Without fail, one hour of my week consists of me yelling at a chubby middle-aged French man. And I so look forward to it. To be clear, this isn’t a random stranger I found on the streets of Paris on whom to unleash my frustrations, but rather my French tutor, Prosper. He yells at me to yell at him, and then I giggle and he thinks I’m insulting the French language. So then I yell back, as directed. He also spends a majority of our time together telling me it doesn’t matter if I know the words or conjugation, if I don’t enunciate, and get over the fact that I think I sound ridiculous, no French person will ever understand me. And that I will never find anyone to love me. Cry me a river. JK he didn’t say the last part. He kinda is like a Greek grandma though in that he asks me every week if I have a boyfriend yet. NO PRESSURE. Go go gadget French! Go go gadget husband! Anyway, our time together was super awkward at first, but it’s kind of awesome now because even though I expect to be interrupted, he is the only person who is patient enough to sit through my rambling and super un-varied sentence structure. Maybe it’s because he’s getting paid to sit there and listen to me stutter “il y a…” “il y aaaa…”? Eh! I’m over it.

Why do you care? Well, because I learned a lesson the hard way. By hard I mean super embarrassing but equally as hilarious. And Propser’s words of wisdom finally stuck to make me understood the value of making an effort IRL with pronunciation/enunciation. I recount now a brief story this past weekend, outside of the comfort of my French lesson…

It was Saturday night and time for the annual Nuit européenne des musées, where museums and art galleries open their doors late and fo free (mostly). Through a friend, I ended up in a group of new Frenchies in this museum-hopping mission. We waited on some super long lines, spray painted some graffiti (after having lost lots of brain cells inhaling the fumes), saw some archives, learned about French-Jewish history, and in between I ate a decent American hot dog which was neither very American or hot-doggy. I also met a kid who was half Welsh- half Colombian–or somewhere else near there in S.America– who had lived in the U.S. and been on every other continent. Which, okay is already pretty cool. But then, I told him I was Greek- and he starts speaking Greek to me. I all but peed myself. So, yeah, overall, pretty successful night.

But, it was at  this one point during the evening, we jumped on a metro trying to get from a graffiti art exhibit near Madeleine to the Marais, and somehow I started a convo to one mec and his copine about immigration in France where the lesson lives…

He was super keen on the idea that France should be kept for the French and although I understood where he was coming from, didn’t agree with the angle he was coming at me from. Trying to keep it light, I played tthe “I’m an immigrant, do you want me to leave, too? I promised him I am trying to integrate and that I will not deplete the whole supply of Camembert, etc etc.” And he was like no, no, ha ha, it’s not you, you’re fine. tell me how it wasn’t fine. Seeing that my efforts to convince were not so fruitful (perhaps because I stranger, speaking English in Paris trying to convince a Frenchman that strangers aren’t taking over his language, country or cheese).

At a certain point, when I felt like I was going to lose, I decided to throw humor into the mix and call him out playfully.  In the confines of my grey matter, I wittily said to him “So what, are you a supporter of Le Pen?” But instead, what came out of my mouth (in French) was “Are you a supporter of lapin?” For those of you who are not familiar with this word in French, it is pronounced la-pahn, and means…Rabbit.

So in the heat of my political debate, to secure my point.. I meant to ask my opponent if he was a supporter of the (mostly-racist, far-right political party) National Front. But instead I asked him if he was a supporter of.. Bunnies.

Rabbits-1.Racists-0… Fin.

To follow up on this hilarity, as per this poster, I learned that Putin, in French, is spelled and pronounced “Poutine”. Next question, if you hear someone yell “I love Poutine!” how will you know if they’re referring to the lovable (LAWL) Russian leader or the Canadian delicacy? Hm? Hm? Chew on that.

Anyway, if anyone is trying to find me I’ll be at home watching Muzzy YouTube vids and French sing-alongs on repeat. #practicedoesnotmakeperfect #practicemakeslessawkward

Filakia from Paris,
Steph