I wish I had continued my French in college, but I didn't feel prepared.
The teachers I had for my first two years of French were excellent. First there
was Miss Accorsi at Forest Park Junior High. Remember Miss Grundy from the
Archie comics? Replace the frown with a patient smile, color the dress gray, and that's Miss Accorsi. She may have looked like something out of a comic book, but she was the
real thing. For the first six weeks of class we had no books, but learned to
converse extensively about les crayons et les cahiers before we opened nos livres and began to
learn about the difference between passe’ compose' and l'imparfait.
At Technical High School Miss Roy made French fun
as we heard
about her trips to Paris, sang songs, and learned about Edith Piaf.
I even, and I find this hard to believe myself, wrote a sonnet in French in her
class. Sadly all I remember about French 3 was that Miss Murray had short
bleached blond hair, on top of which she had a huge bow, making her look like
an overgrown kewpie doll—the extreme opposite of Miss Accorsi. So when I had to
pick a language in college, I picked Spanish.
I wish I had
continued with my French so that I came to know it really well, or else had
started out with Spanish in the first place. As a result of knowing a little
French and even less Spanish, I am envious of those who speak more than one language
well. And what really annoys me are people who see their monolingualism as a
badge of honor, insisting the rest of the world speak English. At the school
where I taught, we had students from many different countries who spoke
numerous languages. Many of them spoke several languages, yet others were
critical because their English wasn't perfect.
Put aside
the fact that being able to converse in more than one language is an advantage
over frowning and waiting for an English translation. English is not an easy
language to learn, and I say that as an English teacher and someone who loves
the language. First there is the spelling. Why in the world should cough be
spelled c-o-u-g-h when off is spelled o-f-f? Then there are those crazy words
that are their own antonyms like left. It can mean that someone is gone, or
what remains. And when the cops on TV dust for fingerprints, how is that not
the same as what they're doing on the Pledge commercial? Adding dust or taking
it away?
Being a
lover of the language, I enjoy reading dictionaries, seeing the roots of words.
Knowing the word's story, knowing, for instance, that the word sinister comes
the Latin meaning left--oh, yes, there's yet another left--this one meaning the
opposite or right-- which has several other meanings. Oh, it's all a wonderful
mess of a language. From the little I know of other languages, I suspect they
are not as complicated, which is why I admire those who really can speak more
than one. Now back to los libros.
Buenas di’as,
mis amigos!
