My Great Escape: Closer to the Dream
Natalie Kardum
Things change. Plans are made only to be revised or broken. What seems like an exciting opportunity falls flat on its face, only to reveal something more exciting walking up just behind it.
It has been nine months since I moved to London. In this time I have done many of the things I wanted to do, some successful and some not so much. I wanted to live here, and I have. After nine months I have taken a close look at the past year... if only to discover what I have taken forward, and what have I let go.
I continually do this thing were I find something that really, REALLY excites me. I get keen on learning as much as I possibly can about the subject; I find like-minded people and spend hours upon hours discussing my new love. Then I think of ways I can spend my life taking pictures, swinging on a trapeze, or, in this case, speaking French.
I have spoken many times about my desire to speak this language fluently. I have spoken of my dream to move to France for a few months, live in a small town or village in a flat above a bakery where I would work, handing out fresh baguettes to all the townspeople who would marvel, "Dear me! What lovely French you speak for a western Canadian! Why, you sound just like one of us!” And I would just smile and say "Merci!", and not bathe entirely in the compliment, knowing that although my French was fluent, I had a dictionary upstairs with a dozen pages of vocabulary I still needed to memorize. After all, why not write a book about my French travels in my newly adopted language?
Well, I'm still living in London, everyone. My French has not improved much since the first day I resumed class last September; I have not cracked open a French book in TWO months; when I do speak, I am sounding as Canadian as ever. "What part of America are you from?" they ask. I'm not. I'm from a town called Vancouver, and before that, Victoria, where they don't sound too different from anyone else. I learned how to speak English from immigrant parents learning English at the same time I was, and my own understanding of English grammar is quite poor. What makes me think that I'll be living atop a bakery in France, throwing croissants from my window to a cheering crowd off village people in the middle of the summer speaking in yet another foreign language? I think I'm a little delusional, at best.
I recently visited a good friend of mine, Kourteney, a photographer living in Paris, and easily one of my most glamorous friends. Not glamorous in the flashy, celebrity, money style, but she moved to Paris for love, set herself up as a photographer, travels with her work, and basically does what she loves. Real life glamour. After four years, her French is pretty fluent. Where it takes me about five minutes to digest a simple question and figure out how to respond, she is in full conversation, the musicality of her response sprinkled with slang. Her French is full of her experience: she immigrated barely speaking any of the language, gained the courage to respond to people without being afraid the say things incorrectly, finally experienced success when she realized she understood the things being said around her. Sure, you can take all the classes you want-I have certainly spent much time and money in the classroom trying to master the language--but there is also the part of learning where you ask someone on a street corner in Paris how to get to the Latin Quarter, and they don't know what they hell you are saying, and neither do you. To have that hot-faced embarrassment, to have that moment where you just NEED that word you are searching for, "Je chereche....ugh......pour le.....ugh......merde merde merde…" It teaches you more than a classroom ever can.
I'm someone who usually does not fear looking like a complete idiot, but when it comes to language, it terrifies me. I can trip or walk into a glass door, sure, I do that nearly every day, but not to be understood, that is what has always worried me. The point of learning a language is to communicate, but what is the use of learning and be afraid to communicate? Hence, me spending many years learning French and always ending up on the same level, "LEVEL: If I mumble and look down, no one will notice me."
I have attempted other languages and have not felt half the pressure. I suppose I put my French dream on a pedestal. When I move there for a few months, I have to be prepared so no silly mistakes sully up my French provincial experience. The thing is, there will be mistakes. Many. And they will be more embarrassing than tripping or bumping into things, because with a language you can actually offend other people by accident and not be able to explain yourself properly. I could run to the supermarket in a frenzy for pepper only to forget how to say 'poivre' and end up saying 'stupid' instead. I know how I forget words in English when I'm over-tired… imagine my brain under the pressure in France.
Be courageous? Don't have expectations? I'm not sure what kind of advice I would give myself at this point. I do like to give myself goals, but whatever goal I have set up for myself in the past year for my French, I have not reached. Perhaps instead of iron goals I need to go back to simply enjoying the language. Celebrate my accomplishments and laugh at my failures. Know that I'll trip up when I try to speak during my next visit to France. But above all, realize that speaking French instead of thinking about speaking French might get me closer to the dream.