Working with Brain Minions in Language Learning Land

A fair warning: today's post features some rather colorful language. Read at your own risk.


Back when I was a middle school and high school student, I often heard my fellow classmates complain about how utterly pointless it was to even bother learning a foreign language and that the subject's sole purpose for existence was to give employment options to the optimistically deluded individuals known as "teachers." I was quick to point out to my classmates that their reasoning was unjust and simply not true. Taking a foreign language class surely had other virtues.

"Oh, you're right, Barbara. It isn't just about giving jobs to teachers; it's also about fulfilling the foreign language requirement to get a high school diploma. All this work for a damn piece of paper..."

"No, no, no! Guys, learning another language is great!" I expounded to these misguided teenagers. "You get to experience and learn about another culture from its grammar and ways of being. Plus, what if you travel abroad? Being able to speak another language other than English might prove to be helpful."

At which point, said classmates would demonstrate their unanimous agreement with my argument by rolling their eyes and yawning in my face. Years later, though, I am indeed very, very happy to have to have stuck by my principle of paying attention in French class because I found myself in the odd position of packing my bags to become an optimistically deluded individual in France.

While learning a language other than the native one you speak can be a fulfilling goal, at times, I think that language acquisition and cultural immersion should come with either a disclaimer, or a cautionary sticker or a warning label directed at those who embark on such an adventure, preferably found as a sign when you cross into another country's border.

The confusions that arise on a day-to-day basis would be enough to drive any expat insane, and this is ever the case regarding conversational exchanges. The expat or foreign speaker will think about what their want or need is in their native tongue, take a moment to translate it in the language-translation area of their brain, let the synapses process the meaning, let said words travel towards the mouth, and then finalize the journey by expressing what was on their mind to the native language interlocutor.

That action alone is a hazard for what is thought in the mind can occasionally be warped: crucial words go missing, grammar tenses and syntax become skewed, syllabic mispronunciations result in incomprehensible misunderstandings.

A recent example happened when some visiting friends of mine and I placed some orders for three coffees in a café only to then change one of the beverages for a bottle of water because my gal pal needed to quench her thirst.

Waitress: "So, do you still want the three coffees?"

Me: "Actually, it'll just be two coffees now and one bottle of water because my friend is in heat."

I had meant to say that my friend was "hot" (elle a chaud) and yet, in the Language Learning Center of my brain, my nearly 10 years of speaking French went out the window when I mistakenly said that she was "en chaleur." I noticed my error instantly and sputtered the correct words, but it was too late. The damage had been done and the waitress was chuckling at my basic A1 level French.

While I was still beating myself up about this incident, I began to wonder: why do these mistakes happen? Or, rather, what causes them to occur?

My theory is this: tiny, hardworking minions who reside in the brain are solely in charge of making sure that messages make it out of my mouth, and these minions, like all living creatures, sometimes make the mistakes which lead to misunderstandings.

I would image that the process of cooperating with minions goes like so. My body is presented with a stimulus and has to have a verbal reaction to it.

(This is an actual song, one which I had caught my students "singing.")

French mistake to NEVER make: "baisser" means "to lower," whereas "baiser" means "to fuck." 

However, if used as a noun, "un baiser" means "a kiss." Yet the proper verb that means "to kiss" is "embrasser." Be careful if you kiss someone and then proudly proclaim "je l'ai baisé" to your friends...

I'm not angry with my brain minion team, but they have instigated some unfortunate incidents during my time in Language Learning Land.

To any expats who may read this: Don't worry or beat yourself up. Whatever throngs you've faced in Language Learning Land, just remember to enjoy the stay.*

*Results and experiences may vary.


Barb the French Bean

Lessons in French: How to Say "Mullet"

In my four years of living in Croissant-and-Baguetteland, I am happy to report that going throughout life isn't always a high fashion runway that requires you to look your absolute best. While French women certainly make a point to look slightly more chic and elegant to their male counterparts, one isn't obligated to look ready to go to a party. What is expected in French dressing sense is that you look presentable: never leave the house in pajamas, keep your bits covered with reasonably lengthy attire, don't look like you just rolled out of bed then went straight to the shower.

Being someone who is perpetually late*, I've been able to cut some corners and get away with wearing just a minimal amount of make-up (lipstick and moisturizer) and my otherwise unkempt hair is kept in a tight bun. I admit that cartoon me, who is always sporting flouncy, untamed locks, is not the best representation of my day-to-day existence.

Sorry if I mislead you guys. 

*Unless I have to catch a train. I'm almost never late for trains. And if I AM late, its nice to know that I can always count on the SNCF to have my back with their own tardiness.

Still, living far away from the familiar American shores and all of the subtle cultural nuances from back home, I never, NEVER thought that I would see the day when I saw a French person sporting the dreaded Mullet. For those who are not in the know, the Mullet is a particular hairstyle that is reputed for being a "business in the front, party in the back" cut, meaning that it provides an odd combination of commencing with what would seem a normal short hairstyle that is abruptly tapered by a long mane.

When you look at a Mullet, you get the uneasy sensation that something is aesthetically off. Heck, when pronounced with an American dialect, the word itself is phonetically unpleasant.

I'd like to imagine that it was probably created by someone who was inept at cutting their own hair and, rather than admitting to their friends it was an accident, decided to convince them all that it would be the latest trend to rock trailer park communities.

Yes, the humble Mullet, with its short, spiky fringe and cascading rear, insinuates a stigma that the wearer is an uneducated, low-income loser who is probably addicted to beer and trucker hats, and terrible movies like Joe Dirt certainly didn't help to improve that stereotype.

Those who are brave enough to sport the Mullet effectively have placed themselves to be a laughingstock in American eyes and are portrayed as being as American as apple pie, bald eagles and Old Glory.

So imagine my horror shock when on one fine Saturday morning I encountered a Frenchman sporting this American hairdo.

Then imagine my further urge to regurgitate my lunch shock when I saw that the Frenchman's wife also sported a Mullet.

Then, dear reader, place yourself in my shoes when I resisted the desire to urgently call child services to report parental abuse saw that their two kids also had Mullets of their own! An entire French family with Mullets!

The Mulet Family Portrait

I was struck dumb. Had American cultural invasion to surreptitiously integrate itself into other countries finally taken its toll? Was I going to start seeing more and more beer pong parties with red Solo cups being advertised on T.V.?

(Of course not; France doesn't need to advertise alcohol, duh.)

After the initial wave of confusion ebbed and flowed from my mind, I courted the idea that perhaps this little odd family was just a one-time fluke. But then I attended the town's carnival and to my surprise, I spotting some more children donning the hairstyle! What is going on, I thought. This isn't right... I tried to reason that this style couldn't possibly be on the rise in France. No Mullet-based craze had yet to hit the runways in Paris and even in my most dreary days in Dijon, I had yet to have spotted a local wearing said 'do. Maybe, just maybe, the Mullet was concentrated to the area I reside in the Sarthe département.

I decided to consult my theories with my hairstylist, but since she is French and I didn't know the French term for "Mullet" (nor if there even WAS a term for it), I resorted to describing the physical aspects of the style.

"Have you ever seen a very particular hairstyle in which the hair is cut short in the front and kept long in the back? Do you know what I'm talking about?"

Her serene features scrunched when she cringed and she nodded.

"What is that hairstyle called in French?"

"Le Macgyver."

I unintentionally paused for emphasis.

"Le Macgyver?"

That bomb should nuke Macgyver's Mullet out of existence. 

"Yes."

"As in...?"

"Macgyver."

"As in the T.V. character?"

No amount of string and paper clips will let you worm your way from my wrath, Macgyver.

"Yes, that one."

I went to explain to her that I was extremely surprised to see the French sporting this hairstyle and had never seen one until I had moved to Sablé-sur-Sarthe. I mentioned to her the social stigma that the Mullet evokes back home and how people who wear it are considered to be very "particulier." She drew a sharp intake of air and said that a similar stigma also exists in France.

"Years ago, when the show aired, from its popularity, it started a craze and people wanted the same style. You see it less and less these days in France, but there are people who still have a hard time letting things from the past go."

Goddammit, Macgyver. Who knew you'd have this effect on deluded French people?

I then asked my hairstylist another question.

"Have you ever had somebody ask you for le Macgyver?"

Her brown eyes widened with the recollection of one woman who, despite my hairstylist's suggestions and pleas to consider other options, insisted on having her hair cut into a Mullet.

"I didn't even know how to go about this hairstyle! You see, haircuts are supposed to fit into a 'frame,' and le Macgyver, with its irregular combination of two different frames, made it very difficult to reproduce."

She then leaned next to my ear and, with utter scandal dancing in her tone, whispered,"Things about it just don't go at all because you can't distinguish when one part ends and another begins. It looks so bad."

AH-HA! Eureka!, I thought. No wonder the Mullet looks aesthetically unbalanced; it's because the techniques to style it aren't even right in the first place!

To console myself, asked my hairstylist to give me a non-Mullet cut for the special occasion of celebrating my last full day in my mid-Twenties*.

Take that, Macgyver.

Barb the French Bean


*I turn Twenty-Seven on April 6th. As people back home in Miami would point out, "Estás vieja."

The Day I Inadvertently Pissed Off a Frenchwoman

On the infrequent occasions in which I head outside of my 15,000 souls town of Sablé-sur-Sarthe, I often make a beeline towards the train station and grab a seat headed to the city of Le Mans.

(The former walled Plantagenet city of Le Mans, for those who are unaware, is most well-known for a motorcar race held in June known as the 24 Hours of Le Mans, in which drivers from all over the world race NASCAR-style for 24 hours straight. Lots of Brits descend on the city in groups and drunkenly buy rounds at the cafés.)

During a recent outing in Le Mans, I was minding my own business walking around the city's relatively calm streets when I came across something which caught my eye. In one of the parked cars, I saw a baby sleeping peacefully in the passenger's side front seat. All would have been right with this scenario had a responsible adult occupied either the driver's seat or if someone else had been sitting in the back.

Except the baby was alone.

My deeply-ingrained Floridian instinct to never leave live creatures trapped in hot vehicles for a prolonged period of time raised a red flag at the situation and, for some reason, I began to panic over this unknown baby. I don't know why I panicked because the child's full rosy cheeks and calm demeanor signaled that she seemed well-cared for and relatively healthy and, quite frankly, it really wasn't my problem if someone had abandoned their child in a car.

And yet, I worried. I couldn't believe that someone would simply leave their child in a car. Was the baby even a real child? It seems silly to think about it now, but in that moment, my brain recalled stories about people who actually went out with realistic baby dolls and cared for the dolls as if they were real children. Had I somehow encountered one of those fake babies resting in the car seat?

I observed the child more closely, paying attention for any vital signs of life: a chest that heaved delicately, a muscular twitch in the face or the hands. Her tiny fist wriggled for a few seconds, which clearly meant she wasn't a doll.

Unless it was a remote-controlled doll? Nah, I reasoned, that's just stupid.

I found myself rooted to the pavement next to the car. Questions arose in my mind. Where was her mother? When was the mother coming back? For how long had the kid been in the car alone? Should I let someone else know about the seemingly abandoned baby? Who could I even tell?

Luckily, my questions were answered after a couple of minutes. Across the street, I spotted a blond woman who dragged her young son by the arm and they walked in the car's direction. I smiled with relief.

"Oh, good. I was worried about the baby," I said to her.

Rather than reciprocating my smile, she stormed towards me, glaring. She yanked the keys from her purse and fumbled finding the one to open the car's doors. Within seconds, I had the privilege to listen to a frustrated mother's explosive tirade.

"I'm getting so sick and tired of this!" she exclaimed. "Every week, this happens to me! I have to come every Wednesday to that building--" she jabbed a raised index finger, keys jangling loudly, to the building adjacent to where we stood "--and this is the third time now that I've had to rush back to the car. My kid's asleep and it really made no sense to wake her up if I was only going to be gone for a few minutes."

She wasn't apologetic with her words. She was angry. At me.

"I'm a mother with three kids! And with no help at all! I can't do everything on my own!" she fumed. I looked at the son's blank face and wondered where the third child could have been and if the kids' father was out of the picture. My latent Fight-or-Flight response kicked in and I backed away from the mother and son. My intention wasn't at all to reprimand this woman. For reasons I can't understand, I just stuck around to make sure the baby was going to be all right. Upon the mother's return, the situation was now effectively out of my hands.

"Right. Well...have a good day, Ma'am," I responded awkwardly.

In a rather un-French fashion, she didn't return my civil reply of bidding someone good-bye, which in turn irrationally pissed me off.

Fine, lady. I thought to myself.  I won't care about your kid again. In fact, see if I ever care about another human being again! I'm going to become a cold, heartless, insensitive bitch and then I'll be able to watch those smarmy Sarah McLachlan ads about abused puppies and kitties and NOT feel a damn thing. I'll show you! I'LL SHOW YOU ALL!!!

In retrospect, I realize now how much of a creep I must have looked standing next to the car and gawking at the lone child. I also feel fortunate to be a woman because given the context, had I been a man, I probably would have been accused of being a perverted baby snatcher and been beaten over the head with a purse.

In all reality, I probably won't stop being an overly sensitive empathetic gal, but I do need to toughen up and not get involved in other people's business.

Especially French mothers who leave their kids alone in cars.

Barb the French Bean

The Joys of Jet Lag (And How to Get Back on Track)

As a frequent traveler who makes it a point to cross the Atlantic ocean at least twice a year, I'd like to think that I've become a pro at handling the extreme changes of adapting suddenly to a new time zone.

Granted, the six-hour change from French time to the American Eastern Standard Time isn't that drastic of an alteration, but it certainly provides enough inconvenience to perturb sleeping and eating patterns. On that note: I've found that even a minor one-hour change from France to the British Isles created some disgruntled moments as I debated whether or not to wait eating breakfasts, lunches, and dinners at a later time.

Here are some tips.

1) STAY AWAKE.

Did you leave at ten in the morning, take a ten hour flight, and suddenly found yourself at having lunch at two in the afternoon when your body was convinced that it was 8 p.m.? It may prove difficult, but forcing your body to remain alert is the quickest way to getting into your new time zone's groove. Generally wait until it is night time before catching some Zs. Supply extra shots of espresso when needed.

And, if anything, think yourself a time-traveler whose mission it was to go back six hours in the past to relay an important message. Remaining awake is vital to this operation!

2) Have enough time to adapt. 

I can only speak from my experience, but I generally have required two to four days of adjustment before obtaining a sense of normalcy, regardless on which side of the Atlantic I'm in.

3) Be busy.

Planning to visit some friends and family back home? Make an appointment for 10 a.m. sharp on the day after you arrive. Make dinner plans to be on the safe side.

4) COFFEE.

I cannot stress how much you and caffeine will become BBFs in these crucial days. Oh, you don't like coffee? Fine. Get yourself some potent English tea or a nauseatingly-saccharine energy drink.

I've usually had no trouble adapting if I applied these tactics. However, I had not anticipated how much my body would be thrown off by the effort of flying to the United States, adapting within four days, only to then face the change in Daylight Saving time (thereby subtracting one hour), ONLY to then return to France within a period of ten days.

The weekend simply wasn't enough time for me to return to normal, which explained why I found myself cooking steak well past midnight (for my stomach said it was dinner time). My students also have the joy of having an escaped Zombie extra from The Walking Dead for a teacher. I am completely drained and plagued by a constant headache.

And sleep? Forget that! I mistakenly took a nap at six p.m. Now, I am perky and alert.

It is now 4:46 a.m. French time. No use in going back to sleep because I work within a few hours. Maybe I'll update this post with some cartoons later in the week.

*This post has been brought to you by jet lag.* 

Barb the French Bean

Home

For the past five years, I've become a bit of a nomad, alternating between moving to France, then back to the place where I grew up, then back to France. As each day passes in my life in France, I am reminded of how much of a foreigner I truly am, language mishaps and differences aside.

However, with time, I've begun to slowly acclimate myself to the spoken and unspoken social cues the French have: always greeting store clerks and cashiers with a "Bonjour," acquiescing an agreement with a wispy, gasp-like "ouais" or a small "mhn" accompanied by a quick nod, always stopping to have the mid-morning "pause café," always respecting mealtimes and eating meals in small courses, hardly ever raising one's voice mid-conversation. The small things that used to trip me up and target me with some invisible bulls-eye have since become ingrained into my very being. I don't feel so out of place anymore.

Every once in a while, though, I find myself longing for a slightly more comfortable and familiar existence, one which makes a little more sense to me. I find myself missing "home."

Then arises the complex question that all expats face with discomfort: what is home, exactly? For those who have never traveled or lived elsewhere, that question is answered rather easily. It is not the case for someone like me.

(Should a French person or foreigner inquire about my origins, I answer that I come from Miami. It's a quicker response and leads to the inevitable awestruck observation of wonderment in which the person in question cannot understand why I ever left Miami.)

Is "home" the anchor of one's childhood and adolescence? It is the current mailing address where telephone bills and bank statements arrive? Is "home" the place where all of my stuff is located? Is "home" tangible, or is it a state of mind?

Thinking to my own mother, a Colombian who grew up in Cartagena, Colombia, "home" for her was Cartagena. Except she left "home" at the age of sixteen only to move to Venezuela, Puerto Rico and then the United States. Throughout her adult life, she had not gone "home" for over thirty-two years, and by the time she did, the Cartagena of her youth was replaced by a more modern Cartagena that felt at once familiar and foreign to her. Things were the same and at once...unspeakably different.

I decided that I needed to pay a visit to Miami to see for myself.

I got the window seat. As the 10-hour flight neared the end, gliding over the sparkling turquoise and teal waters of the Bahamian islands, the pilot announced that we would arrive in Miami International Airport in approximately twenty minutes. It was then that after a seven-month hiatus I caught my first aerial glimpse of the land where I was raised. Flat lands intermingled by a series of dark, murky canals and of complex gray highways snaking in every direction, its streams of rapid transit zooming in quick fashion, various tidy sections of housing developments and coral gabled houses with pristine swimming pools in the backyard and, way in the distance, the unconquered swamps and marshes of the Everglades. This was South Florida. This was my old home.

So what is "home" to me? Home is familiar. Home is where I can relax and breathe a little more easily. That can be in the comfort of my bedroom in Miami or in Sablé-sur-Sarthe.

Home can be the place where people still refer to me as "La Niña" (the girl) rather than Madame. Home can be the place where people refer to me as Madame rather than "La Niña." 

Home is where I can have palitroques, pastelitos de queso and croquetas de jamón for breakfast. 

Palitroque: crunchy Cuban breadsticks
Pastelitos: Cuban pastries
Croquetas: Croquettes

(This is also as close as I am going to get to 'Instagramming' my food. Enjoy)

It can be the place where I have a café au lait with tartines or un croissant au beurre if I so choose. 

Home, for me, is both France and the United States. 

However, as my current physical location is in South Florida, I will elaborate on what "home" is like in the United States. 

Home is multi-colored Surinam cherries dangling off branches like early Christmas ornaments.

Home is bright, cloudless skies during "dry" season*.

*Should you choose to visit Florida during "wet" season (mid-April to mid-November), I highly advise that you bring an umbrella and a hair straightener.

Home is the large bougainvillea with magenta petals in the backyard. 

Home is where I find spiders relaxing among their gossamer threads.

Home is the canal where I would spend many an afternoon in my youth throwing pebbles to observe the expanding ripple effect on the water, gingerly tiptoeing on its edge and risking falling in just to peer at its length in the distance, and waiting, waiting ever so patiently for that one second to spot a fish breaking the tranquil surface to emancipate itself towards the sky.

Home is seeing a mother Muskovy duck leading her cheeping brood of fluffy ducklings and they make me remember fondly the Muskovy duckling that my family raised when I was ten years old.

But then, I start to notice things that are indeed different about home:

The mango tree's growth is considerably stunted, much smaller than I had anticipated. (Mom had had its branches trimmed to strengthen its growth).

The remnants of former trees are depicted by lone stumps.

The hole which was used as a shelter by brooding Muskovy ducks as their nesting ground has since been covered in dirt.

I find the people loud, boisterous. They cut each others' sentences to state their point. The driving is erratic. Repetitive chain stores dot the landscape.

Then, I realized amid my nostalgia that I was no longer even "home": the mundane details which escaped my daily existence and which I would have otherwise not even appreciated have been captured in photographs, as if I were another tourist visiting Florida.

Then, as further proof that things are indeed different, I took a good look at myself. How was I dressed? I had opted to go outside sporting not flip-flops (or, as I was accustomed to occasionally, barefoot) but rain boots because I couldn't bear the thought of having my feet being tickled by the blades of grass and its cold, morning dew.

Living in the muddy French countryside has instilled an aversion to having wet feet. 

My obtained paleness provided further evidence that something was off about myself in correlation to my surroundings. Even indoor-dwelling Floridians who make it a habit to remain living comfortably in the air conditioning have a darker complexion.

Bumbling about my first home, where I vaguely remember the locations of various items in the kitchen, makes me start to miss my second home (and the knowledge of having enough rosemary and black pepper).

But I know the drill now: by the time I do make it back to my second home and settle into my daily routines, I will start to miss the first one with nostalgic familiarity. As an expat, I am in a perpetual home limbo, which I have since resigned to accept.

I wouldn't have it any other way.

Barb the French Bean