The perfect level of background chatter, in a café or train, is like water flowing in a small creek. A busy bar or house party full of people pressed together is the crashing calamity of whitewater, a waterfall that drowns out. A class of recent émigrés stumbling over a dictation pulses and crescendos like a pond of spring peepers, the volume inching upward, punctuated by random monosyllabic yelps. Chatting with a new acquaintance is as though tuning in and out of reception and static as the weather report warns of rough seas...then foundering on unavoidable rocks. A thoughtful person with precise enunciation is like sipping a generously poured cocktail. A word of amorous affection -- an ice cube melting on your tongue.
Sometimes I dream in French, but even in the dream I feel something's not quite right, or I'm just making things up. Occasionally, a word of French pops into my mind, unbidden, in the omnipresent stream of internal monologue, like, "Ok, now I'll stir the soup; the potatoes are looking bien cuit, so it's almost done."
Then there's the awkwardness of what to do with words like "croissant" and "Paris" when I'm speaking in English: just say them normal, or with a ridiculous accent ("KWA-saw," "pah-REE")? Or what to do about "librairie" and "collège"? Say them without the accent and they become "library" instead of the word for bookstore, and "college" as in university, rather than the word for junior high.
The silver lining of my nascent comprehension is that I don't have to overhear banal conversations. Unconcerned with eavesdropping or unignorable cellphone calls, I can retreat deeply into reading in public, and later resurface with the bewildered thought, "Why is everybody speaking in French?"
No comments:
Post a Comment