Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Let's take it back. Three years back.
It is my first time in Paris. I am sitting in a chilly classroom in Université Paris IX, a thin black scarf is wrapped around my neck; it is my vain effort to conform to Parisian fashion. I am surrounded by a handful of foreign exchange students from a handful of different countries. We are all here for the same thing, and we are all waiting.
A sharp clicking sound begins to echo down the hallway; louder, and louder, and louder. Our hearts beat just a little bit faster because, as every student knows, the first day of class is always a little trying on the nerves. Suddenly the door swings open and we are greeted with a resounding “Bonjour!” and a theatrical sweep of the arms. A bold, elegant, middle aged woman clad in a typical Parisian black winter coat bursts into the room and does what can only be described as a bow. Her name is Madame Gouverich and she is to be our phonetics professor for the next semester.
"Learning another language," says Madame Gouverich as she begins her opening monologue, “is nothing short of an existential quest; a journey into the very heart of our perception of reality."
I was in love with the class already.
“When you aspire to learn another language, students, you are agreeing to become an actor; a professional actor. In this class, you will not be a foreigner trying to speak French. You will be a French speaker foreigner. You will no longer try to speak French. You will speak French. C'est compris?”
She was a wonderfully eccentric woman, Madame Gouverich, the sort of teacher who never gave out an e-mail, but instead gave us her home address and asked us to contact her by hand written letter. I remember her having wild hair which was unusual for a Parisian woman. She also had a beaming, infectious smile, another Parisian anomaly.
What I really loved about the class though was that every session was dedicated to a sound. Just one sound. Can you imagine that? I loved the attention and care which was given to each delicate part of the language, and we saw that all these details eventually strung together in the end and helped us to imitate the whispery fluency of our Francophone counterparts.
Every sound was important. Each rise and fall in the sentence took on meaning and helped us to break down the immense language barrier that Parisians have constructed against foreigners trying to speak their language. I liked the way that nothing was left to hazard. We would spend whole afternoons discussing the R sound, which tickled the throat ever so slightly and was nothing like the English R which floated strangely in the middle of the mouth, or the aggressive Spanish R that rolled off the tip of the tongue. We would also recite poems to help us master the liaison; that peculiar French oddity where sentences are married together with melding sounds.
In many ways I felt that it was the most helpful French class that I had ever taken, because it treated the language delicately and with respect; it is the way, I came to understand, that French needs to be treated if it is to be spoken correctly.
The other thing that made the class so enjoyable was the contagious passion that emanated from Madame Gouverich. She was on fire with a love of language that was impossible to resist. Passionate people have a way of inspiring others. If the flame burns bright enough the spark is sure to catch others on fire and this was certainly the case with Madame.
Madame Gouverich really opened my eyes and showed me that speaking another language is more than memorizing dry grammar and vocabulary - it is about acting; it is about building a totally different persona; and it is about coming to understand your very own language in the process. I have learnt so much about English by studying French.
So remember that when you are learning another language that it is important to study native speakers. Watch how they act. Enter into their world. Observe their hand gestures, their facial expressions, and their intonations. See the world through a different perspective and don’t worry that you can’t do it, learning a language is as natural as eating and breathing.
Don’t forget that you are not just translating yourself from one language to another, but are in fact creating an entirely new version of yourself. It is a thrilling and immensely revealing process and I highly recommend that you give it a try.
It is also a whole lot of fun, which is always a good reason to do something, right?
- written on November 19, 2009, a Thursday.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Let's take it back. Three years back.
It is my first time in Paris. I am sitting in a chilly classroom in Université Paris IX, a thin black scarf is wrapped around my neck; it is my vain effort to conform to Parisian fashion. I am surrounded by a handful of foreign exchange students from a handful of different countries. We are all here for the same thing, and we are all waiting.
A sharp clicking sound begins to echo down the hallway; louder, and louder, and louder. Our hearts beat just a little bit faster because, as every student knows, the first day of class is always a little trying on the nerves. Suddenly the door swings open and we are greeted with a resounding “Bonjour!” and a theatrical sweep of the arms. A bold, elegant, middle aged woman clad in a typical Parisian black winter coat bursts into the room and does what can only be described as a bow. Her name is Madame Gouverich and she is to be our phonetics professor for the next semester.
"Learning another language," says Madame Gouverich as she begins her opening monologue, “is nothing short of an existential quest; a journey into the very heart of our perception of reality."
I was in love with the class already.
“When you aspire to learn another language, students, you are agreeing to become an actor; a professional actor. In this class, you will not be a foreigner trying to speak French. You will be a French speaker foreigner. You will no longer try to speak French. You will speak French. C'est compris?”
She was a wonderfully eccentric woman, Madame Gouverich, the sort of teacher who never gave out an e-mail, but instead gave us her home address and asked us to contact her by hand written letter. I remember her having wild hair which was unusual for a Parisian woman. She also had a beaming, infectious smile, another Parisian anomaly.
What I really loved about the class though was that every session was dedicated to a sound. Just one sound. Can you imagine that? I loved the attention and care which was given to each delicate part of the language, and we saw that all these details eventually strung together in the end and helped us to imitate the whispery fluency of our Francophone counterparts.
Every sound was important. Each rise and fall in the sentence took on meaning and helped us to break down the immense language barrier that Parisians have constructed against foreigners trying to speak their language. I liked the way that nothing was left to hazard. We would spend whole afternoons discussing the R sound, which tickled the throat ever so slightly and was nothing like the English R which floated strangely in the middle of the mouth, or the aggressive Spanish R that rolled off the tip of the tongue. We would also recite poems to help us master the liaison; that peculiar French oddity where sentences are married together with melding sounds.
In many ways I felt that it was the most helpful French class that I had ever taken, because it treated the language delicately and with respect; it is the way, I came to understand, that French needs to be treated if it is to be spoken correctly.
The other thing that made the class so enjoyable was the contagious passion that emanated from Madame Gouverich. She was on fire with a love of language that was impossible to resist. Passionate people have a way of inspiring others. If the flame burns bright enough the spark is sure to catch others on fire and this was certainly the case with Madame.
Madame Gouverich really opened my eyes and showed me that speaking another language is more than memorizing dry grammar and vocabulary - it is about acting; it is about building a totally different persona; and it is about coming to understand your very own language in the process. I have learnt so much about English by studying French.
So remember that when you are learning another language that it is important to study native speakers. Watch how they act. Enter into their world. Observe their hand gestures, their facial expressions, and their intonations. See the world through a different perspective and don’t worry that you can’t do it, learning a language is as natural as eating and breathing.
Don’t forget that you are not just translating yourself from one language to another, but are in fact creating an entirely new version of yourself. It is a thrilling and immensely revealing process and I highly recommend that you give it a try.
It is also a whole lot of fun, which is always a good reason to do something, right?
- written on November 19, 2009, a Thursday.
