Speaking in tongues

Every time I visit France, I hope that I will spontaneously develop lingual osmosis.  I daydream about waking up and suddenly being able to understand every single sound that's uttered in my direction; that I will be able to produce the correct combination of nasal m's and n's, guttural r's, and beautifully mixed vowels.  That I could be able to function autonomously in any situation so I wouldn't need to rely on my darling, fluently French, and dashingly handsome copain.  Alas, human evolution is proving frustratingly slow, so I'm stuck squinting in incomprehension while les françaises blink at me with an unending stream of, "vous comprenez?"

I understand that sunshine on grape clusters is always a pretty picture

I took roughly 8 semesters of French classes from 8th grade to 11th grade.  I loved French right up to the point when we started learning how to conjugate subjunctive verbs.  Il faut que ughhhhhhh.  In college, I was required to take "singer" Italian (two semesters of freshman classes dumbed down enough for a bunch of music majors to squeak through).  I don't remember a single thing from those classes.  Sophomore year, I took two semesters of German.  German grammar is beyond bewildering, so I ended my lingual aspirations in favor of some super useful and relevant religious studies classes.  I nearly double-majored in voice performance and religious studies, but I didn't want to be too employable by the time I graduated.

What I did learn in college was diction.  Every classically trained singer must have beautiful, correct, precise, and exquisite diction in whatever language is being sung.  If I do say so myself, I'm a tad gifted in the diction department.  I've gotten beaucoup compliments on my French pronunciation from French people.  I spent hours in college shaping my mouth around mixed vowels, learning the nuances of a nasal consonant, and perfecting the elusive pure "e" sound (we don't have it in English; it's one of the most difficult sounds for a native English speaker to produce in my observation).  I adore the way French sounds, but I never really made the time to study the language itself in college.  I do have a delightful smattering of vocabulary, though much of it is archaic as I sang texts that were written as far back as the 16th century.  I'm able to get by in conversation, and I can get the gist of most any written text, but now is my chance to truly immerse myself and proactively participate.

Who needs to talk when this is the scenery?

So far, much of immersion is absorption.  When Ben speaks to his friends in French, I actively absorb everything that's being said.  At first, everything was a bit rusty, and I was still translating everything into English before understanding.  After a little over a week here, I don't rely so much on my inner google translate, and the French words are beginning to take on their own meanings.  All that inner translation takes precious time from any dialogue, so when I don't need to translate, I have that much more time to formulate my own sentences.  I also try to absorb new vocabulary, structure, spoken cadence, and even the physical attributes to speaking French.  Context is incredibly helpful in any conversation.  If I can pick out a few keys words early in a speech, it helps direct my brain to comprehend everything that follows.  Even if I don't get precisely every word spoken, I'm able to at least understand the general atmosphere of the topic.  Confidence is crucial to participating in conversation.  I'm my own worst enemy; I detest being incorrect, so I'd rather be quiet than be wrong.  Unfortunately, that doesn't progress one's language skills very far, so I'm learning to accept that being wrong is ok; being understood is the most important thing for me right now. It doesn't matter so much that I used the wrong verb conjugation, article, pronoun, sentence structure, masculine/feminine form of a word, so long as I can convey my fundamental needs.  I learned about Maslow's hierarchy of needs in a college psych class, and language comprehension reminds me of that pyramid.  First, one must have his basic needs met: shelter, food, clothing.  The bread-and-butter of existence; the "être" and "aller" and "bonjour" and "je, tu, fromage, pain, et vin" of French.  IThe hierarchy then moves up through functional relationships, stability, rich vitality, up to self-actualization.  I've got the food and shelter of my French production down pretty well, so now I need to start stabilizing my friendship with this beautiful language.

Stabilizing my friendship with French beer, for starters.

All in all, the process of learning a foreign language is exhausting.  It takes an extreme commitment to active listening, processing, trying, failing, and discovering.  By the end of a day, my brain aches from the kind of stimulation I haven't received in years.  I spend most conversations squinting off into the distance because right now, that's how I best process what's being spoken to me.  If I look directly at someone's face, like I would when conversing in English, I get distracted by their looks, their mouth movements, their expressions, stray eyelashes, smudged glasses.  But it's wonderful.  I haven't been challenged like this since college, and the rush of triumph I feel after speaking correctly and being understood the first time is matched by nothing.  Tasting the delicious French words and producing the correct combination is exhilarating, even when just requesting the chicken man quarter the roast chicken.  I never accepted that failure is an integral part of learning when I was a kid, so that really prevented me from trying many, many things.  Now, it's do-or-die.  If I want to be understood, I need to speak the language.  I'm going to be wrong; that's ok.  Thankfully, I'll be taking classes soon, and I live with someone who has a master's degree in telling me how to speak this language correctly, so the errors will eventually get corrected.

I don't have a clever segue for this: these are snails.  Seriously, escargots grow on plants.

We also finally, finally got confirmation for our location this year!  We will be moving to Lyon in the next few weeks.  That means leaving behind warm, sunny Provence, but we're both pretty excited to get out of this limbo.  One can only spend so many days sleeping in, taking long walks in countryside vineyards, and lazily munching on baguettes et fromage...

Au revoir to this beautiful vista!