hoping that you’ll be able to help me out. I don’t get it. I’ve studied French so hard these last couple of years, and yet I’m still struggling. Whereas, you seem to have no problem whatsoever. This will probably sound dumb, but it would really help me out if you did a couple of things for me. First, please don’t correct me unless I look to you for help. Let me work it out myself.”
Nita continued brushing her hair without comment. I couldn’t read how she was taking my plea.
“And, second, please let me tell my own stories.” For whatever reason—perhaps out of pity for the listeners—Nita had started to finish, or at least embellish, my plodding narratives.
Nita stopped brushing her hair and said in her Mary-sunshine way, “I can do that, honey. But, gee, I think you are doing just great.”
You gotta love the girl.
* * *
WITH THE POSSIBLE EXCEPTION OF THE ITALIANS, I don’t know any other people who have a greater repertoire of gestures than the French. They have gestures from everything from “cuckold” (pointed index fingers over their ears) to “magnificent” (kissing their fingertips). Knowing the gestures should be a required survival strategy for any foreigner serious about learning the language. I’ll share with you the most common and
useful gestures to add to your kinesthetic lexicon.
Learning how to count
Ask Americans to count on their fingers, and their index finger will snap to attention on number one. That doesn’t make sense to the French. For them, number one is the thumb, followed by the index finger and so on down the line. I have to admit, I think the French have something there. Why start counting in the middle of the hand?
He is drunk
Is there someone in the group who is a little tipsy? It happens. I was on a New Year’s Day trek with about thirty French hikers. When we got to our turnaround point, we stopped for lunch, and the French started unpacking bread, cheese, and bottles of wine and cognac from their backpacks. I have no idea how they bore the weight, but the French never whine about porting wine.
There was a great deal of laughter, and the wine was being poured with enthusiasm. Now, I don’t want to suggest that the French are any more intemperate than a randomly selected sample of Americans. They do like a good glass of wine (as do Americans), but that’s about as far as it goes. However, on this day, a tall, athletic man had too much to drink. I only noticed because a friend pointed an ear in his direction.
“What?” I asked.
Now his eyebrows were raised as the head pointing became even more insistent, as if he were trying to shake water out of his ear.
“What are you talking about?”
That’s when I was introduced to the “he’s drunk” gesture. My friend made a loose fist, raised his fist to his nose, placed his nose in the tube formed by his hand, and twisted back and forth, much like you would turn a doorknob left and right and left again.
I got it. Now I could see that the tall man was happily soused.
I know that sort of overindulgence is frowned upon by the French because the man’s impropriety was the topic of conversation all the way back to the head of the trail. They were concerned for two reasons. First, because he misjudged his limits, and, second, because they wanted to make sure that he was not behind the wheel on his way home. He was not; they made sure of that.
My eye
Both French and Americans share the same expression, “my eye,” which is to say, “That’s a whopper if I’ve ever heard one.” The only difference is that the French employ a gesture that can express the sentiment without words. Place the tip of your index finger about a half inch under your lower eyelid and lightly pull down.
Jean-Marie introduced the gesture to me one day when I had launched into a story about a leisurely walk through the backstreets of Montpellier. I had just breathed in the delectable scent from a small bakery—the flour and sugar wafting onto the narrow cobblestone street. My eyes closed to languish in the heavenly perfume of freshly baked bread. When I opened my eyes again, there was a beautiful young woman in a black summer dress strolling my way. No, not strolling, sashaying—not in a provocative way but in a confident, graceful manner that said, “I am a Mediterranean beauty. Watch me if you wish, catch me if you dare.”
I wished, but I daren’t.
“But that was not the best part,” I said to Jean-Marie, my eyes narrowing to build the suspense and draw my listener into the story.
“What was the best part?” he asked, with what I thought was just a hint of incredulity.
The best part, I explained, was in the next moment. Just an instant before she swished by me, she looked straight into my eyes and smiled a soft and wonderful flirtatious smile.
“That was it?” he asked.
“That was enough,” I said, knowing that I had set the scene for my last line. “At that moment, she and I had an affair, as good as any steamy rendezvous in a secret hotel overlooking the Mediterranean.”
It was then that Jean-Marie tugged on his lower eyelid and said, “I have some bills to pay.”
I have some bills to pay! How rude! The French are supposed to be the ultimate Latin lovers. Well, I’m here to tell you that nothing can match the imagination of a healthy American libido.
Just for the record, that intimate moment with the woman in the black dress did happen (all the stories in this book are true). Whether you are a man or a woman, do not be surprised if you experience an equally delicious moment when you are walking the backstreets of a French city center. If it can happen to me, it can happen to you.
Damn, that’s irritating
I have to admit that I am easily annoyed by the abundance of human tomfoolery: parents who fetter their children with names like Notorious, Corleone, and ShaDynasty; a preacher who uses the pulpit for personal gain; a CEO who makes 380 times the company’s average salary. I could go on, but you get the idea. But despite all the irritations that assail me, I don’t have a gesture to express my annoyance. The French do. Their gesture is called la barbe (the beard) and is made by stroking the side of your jaw with the backside of your fingers. I imagine that the metaphor has something to do with the prickliness of a three-day-old beard.
I’ve seen the gesture used typically in a family setting.
“I couldn’t get the car out of the garage this morning.”
“Why not?”
“Because all your stuff was in the way.”
“Why didn’t you move it?”
“Because it’s not my stuff,” and, just like that, the hand caresses the jawline as if to say, “Damn, that’s irritating.”
Fear
Americans don’t have a universal gesture for expressing fear. I recently did a survey of a few American friends to prove my point.
“If you could not use words, how would you express fear?” I asked.
One friend flared his nostrils, turned the corners of his mouth down, and opened his eyes wide. For my money, he looked less fearful and more zombie-like.
Another extroverted friend framed his face with both hands and then shook his open palms, which made me think of jangling tambourines. He reminded me of a stiff-legged Jimmy Durante shuffling off stage while waggling his fedora and saying, “Ha-cha-cha-cha.”
When I asked my wife to give me her rendition of a moment in fear, she looked, quite frankly, as if she had just been electrocuted.
No, we Americans don’t have a definitive gesture for fear, but the French have come to the rescue to fill that deficiency. The gesture is simple. They invert their hand as if they were suggesting the petals of a flower and then tap their pressed fingers against the thumb. The gesture is similar to an expressive Italian compressing his fingers and shaking his hand: “’Atsa onea gooda meataball.” Only the French don’t shake their hands, they tap their fingers. And if we are talking scared-out-of-their-pants kind of fear, they would make the gesture with both hands. At that point, you know the story is going to be Stephen-King scary.
The first time I saw the gesture was in a backyard swimming pool. My friend, Marie, was learning to scuba dive. She had her tank strapped on, and she was attempting to remove, replace, and clear her mask underwater for the first time. I was in the pool with her, standing directly in front of her giving directions.
“To clear your mask,” I said, “just press the top rim of the mask, tip your head back, and exhale through your nose.”
Marie was staring intently at me as if I were reciting my wedding vows to her. “Okay,” she said. “Let’s try it.”
We were only standing in four feet of water, so we sank to the bottom of the pool and rested on our knees. Marie was able to take off and reset her mask with ease, but when she tried to clear her mask, she inhaled instead of exhaled, which fired a draft of water up her nose. Her eyes flew open, and she popped to the surface like a submarine missile, coughing up pool water. There was no thumbs-up sign. What she gave me was the tapping-fingers fear sign—not with one, but with both hands.
In Marie’s defense, I have to say that she is an undaunted trooper. “I can do this,” she said with determination.
“Just exhale,” I said.
“Oui, exhale, exhale,” she chanted like an incantation. In the next instant, we were both on our knees again, and s
he doffed, donned, and drained her mask like a champ. We celebrated with a thumbs-up sign.
As a footnote, Marie took to diving like a fish. In fact, she is now the owner of a dive shop in the South Pacific. Not bad for a girl whose first mask-clearing attempt resulted in a snout full of water.
When you are really inflamed
I probably should not teach this to you. Maybe this is a good time for the children to leave the room. But those of us with a more sturdy constitution should probably be familiar with the French gesture for “you can take your *#!%^ and shove it.” Personally, I’ve never used the gesture—I wouldn’t want to be kicked out of the country—but I have seen it used on occasion.
Here’s how the gesture is made. Turn the palm of your right hand over as if you were carrying your dinner plate to the kitchen table. Then, with your left hand tap your right wrist and allow the right hand to flip up to the sun. It is the French equivalent to the American one-finger salute. I told you it wasn’t pretty.
Now the French can be very inventive with variations of this gesture. I once witnessed a car accident at a busy intersection. Before checking for injuries and before writing down license plate numbers, one driver flew out of his car and started screaming a string of invectives that were not included in my glossary of French Phrases for Tourists.
Not to be outdone, the other driver bailed out of his car and gave his astringent assailant a nasty three-tiered rejoinder. He first slapped his wrist, then his elbow, and finished with a whack across his shoulder—his right fisted arm poking a hole in the sky over his head. I think it’s safe to say, I was witnessing a boiling point of rage.
To be clear, I have never seen one of my French friends use this salacious gesture—I tended to mix with a rather polished league of people—but if you are in France for any stretch of time, you will eventually see the obscenity flashed in the heat of battle when the Latin blood is sizzling. I just thought you should know.
Pardon My French Page 5