The Longest Language Journey Back

When you have a godawful experience for years (perhaps French lessons) and need to write about it as part of the healing process and already you feel parts of your cognitive machinery trying to “clean it up” (guess it’s French lessons) for public viewing by default since it’s likely to make some toes curl up (sorry, but definitively French lessons.)

*SIGH*

Common expression heard growing up back home:

“Tell it like it T-I-IS!”

Many experiences cannot and should not be “cleaned up.” They require telling “as is.” Respectfully, this is one of them.

I didn’t enter secondary school (US: high school) with preconceptions, but I did expect to learn Spanish like my brothers did. Spanish was ‘Sesame Street cool!’ But in all fairness, if Japanese was the go-to language on Sesame Street, that easily would have been my choice. It just so happened that…well…

Children weren’t given preferences back then.

And wows, YES! Consider me a dinosaur because I lived through the dark ages of education where you’d take what you were given and never ever even look like you’re gonna complain about it.

Not a problem.

Until the French teacher entered class for the first lesson.

He seemed completely irritated with us for simply existing as first-year students already and spoke not one word of English for the entire period. He expected us to follow his guidance. And how disappointing to him that many of us didn’t.

He wrote, “Bonjour ! Je m’appelle Monsieur…” on the blackboard.

Yeah, with actual chalk (it was all the rage back then) and we did what we had been taught since classroom conformity 'classed.' We wrote what he wrote. He didn’t like that one bit and embarrassed those whose exercise books he saw it in with red pen lines, loudly exclaiming in French, “Garbage !”

In retrospect, it became clear that he wanted us to write our own names instead, thereby learning an introductory French sentence, but it probably wasn’t the best way to go about it for first-time students clueless about his teaching methods.

The rest of the year: Unsurprisingly, not memorable.

A thick flurry of vocabulary to master for tests and traversing basic conjugations to correctly place nouns and subject pronouns with verbs in sentences.

Repetition and writing. Fun, not a factor.

Second-year studies delivered more of the same, plus that irritating tactic teachers would use to call out students for answers in front of the whole class. Just so you felt even more pressure to be deemed ‘not stupid,’ because who were we at all if we didn’t behave intelligently and get good grades?

Repetition and loads more writing.

Rules on top of rules.

But why did it seem that many cool vocabulary words were masculine gender (e.g. un livre, le cheval, un plaisir/book, horse, pleasure) and the boring drab words feminine? (e.g. la haine, une chèvre, la pitié/hatred, goat, pity.)

I recently learned ‘la grossesse’ means ‘pregnancy.’ Gee, not even remotely heartwarming!

And who made these decisions? Was there a vote? How many women were there? Is this what ‘democracy’ in language looks like?

Eww.

I was not impressed. Like, anywhere.

By our third year, we already had huge clunky workbooks, had been separated into academic groups of proficiency for ‘O’ Level examinations, and acquired a new teacher who grated on every single student nerve in every single lesson with a persistent ‘whiney-voice’ approach to teaching.

Pretty much nothing conversational French mind you.

A litany of tenses, conjugations, and vocabulary lists with required after-school classes since we were destined to take the exam.

(Did I mention the whining?)

A seemingly never-ending number of rules with sporadic obtuse exceptions and related grammar dwindled any English language instruction I’d ever had in life. Conditional tense. Imperfect tense. Pluperfect tense. Imperative. Past Perfect. Subjunctive. Conditional Perfect. Future Perfect. Unknown educational intellectuals somehow decided how vitally essential it was for 'by the skin-of-their-teeth' part-time French lesson 13-year-olds to be able to say something like "I think I would have wanted to do that yesterday." Arrrrrggh! Etc., etc.

Mind-numbing marathon sessions with dictée (dictation) thrown in. Sparse praise for correct answers. Tons of red-penned corrections to cement feelings of sufficient incompetence.

Eventually, in my fifth and last year, a bit of comprehension gelled and I could understand and passably express myself, but the damage had long been done. Seething silently for years and bullied into a language with heavy-handed instruction. I hated it.

Not once did teachers allude to the fact that there were populations outside France we could converse with, nor how the language might prove beneficial. No French films, music, or cuisine (pointless to even spring for croissants, I guess.) No mention of Créole. Or James Baldwin and Josephine Baker living in Paris for a glimmer of relatability towards us as children of the Afrikan Diaspora.

The full sinister history of France as a colonial power didn’t surface in either History or French lessons.

I successfully passed the exam, got rid of everything French, and never looked back.

Many years after school, one of the most life-changing books I read about an Afrikan shaman, detailed the painful instruction of his peer group into the French language. They were literally, beaten.

My first inkling of a possible pattern.

It took much longer for me to surmise that my first teacher probably taught that way because he had been taught that way.

Yuck and double-yuck.

I couldn’t yet locate sympathy, life had other plans. And those other plans involved relocation to a country that I’d never considered residing in, and then meeting people who ultimately didn’t become friends, but family.

Aaaand they spoke French.

I couldn’t avoid it.

Everything about them was yummy. But months turning into years of interactions brought a tangle of emotions when they lapsed into that “other language” I dared not name.

Separation of them from their communication wasn’t gonna happen.

At some point, I’d respond purely on reflex to a question 'en français' (in French) and astonish myself. But often, I also felt like screaming and crying whilst tearing my sensory organs out after I’d done it.

Walls decades thick and high in the making showed possibility of crumble.

More sensations I could not verbalize.

They spoke great English (and Créole.) Even when English wasn’t readily forthcoming or easy in its expression, they pushed through.

Could not I do that?

It was a “no-brainer boat” in a sea of “I just don’t want to think about it” resistance. Comprehensive disgust that I held for years had nothing to do with these people I now knew and cherished.

My fascination couldn’t help but grow when 'ma Maman adoptive' (my adopted Mom) informed me that Haitian Créole could be readily understood by herself and fellow nationals who'd never been to Haiti. This, of Afrikans scattered abroad via enslavement and stripped of their native tongues who find ways to communicate through an alien language and both came up with something similar in different geographical locations?

I freakin’ love it!

Long ago memories resurfaced of Haitian friends I met during my university time in Florida.

Gorgeous juicy memories!

I relish the sound and tone in spoken Créole. Full, thick, and rich. Like a low, steady, pulse drum beat of “Welcome, Dear One! Won’t you stay a while?”

Internal dialogue outta nowhere that “sweeted me” and made me laugh out loud:-

Inhabitants of a Newly Colonized French Territory: Sheesh! Your language…it’s pretty bland. Straitjacket-ish. Tasteless and needs seasoning. Let us help it out…*shake-shake-mix-mix-stir*...There! Bonzur, ki manyèr? (Hello, how are you?)

French Colonizers: ???

Inhabitants of a Newly Colonized French Territory: Ooh, my bad! Now you can’t understand what we said in the language you forced down our throats? Aww!!!

Healing arrived by the handful. And then…by the heartful.

Logic reminded me that I didn’t much care for English either, another colonial language enforcement courtesy of the transatlantic slave trade.

Science reminded me that language acquisition for young children comes in stages involving numerous factors. Progression in later years is built on consistent immersion over extended periods of listening, speaking, writing, and reading. Curriculum design, in retrospect, was decidedly inane and ineffective, primarily concerned with exam success.

As ‘like-attracts-like’ law would have it, I kept meeting French-speaking people (never happened before,) with many opportunities to practice. No horrified looks if/when I made a mistake. Approachable kind, generous souls who were empathetic and patient when speaking to me, as if sensitive to my backstory. Même en ligne (Even online.)

Biggest of shout-outs to my Vocal Peeps, “Coucou, Cendrine Marrouat !”

Positive changes also, as the rigid structure taught in my tender years, now amazingly held less formality.

Ouais ! (Yeah!)

I’ve always enjoyed learning new languages, but for known reasons, French had been blockaded due to previous traumas.

Holding trauma never benefits the holder.

So…I let it go.

This did not absolve France of its history as a colonial power and its unsatisfactory redress to date regarding my Ancestors and their descendants, nor the shitty experience I had learning it in school. I have complex feelings in these matters too extensive to articulate here.

I get minute twinges that are by and large infrequent.

However, I’m now actively re-learning a language (by no means fluent) I would have spat in the face of many moons ago, with my sights set on Créole. *Maniacal laugh*

And just wait until you hear about how much fun I had in Paris…

I cannot tell you how much I appreciate your taking this reading journey with me! This was a gargantuan writing step for me in sharing this journey as my experiences remain quite raw.

My wish for you is that this story can become applicable and/or impetus for any trauma you (or anyone you know) may wish to heal from because you have one gift of precious life, and you deserve to live it in joyous rapture.