I'm finally moving to Paris. Say that out loud and you will smile, even if it's not true. There is something about Paris that has plagued us as children. In the movies, the parisien accordion playing the song of romance as a mime....well, mimes. The camera pans across a petit cafe where the most fashionably dressed are sipping on their coffees. And the close up on my smile as I'm finally sitting there at that same cafe.
Now cue reality. I'm not so naive (which is a french word by the way) to think I'll be living in Amelie and Ratatouille, but I do know that for me, to be surrounded by the French language is my dream. When I was 13, I walked into my sisters room and she sat there studying her French homework for Mrs. Boyte's class. I hadn't been exposed to the language before. I opened the book and found my passion. I loved practicing the sounds and wanted to learn all the words. "What is 'dog' in French? What is 'house'? What is 'love'?" As soon as a class was offered at my school, I pounced on it. For years now I've been trying to soak up as much knowledge about the language as possible. Yes, I was the biggest brown noser west side of the Mississippi when it came to French class. Of course this didn't make me too popular with the majority of the class. But, that didn't bother me, the only French they'd be using was French kissing the cow they milked. I'll never forget this one hick in my class that butchered the language almost for fun. There was this one sentence, we had to recite: "Il y a un ordinateur dans ma chambre de coucher" which translated "There is a computer in my bedroom." But for this guy, lets call him Bubba, the sentence was "Eeel y a ordiNADER DAWNS ma chamber day COOCHIE *snicker, snicker, snicker* He had a profound ability to take any french word and turn it into a vulgar slang of English. For instance, when we recited our numbers, number 19 which is dix-neuf, became DEEZ NUTS for Bubba. He was hopeless.
However, I managed to survive the culture killing baboons, and I got offered a chance to go to France when I as 17. I'll never forget when I saw the Arc de Triomphe. It was the first monument I got to see and my 17 year old eyes could not take in the vastness of stone, and the magnitude of splendor. I was seeing what before then only existed in movies for me.
I soaked up every linguistic adventure. Part of learning a language is making mistakes, and funny ones at that. I sat in the living room of the host family that lived in Orleans (and hour and half by car from Paris). Mathilde, my "sister" brought me a glass of water. I promptly said, "Merci beaucoup." But that is not what her, or any of the family heard. They looked at me like I had just sexually harassed their daughter. In fact, I had. I had no idea that Merci Beaucoup sounds, with the slightest mistake in the last prononciation, like "Merci, beau cul, " which is "Thanks, nice ass." I was mortified but now knew how I could get some cul in France if I wanted some.
It's this type of linguistic adventure that fueled my passion even more. My short time in France that summer in 2006 was a taste that tempted me for years to come. I remember making a promise that I would be back. As abstract as the emotion I felt, I made a promise to the concrete beneath my feet that I would walk on it again-actually more likely skip.
There was a part of my soul that was written in French and I am off to discover and decipher and digest all the beauty and grotesqueness that coincides. I can't wait to master a language that has been whispering to me in my dreams since I could understand sounds. I love language because language is beautiful. All langues are beautiful. It's with language that we communicate, and it's with communication that we show who and what we love.
I'm ready to love France. LANGUE IS SCHöN
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