Tongue Tied

Illustration By: mike nawn

With a trip to Montreal looming, our folk writer rediscovers her French.

by Mary Armstrong

"Just do what he says. It's easy!" urged my French-speaking friends at the closing dance of last September's accordion festival in Montmagny, Quebec. The dance, the bal québecois, is a cousin of square dancing and, as such, requires participants to follow called-out directions. Sure, it's easy — once you know how, which I didn't. So I sat and listened hard for a set. Making the motions in my seat — "everybody swing," etc. — I jerked up short in my chair when I heard the man holler, "Crachez à gauche!" or "Spit to the left!"

Laughing loud and wondering what kind of dance this was, I noticed no heads turned, no slick spots developing on the floor. As it turns out, to the untuned ear, crochuz (hook) sounds a whole lot like crachez (spit).

Clearly it was time to take these ears to the shop. As a journalist who covers roots music, I'd be heading to the 17th annual North American Folk Alliance festival. This year's installment, which wrapped February 27, was to be held for the first time in a non-English-speaking city — Montreal, the second-largest French-speaking city in the world. It would also be the first time Strictly Mundial, the conference of European festival presenters, would be co-meeting, doubling the number of artists in attendance. Rusty French simply would not fly.

The best French tune-ups in this area are provided by L'Alliance Française (at 102 years old, Philadelphia's outpost is one of the Paris-based language and culture organization's oldest branches). Once a month or so lovers and distant admirers of the French language gather in its swank downtown location to spend a day living in French.

The immersion courses come in four levels. My quick oral exam placed me in the most advanced level, which, I was delighted to learn, includes native French speakers willing to pay $100 a day just to hear the music of their mother tongue.

My classmates included: a Swiss-born francophone allergist; a young lawyer who'd spent a year in French-speaking Senegal; an English teacher from Jersey who'd been practicing daily with A/V programs to sharpen his skills (though you mightn't guess it to listen to his accent); and a Gladwyne woman who spoke fondly of the days when she played doubles tennis with French speakers at the country club.

In the immersion course, the idea is not so much to correct grammar but to resuscitate people's existing French. We had two different teachers, one a very charitable French woman who teaches at Bryn Mawr College. She spoke slowly and clearly and engaged us all in conversation. I was feeling saucy and secure, encountering only a few new words. The afternoon brought a lively Parisian instructor who reminded me why I was there, speaking quickly in enthusiastic conversation. (She taught me the phrase, "un mot sur deux" to explain to folks who speak rapidly that I'm getting "every other word.") Her relentless speed was effective, though. By the end of the afternoon I was finally trotting along with her.

The course left me confident, mumbling to myself in French every day to keep it fresh until I got to Canada. Right over the border, the immigration folks board the train. The officer who interviewed me started in English. But I'd heard him speaking French to the folks a few seats ahead, so no time like the present to get started. With hand raised, I asked him politely, "Ayez la bonté de me parler en français." Which was close enough for him, so we switched. That he still admitted me to Canada means I didn't insult him, or anyone else.

In Montreal, most commercial exchanges are pitched bilingually. When I had my hair done up on the Plateau, Montreal's hippest area, I had to request someone who would speak French to me. Back at the conference, everyone spoke to the locals in their native tongue if possible. By the festival's fourth day, however, too much music and talk had the circuits on overload. The reimmersion was failing. Pitiful looks and shoulder shrugs substituted for words that were temporarily inaccessible as a universal lapse into mother tongues ensued.

And no courses at L'Alliance can prepare you for the Quebecois accent. For instance, U.S. French students are taught that vite, French for quick, rhymes with heat. In Quebec it rhymes with hit. It is beyond my powers of phonetics to capture the way they pronounce moi.

But back in the hotel, where early in my stay staff had said everything in both French and English, a subtle shift had occurred. They were resigned to the fact that Madame Armstrong was there to speak French. By the last night when I rang for un reveil • sept heure, no English was uttered — and the wake-up call came at 7 a.m. When I couldn't use the video checkout due to errors, "il y a un tout petit probléme" got their attention and a resolved bill.

L'Alliance Française's spring French classes begin on March 14. The organization is also offering "Assouplissement et mouvements" or stretching classes in French as a way to get fit and learn the parts of the body. For more information, visit www.alliancefrancaisephiladelphia.com