In both Dreaming Is Free and Waking Reality, I amused myself and frustrated many with the use of French in the dialogue. As a student of many languages, I do confess French is not an easy language to learn on the fly.  But there is something about it, dare I say, a certain “je ne sais quoi” about the French language that compelled me to lightly torture my readers.

My designated language in school was Spanish. It was practical, and it had a very say-what-you-see simplicity to it that was very deceptive. As Steve Martin’s comedy routine went: “Donde esta la casa de Pepe?” or literally a word for word translation, “Where is the house of Pepe?”

I learned to roll my r’s and talk like my tongue was burned, but all was lost when Senorita Aichele sat us down for the daily verb conjugations. I was blissfully unaware how many verb tenses there were in English until that point.  Then a foreign language rudely awakened me and blew past with tenses that only my doppelganger would know about.  This was also my introduction to foreign languages classifying asexual objects as male and female.  “El libro”.  Since when is a book male?

My response was pragmatic; examine the most popular languages in the world and try one of those instead. Chinese was top of the list, but was then promptly eliminated when I learned there were thousands of characters or letters in their alphabet. Someone once told me the Chinese symbol for war was two women under the same roof.  I snickered at the prospect but was not sold.

I chose to sign up for Hindi, the language of India among others, and was thrilled by a few things the first day at the UW-Madison class. “The grammar lessons for the Hindi language will fit on a postcard” and the cool alphabet characters were comparable in number (and even form in some cases) to English.   The artist in me got to draw neato characters, “May-rah nam Karen hey!” Growing up in Wisconsin, ending all sentences with “hey” was a no-brainer perk. Literally translated in true Yoda-speak style to mean, “My name Karen is.”

However, at the same time I was learning Hindi, I also took the obligatory continued Spanish class, a computer language class in PASCAL, and for grins and giggles, I tossed in Intro to French.

Perhaps it was the suppressed artist in me, or the memories of ditching the chaperone in Paris when I was 16.  Or perhaps it was how my teacher delivered her introduction in perfect Jeff Foxworthy redneck French.  I took to French like tourists flog the Eiffel Tower, “La Tour Eiffel.”

I dropped PASCAL.  I finished my second semester of Hindi.  I barely passed my Spanish lit class.  I didn’t care.  I was hell-bent on going back to France one way or another.

There is something about the place that resonated with me. And the sad truth is I never achieved REAL fluency in the French language. I dreamed in French and sang along with French radio (as long as I could get the lyrics). Whatever that seductive thing is, it failed to get me over the hump of thinking in French, a true sign of fluency.

But I can share a few things about the French language.  Again I reference Steve Martin, “omelette du fromage, those french have a word for EVERYTHING!”  The French are also absolutely decadent about letters.  They put many letters into their words, especially on the ends, but you simply don’t pronounce most of them.

Unspoken letters aside, I am a person who has difficulty processing what is heard (versus what is seen), and translating sounds into viable sentence is a challenge.  Consider a sentence as a string of syllables with spaces to mark the beginning and ending of each word.  Now pretend you are French and push all those beads together and arbitrarily insert spaces in the middle of words.  Connecting and disconnecting syllables the way the French do, helped me to understand that I don’t have a hearing problem:

I just try to hear English the way I am supposed to hear French.

Or should I say,

“Eye jestry two earrings lishthe wayiams a post two ears French.”

Capiche?  Thought so.

Oh,  I mustn’t forget my favorite French phrase of all.  Now you can put what you’ve learned to the test!  Find the correct pronunciation for the following freakish collection of letters, apostrophes and hyphens “n’est-ce pas?”  which translates roughly to isn’t that so? 

Let’s review:  remove all the spaces from the phrase, and don’t pronounce the t, c, second e or the last s.  Add a little French ‘h’ exhale on the end and what do you get class?  “NESPAHHHH!”  Ahhhh, oui, tres bien, merci!”  If you came up with “Nasty Paws”, I think that will get you out of clapping erasers.

But there is no other language that can make sitting back and doing absolutely nothing sound so erudite and sophisticated: “laissez-faire”. Did you ever notice how a Frenchman can utter these words without dislodging the smoking cigarette stuck seductively to his bottom lip?  What a beautiful alternative to the coarse American terms “lazy,” “irresponsible,” or “slacking.”

I would be terribly remiss if I didn’t mention something else, but its a secret you can’t tell anyone!  Classier Brits and Frenchies share the unique articulation of keeping their teeth covered while they are speaking. Perhaps these longtime adversarial nationalities share the same problematic dental hygiene?  If you have read Dreaming Is Free, I think you will agree that British rock star Geoffrey Dowager would find great distaste at having anything in common with the “frogs” across the channel.