I need to get over being shy when I speak French. The perfectionist in me wants to speak perfectuly at all times with as little an accent as possible. Thus with this sensibility, I have struck out many times in conversation because of my timidity to make mistakes.
I hit a rough patch emotionally about a week and a half ago. It was a day that I had to go to a lot of different stores to buy things for my upcoming week vacation from classes.I went to about 5 places and looked like an idiot/ didn't understand what was being said to me. I felt so incredibly frustrated like the French were personally out to make me feel miserable.
I then proceeded to rage and complain to Kaitie and Mary as well as to the internetosphere on facebook and twitter. From that frustration and overall miserableness I learned two things: A/ If anyone complains of people not speaking English in America I'm going to give them a piece of my mind because chances are they have no fucking clue what it's like to be learning a new language in a foreign country and B/ I'm going to have to get over my timidity if I'm ever going to truly progress further.
On the day I left for vacation to Poland, I got my first chance at this kind of redemption.
I was sitting in the train station waiting for a train to take me to Charles de Gaulle when a man passes by me and sits down on my bench. I thought this was weird because there were plenty of open benches in the station and my bench wasn't situated in front of the schedules or anything of importance like that. Then after a little bit he says something, but I figure to just ignore it since I couldn't understand what he saying in the first place and wasn't sure if his words were even directed at me. However, he says something different in a louder tone closer to my face, and I turn and the conversation begins.
And I had an interesting conversation with him. At first I couldn't understand what he was talking about, if he wanted to ask me for directions or what but after I asked him to speak "plus lentement" (more slowly) I understood. I explained to him that I was American and studying at the Institute and I guess he understood what I was saying even though he had somewhat of a blank look upon his face because he asked me in which part of the city I lived. I responded "avant le jardin" and he asked me which one. I told him I didn't know, which was the truth, but nevertheless I don't know if I would have felt comfortable telling him which garden.
You know it's weird. I read in my French culture book that when meeting new people the French rarely exchange first names, yet this guy asks me where I live? French people don't you think that where a person lives is more private than their first name? The whole public/private thing boggle my mind sometimes in France, and I'll speak about it more when I write my massive treastie on Muslims in France soon.
Anyway he asked me where I was going and I told him Charles de Gaulle. Then he asked if I was going back to America and I said no I was going to visit my father in Poland for vacation. Then he said "oh your father lives in Poland and your mother in the U.S." and I told him that my father's family lives in Poland and that both of my parents live in America. Then he said "Those Poles sure do love Americans" and I responded that I guess it's true (Poland's foreign policy is very Pro-American).
From there we got to the subject of politics and I asked him if he liked Nicolas Sarkozy and he laughed and said no. He then said he judged the United States for electing Bush, but conceded that the same could be said for France's election of Sarkozy, which I thought was very interesting.
So all in all I had a pretty nice conversation with this guy. I wasn't really nervous because he wasn't cute and was about a decade older than me. Since he initiated the conversation I felt more comfortable asking him to speak slower and also in talking myself because I didn't care how competent or cool I came off as.
Here's to hoping more of these situations arise in the next four weeks!
No comments:
Post a Comment