Precerpt from My 20th Language

 

My Walks to School

In my last two years of high school, I used to walk to school with my best friend, D. I would meet her at her house. While she finished getting her things together, I would talk to her mother, a native speaker of French with pretty darn good English. A lovely lady. Our morning conversations, however brief, were among the highlights of my day, every day.

Upon occasion, I would ask her for help with my French homework, if there was something I did not understand or know. One of her “explanations” has stayed with me for decades. I could not remember the gender of one of the nouns in the assignment. “Is the article le or la?” I asked her.

She did not know. “Just say it fast,” she advised.

So, l’ it became! In so many conversations in the future with all kinds of people, even in college classrooms, I would just say it fast—and I nearly never got caught! Which makes sense because a lot of expressions in French are “just said fast.” Whole sentences get contracted into one word, and everyone knows what is sliding down the throat, untouched. For example,

  • J’ je ne peux pas → j’p’pas;
  • je ne veux pas → j’v’pas;
  • je ne sais pas → j’n s’pas;
  • je ne sais quoi → sqoi.

It’s a whole system. It turns out, I grew up around a dialect where:

  • speed mattered more than clarity;
  • vowels collapse under pressure;
  • consonants carry the meaning; and
  • grammar was something schoolteachers cared about, not mill workers.


For more precerpts from My 20th Language, click HERE.

For more posts about language learning, click HERE.


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