ECOUTEZ ET REPETEZ

“Jean-Paul et Marie-France et dans la cuisine… Beep!”

“Jonn. Pawl. Ett. Marree. Fronce. Ett. Don. Ler. Coo. Zeen.”

“Ou et les legumes?... Beep!”

“Oo. Ate. Lays. Leggooms.”

“Claudette et dans la salle de bain… Beep!”

“Clordett. Ett. Don. Lar. Salderbann.”

“Ou et le savon?... Beep!”

“Oo. Ate. Ler. Savvon.”

I swear to God (or whatever...) that the first time I ever went to France I half expected every sentence to end with a slightly hopeful beep, and I suspect that, if cornered, my immediate response would have been to repeat whatever French had been garbled at me straight back at whoever it was, albeit adjusted for my own mangled hearing of it and with my own hideously flattened vowels scraping across the eardrums of the unfortunate listener as I throttled that most lyrical of tongues beyond the realms of reason.

Mr Griffiths was never really all that impressed by my skills in French. Despite teaching me the subject for five long years, which I suspect probably seemed to last twice as long for him, I don’t expect that we ever really got much beyond what was absolutely necessary for me to scrape that pass at “O” level. It wasn’t his fault, of course. I’m sure that if I’d been a gifted linguist or even showed the remotest sign of having a passion for languages above and beyond the call of necessity, he’d have put a whole lot of energy into encouraging me, because he was a nice bloke was Mr G.

Sadly, for him, instead he got me and my contractually obligated interest in French. We had to do it, so we did it, and we did no more than we had to do. My homework was approached with about as much understanding as I might have given to trying to speak fluent slug, and I was about as successful at it as I would have been with such a pointless task, too.

As I get older, not being fluent in other languages has become, like my inability to successfully wrangle a musical implement, a source of slight regret. In my mind, of course, I would love to have lived the life of the polymath, gaining expertise in so many fields and excelling at even one thing which might be considered a marvel or a unique ability to someone. Somehow to be un homme des letters, to be able to speak the language of lerve, or perhaps something slightly more übertechnik is always going to be somebody else’s pleasure.

It’s nobody else’s fault, of course, after all the opportunity was there but, despite all the efforts of Mr Griffiths, and also his colleague Mr Brammall as he struggled to get some German to stick in my synapses, it seems it was all in vain. I can only claim now to have a “smattering” of either, and I suspect to even claim that borders upon exaggeration.

I think the writing was on the wall even then, however, because despite the threats of  detentions for retests for those of us failing to make the cut during the weekly vocab tests, I rarely seemed to improve much beyond the mean, so much so that it was the language examinations that were sat with a promise from my parents that I wouldn’t be made to resit them if I failed to pass those particular ones.

Strangely enough, the fact that I did actually scrape a pass in both which was, I think, as much of a surprise to the teachers as it was to me, especially after the strange muttering and other indecipherable grunts that resulted from the recording session that made up the “oral” part of the process, as I never really successfully got to grips with the technological mysteries of the “language lab”. Sadly for them, many of that year’s supposed “Grade A” students (I always did resent Mr B for his demarcation of the layout of his class seating positions in that manner) also got the same grade as me, which wasn’t due to any overachievement on my part, I’m sure, but probably goes to prove something in classroom theory.

Happily for me (at the time), I was able to go forward into my life with those little letters in boxes on a scrap of paper behind me and never look back, and, much to my mother’s chagrin as she was a bit of a fan of learning languages, I never had to spend any time with a language text book, or in a recording booth looking flustered and more than a little embarrassed, ever again. I was free. Language learning was behind me.

Huzzah!

Only…

I dunno. Nowadays, I really wish I had tried a bit harder. Being multilingual just seems such a wonderful thing to be able to be. That skill to be able to make yourself understood in another country, and engage with its people un-self-consciously and without embarrassment must be the most marvellous of feelings.

Perhaps that was always the problem, that crippling fear of making a fool of myself that has nobbled so many of my plans and hopes across the decades. I once went on holiday with someone who was a French teacher and they were completely furious when I wouldn’t even attempt to ask for the bill (“L’addition s’il vous plait?”) in French, despite my very reasonable assertion (I thought) that they would be far better at doing it than I could hope to be. I don’t know, though, maybe they had a point. Perhaps it really is all still in there somewhere, despite my very best efforts to deny it, and all I needed to do was try.

I remember going on holiday to Normandy a good fourteen years after my last ever French lesson and going into a pizzeria just as soon my friends and I left the boat, and being only able to attempt a sullen pointing and “Cheers” combination when it came around to my turn to order, even after all of my fellow diners had gamely attempted to order in the Lingua Franca. A few days later, during that same holiday, I was left alone in a beach café whilst they all went off on more exciting challenges, and I had a lovely afternoon ordering my drinks and food and even managing a smattering of conversation, all in French and without any English onlookers to mock me and it was all just fine and rather lovely, to be honest.

Granted I was unlikely to win any awards for linguistic skill, but I got by, and within the week was accurately dredging up various words and phrases from Mr Griffith’s vocab tests of so many years before. I like to think that he would have been proud of me that day. He was a good egg, was Mr G. I remember our last couple of hours as teacher and pupils vividly, when he decided that “If we didn’t know it now, we never would” and instead just spent a couple of hours chatting to us like the grown ups it turns out we weren’t really. I can clearly remember him telling us about when he was a young teacher, and trying to engage other young minds in a new first year intake. They were stood talking next to a poster and, in an effort to be “matey” he tried to show an interest in the poster himself and, as he put it, “They ripped me to pieces for the next five years!”

A life lesson well learned, and, you’ll have noticed, one he left until the very last lesson to share with us.

Très bien!