I think I have a problem…
With this whole language learning thing, I mean. First I started off with Spanish, studying it in school, then majoring in it in college and even going abroad with it to Barcelona (although of course the study abroad thing might have been part of why I did the major…). Then I decided to move to Italy to teach English, despite not knowing anyone here, not having any Italian ancestry or anything like that, and only knowing of the language what I had taught myself from reading in Italian, having picked up a couple silly novels when I had visited Italy.
Now, I still haven’t studied Italian formally but I get by, and I keep finding myself at… The French cultural center in Rome, Centre Saint Louis de France. They have a chock full calender of films, exhibitions, lectures, and book readings, and I just started going when there was a topic that particularly interested me, as a nice way to unwind when I was downtown after work.
There was a lecture about Andy Warhol and religious themes in his work which I thought should be interesting, but I went with low expectations of how much I would understand based on knowing other romance languages. And, in fact, the first speaker I had a hard time with. Slides going along with his points helped somewhat, but what I find difficult about French are the different accents and ways of speaking, some people are just phlegmy and slur and mumble and it sounds really awful, in my humble opinion. The second speaker though I fared better with; he was one of those slow-talkers who sort of has to think of each word himself before he says them, which obviously helped. I took some notes on what I did understand, and looking back at them afterwards I realized I had gotten quite a lot of it.
So at that point I was sort of hooked. Maybe I can learn this one too, at least a little. I went to other talks where I understood really about 1%, films where at least I could follow the basic story. Last week however I went to my favorite event yet, a book discussion with a French author who grew up in Rwanda before the war (if you can call it that) there. I understood enough to be interested in the book at the first talk, in French, and then luckily a few days later he gave another “conversation” at a small African bookstore here, where he had someone live translating to and from French for him, whispering in his ear as the interviewer spoke and so on (and as a geek, I find even little details like this totally fascinating). It soon switched to French though, of course, as most people in the crowd who asked questions did so in French. Still, once you have a little context you can understand more than you might think, if you just try and don’t give up. It was a fantastic experience and I managed to learn a lot.
I got the book (the Italian version though, I don’t want to completely frustrate myself) and it’s fascinating, really creative, a dialog of sorts between two parallel lives, one a mute boy living in the aftermath in Rwanda, and the other a girl who was born there, orphaned, adopted by a couple in Paris, and therefore grew up thinking herself disconnected from what happened. (The title is “Le Passé devant soi” in French if you are interested, I don’t believe it has been translated to English though.)
When I picked up my copy, I had it signed by the author, though I could only pronounce my name and say thank you in the most basic French. His translator offered to read me what he had written, but instead I waited and looked up the words I didn’t know when I got home, and there you have it, my first personal experience in yet another language.
