Which way toward fluency?
Until my husband and I started visiting Montreal on the weekends, the most time I’d spent in a foreign country was the summer I worked as an intern at the German newspaper Frankfurter Rundschau after my sophomore year in college. It was an amazing experience, even though it continues to be my Achilles heel when it comes to learning French. Apparently I’m almost one-third of the way towards official French fluency (I’ll complete Module 5 in my course next week, out of a total of 15 modules) – but I still often want to say funf instead of cinq for “five,” and und instead of et for “and.”
And just last week, while conversing with my tutor, I was trying to explain that the American Memorial Day holiday is for war veterans who have died (as opposed to Veterans’ Day, which is for living servicemembers) — and I used the German word tot for “dead,” which in French means “early.” Unfortunately this only dawned on me after we ended the Zoom session, as I reflected on the moment when my tutor looked quite confused, and I realized that, thanks to my language mishmash, she may now believe that Americans have a separate holiday for veterans of “early” wars.
Mais, je digresse.
The reason I brought up my German summer is because I’ve noticed that something similar is now happening to me when I’m in Montreal, as started to happen toward the end of that summer in Frankfurt: people are actually coming up to me and asking me for directions. Which, more than a sign of my own successful cultural immersion, is, instead, an indication of the people who aren’t super-observant — since my dead giveaway as an American in Frankfurt in 1998 was my baggy jeans and Nike sneakers, and as a present-day American tourist among the residents of downtown Montreal, it’s the fact that j’ai besoin de perdre un peu du poids. (Sigh…I won’t translate that one.)
Anyway, my most recent appeal for directional assistance came two weekends ago, when Tayt and I were walking back from lunch at Weinstein & Gavino’s. (Hmmm… maybe there’s my problem with the poids? Bien sûr que non.) As we waited for the light to change at the corner of Crescent and Rene-Levesque, a young woman sidled up to us. She said something to Tayt in French as she pointed to an address on her phone, and Tayt pointed her to me. The address was 1201 Boulevard Rene-Levesque, and I was actually able to tell her in French that the building she was looking for was up ahead, and, based on the odd number, on the same side of the street.
J’était certainement fier de moi-même!
That pride, however, turned to a bit of embarrassment as we all continued walking, and Tayt said to me: “Why do I know that number?” A few moments later, as we approached the entrance to our hotel, we both realized it’s the address he inputs almost every Saturday into his Waze app when we drive up to Montreal. It’s the address of the Sheraton hotel, where we usually stay when we spend the night.
Clearly, we are not locals just yet.