Learning French the hard way

The following posts document David Sedaris's fictional accounts of his narrator learning French in his excellent book Me Talk Pretty One Day:

"When called upon, I delivered an effortless list of things that I detest: blood sausage, intestinal pâtés, brain pudding. Having given it some thought, I then declared my love for IBM typewriters, the French word for bruise, and my electric floor waxer. It was a short list, but I still managed to mispronounce IBM and assign the wrong gender to both the floor waxer and the typewriter. The teacher's reaction led me to believe that these mistakes were capital crimes in the country of France.
"Were you always this palicmkrexis?" she asked. "Even a fiuscrzsa ticiwelmun knows that a typewriter is feminine."
I absorbed as much of her abuse as I could understand, thinking - but not saying - that I find it ridiculous to assign a gender to an inanimate object incapable of disrobing and making an occasional fool of itself."


"We'd have one of these "complete this sentence" exercises, and I'd fool with the thing for hours, invariably settling on something like "A quick run round the lake? I'd love to! Just give me a moment while I strap on my wooden leg." "


"My only comfort was the knowledge that I was not alone. Huddled in the hallways and making the most of our pathetic French, my fellow students and I engaged in the sort of conversation commonly overheard in refugee camps.
"Sometime me cry alone at night."
"That be common for I also, but be strong, you. Much work and someday you talk pretty. People start love you soon." "


"The Italian nanny was attempting to answer the teacher's latest question when the Moroccan student interrupted, shouting, "Excuse me, but what's an Easter?"
It would seem that despite having grown up in a Muslim country, she would have heard it mentioned once or twice, but no. "I mean it," she said. "I have no idea what you people are talking about."
The teacher called upon the rest of us to explain.
The Poles led the charge to the best of their ability. "It is," said one, "a party for the little boy of God who call his self Jesus and ... oh, shit." She faltered and her fellow countryman came to her aid.
"He call his self Jesus and then he be die one day on two ... morsels of ... lumber."
The rest of the class jumped in, offering bits of information that would have given the pope an aneurysm.
"He die one day and then he go above of my head to live with your father"
"He weared of himself the long hair and after he die, the first day he come back here for to say hello to the peoples."
"He nice, the Jesus."
"He makes the good things, and on Easter we be sad because somebody makes him dead today."
Part of the problem had to do with vocabulary. Simple nouns such as cross and resurrection were beyond our grasp, let alone such complicated reflexive phrases as "to give of yourself your only begotten son." faced with the challenge of explaining the cornerstone of Christianity, we did what any self-respecting group of people might do. We talked about the food instead.
"Easter is a party for to eat of the lamb," the Italian nanny explained. "One too may eat of the chocolate."
"And who brings the chocolate?" the teacher asked.
I knew the word, so I raised my hand, saying. "The rabbit of Easter. He bring of the chocolate."
"A rabbit?" The teacher, assuming I'd used the wrong word, positioned her index fingers on top of her head, wriggling them as though they were ears. "You mean one of these? A rabbit rabbit?"

Nothing we said was of any help to the Moroccan student. A dead man with long hair supposedly living with her father, a leg of lamb served with palm fronds and chocolate; equally confused and disgusted, she shrugged her massive shoulders and turned her attention back to the comic book she kept hidden underneath her binder."