Jour Deux

I feel like the schedule's going to vastly differ from Florence here in Paris. In Florence I spent a lot of time putting off work sleeping (the good ol' depression cure-all) or going out and wandering the city. Overcast Paris, however, screams, or rather dolefully moans "stay inside... especially until you can say at least one word of French." French people speak to you a lot more than Italians do. Especially if it's clear you don't speak French. I like it; it's not necessarily mean, it's resolute and every so slightly defiant. You come to France, you speak our language, which is the way it should be.

Except that I flat out can't speak French, no matter how many times I make Rosetta Stone repeat things slowly. "Une pomme" will never come out of my mouth to its, or any Frenchman/woman's, satisfaction. However, me repeating it, over and over and over, with different emphasis, in my best French impression, slowly, quickly, and finally with absolutely frustration, would probably greatly amuse them. Oh ho ho! Oui oui! Triumph! The silly American girl fails again.

I'm so afraid that I've reached that age where you lose the capacity to form non-native sounds, and just when I've become really interested in fluency in another language. Over the break I met so many people who knew at least one other language, if not several: my Japanese suitemate knew at least Japanese, English, and Italian, the Irish guy I got hot chocolate with studied Irish throughout school and then a foreign language on top of that, and the Croatians were serious polyglots (Ivan knew Croatian, English, French, Italian, and German, and was considering taking an intensive Russian program).

Being monolingual in Europe embarrasses me to no end, even if being bilingual has little more use than as a cool party trick in the U.S. In general I just feel less intelligent in Europe, or that I know less and less valuable things. My Irish friend, Michael, did not mince words at all when he proclaimed the superiority of the European education system. He claimed that a study had shown that a large chunk of American schoolchildren couldn't even point out the U.S. on the map - "They'd point out China, or somewhere else way off." I told him that one time I was asked if the U.S. was in North American or South - and I picked South. "It's still a mortifying memory, but I was really, really young." Michael's face told me I probably should have kept my mouth shut.

Lena tried to argue with me that it's just a difference in culture - being bi- or tri-lingual is just more important in an area of the globe with so much linguistic diversity, but I still can't really buy it. I wasted two years of Italian education to come out of it with barely the ability to converse with a preschooler, when a huge chunk of the global population can speak completely non-native tongues. The first day at the hostel in Dublin I expressed my embarrassment at not being better at Italian to the two Italian girls in our room. One of the girls looked up and said, "It doesn't matter really, you know the most important language," and then went right back to folding clothes. It was just so matter-of-fact, and so shitty.

I don't want to just ride the wave of colonialism and English-dominance. Being born into English shouldn't alleviate my or anyone's responsibility to study languages, especially when traveling in another country. There's nothing that makes English inherently better than any other language, or any decent reason that English should swallow up other language and thus swallow up some of the culture and specific cultural meanings with it. Languages aren't just interchangeable - they express unique nuances about their home culture that go further than just different names for the same objects or actions or feelings. On the street in Dublin I overheard these this American guy talking about his friend who spoke Irish. He explained that his friend thought English was great for discussing everyday things, news, business, etc., but when he wanted to express his feelings or emotion, he always preferred to use Irish. I thought it sounded fabulous and romantic - and like something I'd never experience.

And so, I'll keep at butchering French pronunciation, and brushing up on Italian, if only to prove to myself that I'm not letting English win.