In which I ruminate on the fact that I still speak French poorly but my Italian is improving

I think I’m beginning to understand my stepmother’s point: she always talked about my sisters’ feeling excluded from making friends at school because they’re from the US and therefore foreigners. I beginning to feel that way around here—people from the US tend to make an embarrassment of themselves abroad, if only because they don’t go out very much. I’m not sure: maybe I’m an embarrassment too. It’s all difficult to understand.

I don’t know why the Italians seem to be much more willing to speak in Italian than the French are willing to speak French. That’s a lie, I know the reason: it’s because the Italians, in general, speak less English than the French do; the French would rather speak French, but (I generalize here, but national characters do exist, and exceptions to them exist as exceptions) they’re not so excited about helping other people learn French, which is profoundly unhelpful. I think that one solution is just to be bullheadedly stubborn: they seem to appreciate an interest in French for the sake of the French language, which interest I can demonstrate. Certainly they would rather speak French than English, and so if you can tap into the “je peux parler français avec celui-ci” part of them (and I’m not totally certain that that sentence is “correct” nor idiomatic, but I’m trash), then they’re willing to put up with it. The main variation is the balance of the two: some people are so desperate to speak French that they’ll put up with a lot of trash, and some make you fight for every word and instant you get to be a francophone with them. As I said, bullheaded stubbornness can be a virtue.

But my sisters are in a context where they don’t have the option not to be stubborn: every word with every person is a fight, to some extent. And goddamn are the languages hard. Hard for everyone, yes, but hard for them, too. Sometimes you’re fighting an uphill battle. I’m tempted to begin to lie about my background, but I can’t think of a plausible lie. The problem, of course, is being an English speaker: nobody blames a German for not speaking Italian, or an Italian for not speaking French. But if you’re an English speaker, you’re assumed to be an ignoramus if you don’t speak every language: if you, as an English speaker, say “I don’t speak X language,” you are assummed to be monolingual. Never mind that I in fact speak Y and Z and ξ and λ; they don’t know or care. If I don’t speak X, and I was educated in English and have English-speaking parents, then I must be monolingual and therefore a buffoon.

I hate speaking English. I like to read and write it, but speaking it is a disaster. I can communicate with a few people in the minor sociolect I have from the US, I can speak the Imperial standard form with others from the British (post-)empire, and I can speak the international standard of the European Union (though with time this last is becoming weaker under the influence of the former two); I admire the beauty of other socio- and dialects of English that I understand but cannot speak. But in this maelstrom, I am lost: notice, reader, that I write an English that is very different from the way I speak (since nobody would understand me if I spoke this way) and very different from any accepted standard of the written language. I promiscuously mix vernacular vulgarities from my US sociolect with awkward (and potentially misused) archaisisms and features of the Southern English formal dialect. In short, I write a broken pidgin English que j’ai bricolé from the various scraps and pieces of languages I hear around me. And it’s decidely quirky—perhaps it’s what passes for “voice” nowadays. But I write that way precisely because I’m not constrained by my interlocutor: when I’m speaking, I have to arrive at a common language with the conversation partner; in writing, I can use my own language.

But, as usual, I digress (if there’s someone doing research on my writing, I’d be very curious to know what the overall structure of these blog posts is. I usually begin with a single sentence and use that as a prompt for stream-of-consciousness until I know the piece is done. Then I give it three or four rereads and a title. I usually aim for a chiasm, but I’d be interested to know more specifically how they come together): my half-sisters are about to begin (or are already beginning?) secondary school in Switzerland. They’ve lived there for eight years now, and have been educated in local state schools that whole time. I’m going to see them in about a week for the first time in almost three years: how they’ll have changed! I hope that they’re not still so excluded from the social environment after all this time; even if the anti-US bias continues, they might be able to become known as an exception. I’ve been happy to be told “you’re not like other Americans, you’re a normal person; I met this American who…, but you’re not like that.” Why must we be such embarrassments abroad? I suppose it’s because we don’t go very often—people from the US are, in fact, very isolated. No wonder people don’t like us.

But it’s painful to be judged in advance for something you can’t change, and it’s painful to be unable to escape the stereotype. One beauty of speaking the language is that at least you’re trying: I’m trying to be better, and it’s an unambiguous sign of my effort. You have to be stubborn as an ox to get them to acknowledge it, but once they concede that you’re a real person, they’ll be your friend. I wonder how my sisters are faring: I’ll find out soon. They’re good kids, and I want them only to be… what, exactly? Themselves, maybe. I understand my step-mother’s concern, and I wonder whether this isn’t better for them in the long run: they’ll be beautifully trilingual and able to some extent disclaim the US. I wonder what they’ll say when asked where they’re from? I’m not sure—it’s difficult to know. But I must be careful: it’s very difficult to distinguish my wishes for myself from my wishes for them; frankly, I envy them their life in Switzerland. It’s a difficult country, but a good one. I’ll be interested to check in: it’s been quite a while since I’ve seen them. I hope that they’re not being treated too harshly.