Why learn French is the real question.
To answer this I need to take you back in our history and the French settlers who landed in South Africa in the 1680s. Well, actually, not that far back.
Picture this - Köln, Germany, 1973. A new city, a new adventure and the need for a new car with left-hand drive. I was always in love with Citroen cars and it was no surprise that I wanted a new Citroen. Now, although the agent was in Köln, the car was to be delivered near Paris. No problem, since we were already in the Euro zone and there would be no problem with customs, etc. The only challenge remained for me was the French language. I was fluent in Afrikaans, English, Latin and German but none of that it any easier to understand French people.
I have to tell you that I always had a talent for languages and specifically for the accents of foreign languages. In my youth I dabbled in acting and it was easy to use a fake Russian, Italian or whatever in way which made it sound like that language. So, having all that in the bag, I bought a ticket on the overnight express from Köln to Paris Gare du Lyon. The Citroen agency was in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower. Arriving at the station, it was but a short walk to the agency - unfortunately, it was 7 am and the agency only opened at 9. What to in that part of Paris at that time? Well, breakfast is on the menu.
Found an open cafe, and reading the chalkboard, I entered and in my best fake French accent and sounding like a guy with a headache, I went "Bonjour Monsieur. Un cafe grand la creme, sil vous plait" or something which sounded like that. Got my bowl of coffee and, knowing that croissants are always fresh and on the counter, I had two while puffing a Gauloise - oh yes, I was smoking then and in French. That all worked great. Then off to the agent who surprisingly could speak both German and English. He took me to the depot which was about 15km south of Paris and there I collected my spanking new Citroen. He kindly showed me the route from there to Köln, using the Boulevard Périphérique. Problem is that I had no intention of going directly home. No. I decided to visit an old friend who was working in the South African Embassy as an Attaché.
Easy as pie, right? Well, sort of. Remember three things: a new car which happened to be a left-hand drive; rush-hour traffic in Paris; an incomplete address and a terrible map. After a while on the peripherique, I found a likely offramp and headed towards where I thought the SA Embassy was. Decided to rather park the car in a car-park and walk the few blocks. Arriving there, I found the doors closed with a notice in French and a gendarme guardian the building. I was stumped. He did not understand any English or German and with great difficulty and using my very broken French, he showed me a phone number on the notice. I wrote that down and went looking for a public phone which I found was mostly inside bars.
Which in a very round-about way takes me back to the question why learn French? Since that trip through Paris and a few other trips through France, I never had the need to use the language again. Fast forward to 2020 and lots of time to do things like watching the Tour de France (on the French TV channel), watching 6-nations rugby (again on French TV). But mostly it has to do with Agatha Christie and Jean-Luc Bannelec. Recent TV versions of Agatha Christie's Poirot irritated me greatly as the character of the man was not being portrayed correctly. Thus I had to reread the original short stories and novels which is, as was the fashion in those days, full of French phrases. Bannelec wrote an intriguing series of detective novels based in Brittany and starring Commissaire George Dupin and they use many, many phrases which sort of went over my head.
This then is the reason why I enrolled in free courses at the Open University to at least get some fluency in French, even though I will probably never, ever speak it ever again.
7 February 2021.
