Flirting with French: How a Language Charmed Me, Seduced Me, and Nearly Broke My Heart
Page 20
French, which, as we know, couldn’t muster up a dedicated word for “wife,” has more ways to say “thank you” than President Mitterrand had mistresses. For example:
Je voudrais exprimer toute ma gratitude to the many individuals who greatly enlightened and enlivened my linguistic journey, including linguists Heidi Byrnes and David Birdsong and psycholinguist Elissa Newport, all of whom graciously lent their time and expertise to lengthy interviews and follow-up questions; Bowen Zhou of IBM and Jeff Chin of Google for their patient demonstrations and explanations of machine language translation; Acadian historians Lise Pelletier, Anne Chamberland, Don Lévesque, and James Lavertu; polyglot Benny Lewis for his insights on adult language acquisition; Rosetta Stone’s director of learning, Duane Sider; Connie Klein, for sharing her own experiences with learning French; and Karen Nolan for her advice on cognitive testing.
Un grand merci à mes collègues Dave Guilfoyle, Matt Hoptman, Jan Hrabe, and Raj Sangoi for permitting, conducting, and interpreting fMRI results on my pre- and post-French brains.
For my retelling of the history of French je suis redevable to the work of Jean-Benoît Nadeau and Julie Barlow, whose excellent book The Story of French provided much of the source material.
Mes remerciements à Amy Gash, mon éditrice formidable, qui ne parle pas français mais qui maîtrise bien l’anglais!; publisher Elisabeth Scharlatt and the entire creative and marketing team at Algonquin Books for their support and contributions over three books; agent et amie Liz Darhansoff; and copain Jack Fuchs for his valuable insights and manuscript suggestions.
Bien sûr, je tiens à remercier ma femme, Anne, and ma fille, Katie, for once again allowing their personages to grace these pages despite their (mostly) unvoiced reservations, and for putting up with a hopelessly French-wannabe husband and father.
Finalement, to Dr. Larry Chinitz and the entire staff at NYU Langone Medical Center, je vous remercie de tout cœur. I thank you with all my heart.
À bientôt!
Additional Books by William Alexander
THE $64 TOMATO
How One Man Nearly Lost His Sanity, Spent a Fortune, and Endured an Existential Crisis in the Quest for the Perfect Garden
* * *
“Both an inspiration and a cautionary tale for anyone who has ever looked at a tomato and thought, I could grow that!” —Life magazine
“A wry memoir in which every reader who’s spent more to grow a plant than he could purchase it for at the supermarket will recognize his own success, failures and foibles.” —San Francisco Chronicle
“The real treat of The $64 Tomato comes in the form of Alexander himself . . . A rollicking read.” —New York Newsday
A National Bestseller
* * *
GARDENING/MEMOIR • PAPERBACK • ISBN 978-1-56512-557-5 E-BOOK ISBN 978-1-56512-584-1
52 LOAVES
A Half-Baked Adventure
* * *
A gastronomic odyssey spanning three continents, a backyard wheat field, two exploding ovens, one herniated vertebra, a crisis of faith, and a thirteen-hundred-year-old monastery!
“Serious, irreverent, funny and informative at the same time, 52 Loaves reflects precisely the frustrating and infuriating—if not impossible—process of creating the perfect bread.” —Jacques Pépin
“Alexander’s breathless, witty memoir is a joy to read. It’s equal parts fact and fun . . . Alexander is wildly entertaining on the page.” —The Boston Globe
“Nitpicking obsessiveness was never so appetizing . . . A–.” —Entertainment Weekly
* * *
FOOD/MEMOIR • PAPERBACK • ISBN 978-1-61620-050-3 E-BOOK ISBN 978-1-61620-062-6
Published by
Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill
Post Office Box 2225
Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27515-2225
a division of
Workman Publishing
225 Varick Street
New York, New York 10014
© 2014 by William Alexander. All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America.
eISBN 978-1-61620-425-9