On the other side of the curtain, she asked if I was ready. “Vous êtes prêt, monsieur?” to which I replied, clutching the two wispy squares of paper, “Oui, madame.”
Pulling back the curtain, she walked in, her rubber-gloved hands outstretched like a surgeon. She stopped, took one look at me, from top to bottom, pausing in the middle, and let out a gasp so loud I thought it might have been her last breath, ever.
Thinking about it later I realized she must have said, “Déshabillez-vous. Enlevez tous vos vêtements sauf le slip,” instructing me to take off everything but my underwear. Funny, I don’t remember hearing that. (And I’m still not clear on what the paper towels were for.)
I don’t know which of us was more embarrassed by my inadequate command of the French language, although since I was standing in a booth with someone’s grandmother, clutching a couple of squares of paper for dear life, I’d say it was me. Unfortunately, that wouldn’t be the last time I was caught with my pants down when it comes to my understanding of the language.
It’s entirely possible to get by in France without speaking much French, thanks to the Internet, CNN, international bookstores and newsstands, and the very eager English-speaking waiters who have learned that if they charm a table of flummoxed American tourists, they’ll get a nice tip. But if you want to live here and be a part of French life, and do more than barely cover your butt, learning French is essential.
When people ask, “How long did it take you to become fluent in French?” I respond, “Become fluent? Even the French aren’t fluent in French.” To prove it, there’s an annual Dicos d’Or, a dictation contest where French people compete against each other to see who can best comprehend and write down what’s spoken to them—in their own language!
To alleviate some of the confusion, there exists the Académie Française. Within those hallowed, plush chambers on the Left Bank, the definitive dictionary of the French language was started in 1635. And to this day, forty immortels (a name that demonstrates the reverence they inspire) regularly meet and discuss what words should be spoken in France, a decision that can take decades. American dictionaries are updated far more frequently to include new, important words, like muffin top (the overhang from low-slung jeans), prehab (intervention for junior celebs), and designer baby (none of which I’ve been able to translate, or even explain, in French).
The biggest problem these days for les immortels, whose average age is a ripe seventy-eight, is trying to prevent the insidious encroachment of the English language from contaminating the sacred French vocabulary. Nevertheless, words like relooking (makeover), le fast food, and très People have jumped the line and are heard in everyday speech, government-sanctioned or not.
Most of the words arrive via les teenagers, which is evident when you consider some of the un-French words that have become part of la langue populaire: nonstop, le weekend, le star système, l’ happy hour, le feeling, le jet-set, le shopping, le “must” (always in quotes), le snack, le gadget, and the latest rage that’s sweeping all of Paris—le scrapbooking.
There’s so much concern about the encroachment of franglais into the French vocabulary that the government has issued les quotas musicaux, which mandates that only a strictly limited percentage of music played on the radio in France can be non-French. Listen for a short while to French radio, and you might start off by enjoying a heart-wrenching serenade by Edith Piaf, followed by an ear-splitting blast from Iron Maiden, leading into a jaunty chant from French tennis star Yannick Noah, whose successful recording career, if you’ve ever heard him, is one of the more unfortunate consequences of les quotas musicaux.
The French take their language very, very seriously, and I can’t remember a dinner party where an argument about some aspect of the language didn’t at some point break out and was not resolved until someone went to a bookshelf and pulled out a copy of Larousse, an important fixture in every French household.
Especially vexing is that seemingly ordinary words that one might innocently translate from English to French, like populaire (“I’m popular!”), take on drastically different, less-than-complimentary meanings when translated. Calling someone populaire means they’re from the lower classes.
Similarly, complimenting the beauty of something—“C’est Joli!—can have frightening consequences. I made the grave mistake of telling a clerk at Moisan bakery what I thought was a compliment—that the magnificent tray of golden-rimmed madeleines she was putting on display were indeed très jolies.” Elles ne sont pas jolies, monsieur! Elles sont délicieuses! She screeched back, “They’re not beautiful! They’re delicious!” before walking away in a huff. After that, I avoided the bakery for a full year. Which was unfortunate, as it was one of my favorite places to buy bread. But after monitoring the situation safely from the other side of the window week after week, only when I deduced she no longer worked there did I dare step inside again to try the madeleines.
After I took my first bite, I took smug satisfaction that I was right: they were, indeed, beautiful. And I stopped wondering what happened to her and figured she must have been fired for lying because they weren’t, as she claimed, all that delicious.
I give Parisians a lot of credit for taking pity on me as we mutually struggle to understand each other. Even after living here for over six years, more often than not, I still don’t have a clue as to what people are saying to me. I have become a César-worthy actor and perfected an award-winning look of comprehension, avoiding the deer-caught-in-the-headlights look when someone barrages me in rapid-fire French. But what can they expect? I mean, in all honesty, how can one begin to master any language that’s so difficult, it lists six different ways to say “because”? Puisque, comme, à cause de, car, grâce à, and à force de all mean “because.” The difference between them comes down to because of what?
Look at the banquet of choices for a chicken breast: poitrine de poulet, blanc de poulet, émincé de poulet, escalope de poulet, and suprême de poulet. And a jug of wine can be a carafe, picket, pot, décanter, cruche, or fillette, which is also a young girl. So be careful where you are when you order one.
A can of soda is a canette, not to be confused with canette, a young female duck (not be to confused with a young male duck, which is a caneton). And a can of vegetables is a boîte de conserve, but if you’re going out to a nightclub, you’re going to sortir en boîte, so let’s hope that after a night out on the town, you don’t come home a vegetable.
If you want chicken, you go to a volailler. But if you want beef, head to the boucherie. Is it pork you’re after? Stop off at the nearest charcuterie, because the boucher might not have it. Pork is not meat, it’s pork. But lamb is meat, and you can find that at the boucherie. Like innards? Those can be found at the triperie, which I’ll let you find on your own.
Rabbits fall inexplicably in to the same category as our feathery friends found at the volailler. And in case you’re looking, horsemeat is normally found at the boucherie chevaline, although it can sometimes be found at the regular boucherie, too. But not necessarily vice versa. And if anyone can tell me the difference between a saucisson sec and a saucisse sèche, I owe you a dried sausage. Or a freshly dried one.
My most unnerving mangling of the French language was at Sur les Quais, a fantastic épicerie, where I was explaining to out-of-towners the different flavors of jam made by Christine Ferber, a famed confiseuse. (Yes, there’s a gender-specific word for a female who specializes in cooking sugar.)
I was translating the lineup of flavors for each pot de conserve, to the best of my abilities, for someone. (An empty jar is un bocal, but putting jam into it turns it into un pot.) When I mentioned there were jars of red currant jam, confiture de groseilles, my guest perked up, “Oh yes! That’s what I’d like.”
So I asked the salesclerk for a jar of confiture de groseilles, which is pronounced “gro-zay.” But with my less-than-stellar command of the language, I asked for “confiture de grosses selles” (which I pronounced as “gr
oss sells”). The saleswoman’s jaw nearly hit the counter: I’d ordered turd jam … make that big-turd jam.
At this point, I realized that I needed to seek professional help, an assessment that salesclerk probably shared, and enrolled in a French class.
Paris is rife with schools that advertise in the freebie expat papers distributed around town, promising to help us all “learn French—the easy way!” Flip through the pages or search the Internet and you’ll find everything thing from classes that meet in a park where the admissions procedure consists of “finding the guy with the bowler hat” to another that lures potential pupils with an ad showing two ruby-red lips pursed in an undeniably French manner, poised and ready to give pleasure to the Eiffel Tower.
I wasn’t sure that was the kind of French I needed to learn—maybe later. Right now, I needed to get serious, and I chose a school located up near Père Lachaise cemetery, affiliated with the Ministry of Culture. It promised supervision “rigoureuse,” and for a world-class procrastinateur like me, they were speaking my language.
As I opened the creaking door of the school, I was confident I was on my way to becoming a true Parisian, excited by the possibility of joining an international coterie of expats and locals engaged in lively debates on Proust and Existentialism, all the while mastering the merits of the plus-que-parfait de l’lndicatif over the plus-que-parfait du subjonctif.
I stepped into a grand courtyard jam-packed with Korean teenagers playing Ping-Pong. Most of them were sucking on rank-smelling Gauloises, furiously texting messages back and forth between friends standing a few feet away, and gulping inky vending-machine coffee from plastic cups. This was not the intellectual environment I had envisioned.
The upside was that I developed my first Parisian crush d’amour on a special someone. It was Laurent, my French teacher. He wasn’t anything particularly special, but like the best French lovers, he was patient and careful, tending to my needs. He taught me how to wrap my lips around complex verbs, and most of all, took pity on me for all my embarrassing Americanisms.
But like most things in Paris, just when you think you’ve got it all figured out and things are going smoothly, something happens and you’re thrown for a loop: one day, in walked a new teacher and poof, dreamy Laurent was gone. Our new professor strutted through the door, hugely muscled, looking like a living, breathing Michelin man—as gonflé as those puffy breads at La Brioche d’Or. For once, I can aptly apply the cliché: both resembled pastries on steroids.
Unlike lovely Laurent, this mec didn’t care how much any of us were struggling, and as the days progressed, I was sure he was determined to belittle me—which frankly, wasn’t all that much of a challenge—as much as possible in front of my classmates.
On his first day, I made the common mistake most Anglophones make and pronounced every letter of every word: if there’s a letter there, it just seems logical to pronounce it. I’m sorry!
For that infraction, Monsieur No-Neck came strutting over to where I was sitting, stopped in front of me with his hands curled into tight fists by his side, and proceeded to shout at me for a full five minutes in front of the class. My Korean classmates were cringing in their seats, clutching their electronic translators in fear of this Gallic Godzilla, breathing his fiery wrath on me.
And that, I vowed, would be my last French class there. I later ran into one of my classmates, who told me shortly thereafter the professor walked over to the wall and punched his fist right through it. “Yikes, that could’ve been me,” I thought to myself. It probably would have been, had I stayed.
My eagerness and enthusiasm for learning French was diminishing rapidly, yet I did dabble in some of the other schools around Paris. As I went from one school to the next, however, I soon became sympathetic to the urge to punch someone out: in the classes I attended, there was always one sac à douche whom I dubbed “the corrector.” No matter what their skill level in French was, whether or not their comprehension was any better than mine (it was usually worse), these people felt they were doing me a favor by constantly correcting me when I spoke up.
I got to the point where I could spot “the corrector” types the moment I began a new class, and could see them out of the corner of my eye practically wetting themselves in anticipation that I’d make a mistake so they could chime in with the right answer. No matter how hard I tried to block them from my peripheral vision, I could see them almost leaping out of their seats, their heads volleying back and forth, from me to the teacher, as if watching a tennis match at Roland Garros, hoping, praying, that I’d make a mistake so they could fill the enormous gap in my intelligence with their words of wisdom.
So before I put my fist through something, or someone, I gave up on French classes altogether and decided my best teachers were going to be the Parisians themselves—whether they liked it or not. It’s a task not all of them seem to appreciate very much.
My greatest gaffe in French at a social event occurred at a chic dinner party with people I didn’t know. I had just returned from a trip to Italy and was describing how terrific it was. I’d climbed high in the mountains of Piedmont to see Oropa, the magnificently situated sanctuary famous for its Madonna Nera, a black Virgin Mary who inspires cultlike worshippers. It’s an inspiring spot, no matter what your faith, and pilgrims and tourists flock there from all over the world to head up the winding mountain road, then up a formidable number of stairs to see her. (The hot chocolate and pastries they serve in the adjacent caffè are additional incentive to make the trek, too.)
Hoping to impress everyone with my highly cultured and richly detailed description of the lovely lady herself, I contributed my account: “Up in the mountains in Italy, il y a une verge noir. C’est magnifique! People come from all over the world to worship it. They kneel before it and pray to it.”
As I’m talking, rambling on and on and on in my impeccable French, I notice everyone looking uncomfortable and glancing around at one another, taking a renewed interest in what’s on their plate, rather than what’s coming out of my mouth. But like a high-speed TGV train, I keep going, picking up speed: “You drive up this long, winding road and when you open the door, you see it and it’s really, truly incroyable. It’s surely one of the most famous verges in the world.”
I fail to notice anyone getting as worked up as me about this icon, until Romain leans over, “Don’t you mean the Vierge Noire, the Black Virgin?”
“Uh, yes. Isn’t that what I was talking about?”
“Daveed, a verge is a penis.”
I know my version of the story would have received a better reception in different company, but perhaps I was a bit hasty in dropping out of French school. I’m just happy he stopped me before I went on about all the pictures I’d taken of it, from every conceivable angle.
I’m still struggling with some of the facets of the language that are foreign to les anglophones. Like the two-tiered system of tu and vous, depending on how formal you need to be (what happened to égalité?), and la concordance, the insidious way that the gender of the subject changes the spelling and pronunciation of not only the noun, but the adjective and verb as well. It’s no wonder even French businessmen and women are shipped off to schools to improve their French.
Just like me, a lot of French people have atrocious spelling, and they cover it up with magnificent, cursive handwriting, which you’ll recognize if you’ve ever tried to decipher a handwritten café menu scribbled on a blackboard. I’ve even corrected the spelling of some French people, who take it in stride. So I don’t feel so bad when I make an error myself.
Needless to say, I spend a lot of time laughing, and getting laughed at. But I’ve made a truce with the French and their language: that neither of us fully understands the other, and neither of us probably ever will.
DINDE BRAISEE AU BEAUJOLAIS NOUVEAU ET AUX PRUNEAUX
BRAISED TURKEY IN BEAUJOLAIS NOUVEAU WITH PRUNES
MAKES 4 SERVINGS
I struggled for quite some time to
get my volailler, Catherine, to understand me when I wanted turkey: I would pronounce dinde (“dand”), as “din-dee.” Which may sound logical to those of us who believe that letters are there for a reason.
Another thing that’s hard to comprehend is the big deal made over Beaujolais Nouveau. Each November, specifically the third Thursday of the month, Beaujolais Nouveau is released across France and the rest of the world. There’s lots of clever marketing meant to spread excitement among Parisians, who don’t fall for the hype and remain a bit blasé about quaffing this young wine.
I share their disdain, but fruity Beaujolais Nouveau does make a wonderful cooking wine; its robust flavor holds up well when braising turkey thighs, les cuisses de dinde. If unavailable, substitute another fruity red, such as Brouilly, Merlot, or Pinot Noir.
The French rarely pit prunes, or pruneaux (not be confused with prunes, which are not prunes, but fresh plums), perhaps due to the lack of lawsuits, but also because the pits are said to add a bit of flavor. You may wish to alert any non-French guests if serving prunes with pits à la française, or just use pitted ones.
For the prunes
8 ounces (225 g) prunes (dried plums)
½ cup (125 ml) Beaujolais Nouveau
2 tablespoons honey
1-inch (3-cm) strip orange zest
6 sprigs fresh thyme
For the turkey
1 turkey leg and thigh (about 3 pounds/1½ kg)
1 tablespoon olive oil
Coarse salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 cups (500 ml) Beaujolais Nouveau
1½ cups (375 ml) chicken stock or water (if using canned stock, use low-sodium)
The Sweet Life in Paris Page 15