REMEMBERING A MEMOIR: AFTERWORD TO A NEW EDITION OF FRENCH LESSONS

4 4 Y R E M E M B E R I N G A M E M O I R A F T E R W O R D T O A N E W E D I T I O N O F F R E N C H L E S S O N S A L I C E K A P L A N After three decades, the adventure of a young Midwesterner learning French, entering with passion into centuries of borrowed habits and rituals, seems like ancient history – so radically has the place of French in the world changed, along with the place of France. Professors are lecturing in English in the best French schools to prepare their students for a global economy. Every imaginable American product or food, including Oreos, is available on French grocery shelves. You can even sit in a movie theater in Paris and smell popcorn. Yet despite the impression that English has ‘‘won,’’ statistics tell another story. French is now spoken by more than 150 million people around the world, give or take a half million. By some predictions it will soon be spoken by more people worldwide than any other language. The salient fact is that the French speakers of the metropolis are a minority of those French speakers. The French language belongs to the planet, to the fifty-four francophone nations but also to that small but vital tribe to which I belong – foreigners who have chosen French out of love or necessity. Yes, France is full of gluten-free cafés and Brooklyn decor. Imitation, like everything else, is faster today. There may soon 4 5 R come a time when you can put on earbuds and translation goggles anywhere in the world and read street signs and hear conversations in your native tongue. But in the meantime, as long as it lasts, the miraculous process of stepping into another person’s language persists. And for that purpose, technology is a friend, not a foe, of learning. The same apps that keep students constantly in touch with home, that map Starbucks and Bagelstein for them, also allow them to ‘‘friend’’ their French friends on Facebook, to write in French on informal blogs, without the pressure of an academic assignment, and to send text messages in French. The Petit Robert French dictionary includes ‘‘LOL,’’ but there is a French equivalent, ‘‘EDR,’’ which means éclats de rire – bursts of laughter. Once students return home from studying abroad, there are a hundred new ways to stay in touch, day by day, with foreign friends. My students are messaging friends in Senegal, Korea, and Peru every day. Email, that ancient technology, is for the old. New language teaching methods mean that you can learn French, or any other language, faster than ever before, with a better accent. For years Europeans learned colloquial English from Hollywood cinema and TV shows, and now we have the same possibility with French radio and television, which anyone can stream on their laptops. Gritty crime shows, international espionage full of slang and whispers, leave the old methods far behind. However economically motivated, French eagerness to learn English has generated new empathy for Americans learning French. The protagonist of French Lessons who wanted to die over a French mistake wouldn’t worry so much today. And she has come to understand that there are many more accents, many more varieties of the language than she ever dreamed of. Yet I am certain that the sacred sense I had, of trying new words and watching them work, is as vivid for students far from home as it was when I pointed to my bags at the Geneva airport and muttered ‘‘là-bas.’’ Sartre, in The Words, observes that writers like to think that their most recent book is their best, and the worst insult you can give them is to praise as their finest a work from ten, twenty, thirty years earlier. I would have been just as happy to keep a foggy 4 6 K A P L A N Y memory of French Lessons and cast my sights on new projects. Rereading the book has...