La Coquette

Franglish

Recent comments about my father’s lack of a French accent notwithstanding, there’s something about having to shout in another language. It’s like taking those scarcely foreign vowels and holding them up to a magnifying glass so you can suddenly see all the weird hairy bits. 

Going through a drive-through window with my father today, I took note of this.  Not enough “h” in his “hamburger.”  Something a little too nasal in the word “fries,” like someone impersonating an American accent. 

I found myself teasing him, which is just asking for trouble, being that my French accent is light years from his American one.  He then kindly brought up the time when I was locked in the gym bathroom in Paris and forced to shout, “Aidez-moi!  Je suis bloqué!”  Help!  I’m stuck.  (This is something I prefer to forget, not because I was fearful of being stuck, but because I was fearful of my own horrid accent, all the hairy bits magnified).

In situations such as this, (and especially whenever he corrects my French), I retaliate in the only way I can, which is to remind him that ONLY HE CAN BE BLAMED FOR ROBBING ME OF THE OPPORTUNITY TO SPEAK FRENCH AS A CHILD. 

Of course, that would have been too easy.  You don't think I ever would have really said that, do you?

It's okay, only my father and I think this is funny.

My father has been in an excellent mood since reading my last post, and over the phone from work just now, he shouted to me “C’est tout bon!”  To which I answered “Mr. All Good.”  Then we laughed like drunk hyenas.

You see, there was a French minister of culture called Monsieur Toubon who created a controversial law listing thousands of French expressions that must be used in place of their English equivalents in all advertising, radio, and TV broadcasting.  Being that his name sounds exactly like the French expression for “all good,” his opponents took to calling him.... MR. ALL GOOD.  Get it?  GET IT!

Real Men Bend It Like Beckham

My father (far right) with his Université teammates after a soccer win, circa 1972.  He has no idea that in a few short years, he will move to America, FOREVER ALTERING THE COURSE OF HIS LIFE.  America will make him drink beer from a bottle and put ice in his drinks.  America will persuade him to buy a Golden Retriever and an SUV.  America will inspire him to wear khaki trousers and oversized work shirts made by Tommy Hilfiger.  But will America take his soccer ball-shaped soul and replace it with NFL-regulation pigskin?  *swell French National Anthem, La Marseillaise*  NEVER.   

I remember feeling shocked when a teacher told my mother that my father had a cute accent.  What accent?  I’d never noticed any accent.  Of course, my father did, and still does, have a French accent, but it’s so indistinct, most people can’t pin what country he’s from.  I actually felt a bit disappointed when I realized what a less bated French accent could sound like.  Watching Jean de Florette, my sisters and I wondered why our Dad didn’t sound like Gérard Depardieu.  Even a French doctor who ran local T.V. commercials in Florida would say, exotically, “I’ve been a resident of Floreedah for 25 years.”  What was wrong with our Dad?  He sounded nothing like that, and he’d only been here 15 years. 

I just saw the movie Spanglish.  If you’re reading this from France, the movie is not slated for release there UNTIL APRIL.  I WISH SOMEONE HAD TOLD ME THIS BEFORE I MOVED TO FRANCE--YOU WILL NEVER AGAIN SEE A MOVIE WHEN IT’S SHINY AND NEW, BUT INSTEAD MONTHS AFTER IT HAS REACHED THE 100-SEATER IN PODUNK WEST VIRGINIA.  I am considering legal action because no one warned me I’d have to wait three months to see Lost in Translation. 

So if you haven’t seen Spanglish, two of the main characters are an immigrant from Mexico and her young daughter.  The typical struggles between first and second generation immigrants ensue--the balance of assimilation with homeland heritage, the problematic of a child having more power than her parents (the mother barely speaks English), etc.

I couldn’t relate to any of this.  I never felt like the immigrant’s child, shamed by my father’s accent and foreign ways.  (Oh, he made me cringe in public all right, but it had nothing to do with his being French).  Why was he so assimilated by the time of my birth?    A large part must be that he had absolutely no connection to France here--no French friends, no French-speaking television channels, and calls overseas were expensive.   And although my mother and he fell in love when she was studying abroad in France, they always spoke in English together.

I've been thinking about my Dad’s experience since reading Petite Anglaise’s posting last week, Cultural Schizophrenia.  She writes how even when you become fluent in another language, your true self can be harder to translate.   Asking for my father’s reaction to this idea, he told me what I already knew, but prefer not to think about--that 30 years after moving to the United States, no matter how confident his English skills, he still feels more comfortable telling a joke in French.  He told me that he considers his "true self" his French self.  Then we started talking about how his closest friends remain his high school friends, how he’d really like to retire in France, and how only after becoming a father does he realize the injury he caused his parents when he left.  And then, OH GOD THEN, as if my glasses weren’t foggy enough--he just had to go and bring up soccer.

You see, the thing about soccer is that not only did my father move all the way across the Atlantic for my mother, but then GOD GAVE HIM THREE GIRLS WHO COULDN'T HAVE CARED LESS ABOUT SOCCER.  The family member most moved by the game was probably our Golden Retriever Ginger, and even she ranked it a distant third to chasing lizards and digging holes in the ground. 

My father has made the best of things--he coached soccer at the YMCA off and on for ten years, played in a league when he first moved stateside, and now, while many of his friends play golf on the weekends, he spends his Saturdays refereeing youth soccer.   I asked him yesterday if he felt disadvantaged socially because he doesn’t follow American football and he said, “Sometimes I feel like a woman--when they’re talking about football in the hallway at work, I just walk on by.”

And that’s when I really lost it.  My father is a man.  MERDE.  Americans just aren’t talking about the right game. 

What's In A Name?

My name is what sells me out.  When I first moved to Paris seven months ago with my college-level (at best) French, I dreaded having to give my name because of what would inevitably follow: 

FRENCH PERSON:  (Saying my name).  But that’s a really french name!
ME:  Yes, actually my father’s French, but we didn’t speak it growing up. (This said remorsefully, to help soften the blow).
FRENCH PERSON:  Not actually sure what they were saying, being as it was so mired by tongue clicking, lip pursing, “C’est pas vrais!”’s and various Gallic manifestations of freaking out. 

I love the French, but they’re SUPER theatrical.