Not going it alone in France

 

I do keep an eye on the French immigrant experience as people write about it on the Internet. Apparently it is very hard to make French friends! Sometimes people get very lonely trying to make a life here in France.

Though I guess people get lonely everywhere. Loneliness is sweeping the world.

If I ever decide to try and make a French friend maybe I will see how hard it all is.

So if you want to move to France, you might want to bring a friend with. That's what I did. 

We alone can understand each other's French.

Je parle francais

 

Je parle francais.

Tu parles francais?

Don't worry, there are things on your phone or computer that can translate that for you.

I speak French!

But no one understands me when I do.

I understand French!

But not when other people speak it.

This creates some tricky situations. One of my favorites is the "everyone knows the easy part" conundrum. Like I'm talking with a French person who speaks as much English as I speak French. Maybe we're not understanding each other. I can say some part okay in French, but not enough to communicate the whole thing. They say a bunch of French, and then, seemingly triumphantly, they say the same thing I said in French, with great empahsis, in English.

Here. How about this to explain. Say the emergency room person is directing us to walk to another hospital. They'll say: 

"Vous devez aller bien au-dela de l'endroit ou la rue est defoncee, ignorer le mendiant agressif, puis tourner a droite."

I don't know about you, but I can understand way, way better reading French than hearing French, but either way this has too many odd words and I'd be lost even then. Spoken? I can only clearly understand the end of that where the person says "Then you go right" (puis tourner a droite). And so it is uniquely disappointing when the French person, as if they're super helpful, adds to their long incomprehensible string of French, a bit of slow English, "You... go... right... there."

Yes, that was the part I got.

But okay, they speak a bit of English. Maybe we can muddle through. So I ask, reaching deep "Ou je dois aller a droite?" Which means 'where do I go right?' except I think the syntax might be bad on that. And the person, now frustrated that after all their copious English I still don't understand, says in an irritated tone ""Vous devez aller bien au-dela de l'endroit ou la rue est defoncee, ignorer le mendiant agressif, then   you    go     right!" 

So we head off.

"Merci, au revoir. Bonne journee." We say.

"Goodbye." They respond. "Have a nice day!"

The bookstore

 

In the spirit of unadorned photography from around my Belle Epoque City, I have some pictures to show you today of a bookstore, or "librairie".

But a few things before we go. First is the funny, and initially confusing reversal of the English words "Library" and "Bookstore", something that led me to confusion and misunderstanding the first time I went to Paris. A "Library" in French is a "Bibliotheque" which, at least to me, sounds like it would be a bookstore, whereas, as stated, a "Bookstore" is, in French, a "Librairie" which, of course, sounds like it would be a library. It's all a bit Goose Juice and Moose Goose from Dr. Seuss, where the trouble comes when Mooses dream of goose juice and Gooses dream of moose juice.

As an aside, we walked to what we remembered as the truly amazing main library here in this city, which shares a sort of fabulous complex, bridge, and elevated park, with the modern and contemporary museum. But the whole thing was closed down for some major refurbishment project and had no indications of when it would open again. 

But, on the subject of unaltered photos, here are a couple pictures of the terrific dragon fountain in the park above the library and museum:

Anyway, to return to the subject of bookstores here in France, I haven't been into very many. After all, while they seem terribly appealing, how terrible to be faced with so many intriguing books that I AM INCAPABLE OF READING.

Nevertheless, the one pictured below, elaborately Christmassed up, looked so full of charms and treasures, we did venture in to just its vestibule to moon at its displays and all the promise of its antiquities. We could not bear to enter its front doors though, and instead we wandered off to buy chocolate.

We speak French!

 

The rhetoric, at least as I encountered it all my life, is that the French are horrible and cruel about people speaking their language, or trying to. 

They are, but they are everything else as well: kind, patient, irritated, confused, and really nice about it. They vary. And if I had to give an overall accounting, despite some bitter experiences with that famous French disdain, they are like people everywhere else we've travelled: touched and complimentary about our speaking their language, in this case, the awesome and mysterious French one.

And though one is supposed to hold tourists in general contempt in order to feel better about being a tourist (I'm an Emigre, dammit!), all these English speaking tourists flocking to the Cote D' Azur and speaking English like it's a divine right have set the stage for our flailing, toddler level, utterly confused French to look like graciousness itself to the beleaguered local inhabitants.

Going in I was inclined to think that many tourists have better French than we do, but I suspect now it is only the tiniest percentage that do. A couple days ago in a beach restaurant (that we can see from the window of where we're currently living), we got a slightly absurd compliment from the waiter we were chatting with that brought it all home.

"How did you come to learn French!" The waiter marvelled. "It is very unusual for Americans to know French." 

It should be noted this was spoken in English.

Although it is possible someone else has paid us this compliment in French in the past, but it would have blown by us by as we only understand maybe a quarter of what anyone says to us, and then only when it is slow, has a lot of context, and is being said the second time around.