The Journey Back to Quebec: Part II, How to Recover Four Years of Forgotten High-School French in Four Days

My last post ended with Monsieur Magpie and me hightailing it for the Canadian border, singing, "We got married in a fever, hotter than a pepper sprout.  We been talkin' 'bout Jackman ever since the fire went out . . ." at the top of our lungs.  Once we'd made it over the border though, the singing stopped and the serious practice began.  One of the many painful truths we have accepted after twenty years together is that our combined knowledge of the French language puts us at about the level of a five-year-old native speaker.  This isn't such a good thing when one considers that between us we have studied eight years of high-school French.

Interestingly, too, we each have very different sets of skills.  Todd knows his verbs--how to conjugate, how to use tenses, how to string them together to show actions that happened yesterday or that might happen tomorrow.  I, on the other hand, have managed to maintain a large store of nouns and other vocabulary words in the old metal file drawers of my brain.  I can tell you that la bougie means the candle (or the spark plug), but I can't quickly tell you to blow la bougie out before it catches the curtains on fire.  Needless to say, after two decades of studying, teaching, and making a living as a writer, I know which tools are most important to have at one's disposal when communicating.  It's easy to look up a noun in a dictionary, but the ability to craft a sentence that makes sense is not so simple.  Todd is thus a much faster and more fluent French speaker than I am.  I, with my brain for minutiae and lists, fumble along, spouting nouns and colorful adjectives, and gesticulating wildly.  I do sprinkle in a verb or two from time to time, but my sentences lack any sophistication.

So, what to do about this problem?  

For us the answer was--and is--simple.  Dive right in and talk.  So talk we did.  We had conversations both long and short with locals everywhere we went, and we found that every single person we met was more than happy to talk with us.  Armed with a pocket dictionary and a book of common phrases, we spoke as much French as we possibly could.  We also asked countless questions about words, expressions, and turns of phrase.

I found that the more I spoke, the more I wanted to speak . . . and to listen.  Whether discussing medieval illuminations with the owner of one of the best pen shops I've ever visited, Quebec politics with a fantastic graphic artist, or great local neighborhoods with a man we met on the street, I loved listening and discovering new nuances of this beautiful language along the way.  By our fourth and last night there, we didn't need to resort to any English when we chatted with our waitress at Chez Victor (the best burger place ever, including veggie burgers).  It sounds silly to be excited about speaking very basic French at a restaurant, but the fact that she didn't automatically switch to English as soon as she heard our American accents was heartening for us.  Many folks will politely shift over to English if they know that French is hard for you, but we learned that if we asked them to use French with us, most people were happy to help us stumble along.  

As an American who loves talking with people visiting my country, it was a thrill to meet so many like-minded folks in Quebec.  It was also a thrill to think so hard every day that my head hurt.  Even when Todd and I were just talking to each other, we tried to speak in French as much as possible.  Now that we're back in the U.S. we're still at it, messing around with sentences and looking up words.  

I kick myself for being such a lousy student all those years ago in high school.  I couldn't be bothered to learn the language of my own heritage, my father's first language, and one that carries me back to some of the best memories of my childhood.  The motto of Quebec province, which can be found over the main entrance to the Parliament building and on every Quebec license plate, is something one can't help but feel, especially within the stone walls of Vieux Quebec.  Je me souviens.  The French may have lost to the English on les Plaines d'Abraham in 1759, but this is a deeply French place.  It endures.  Et quand je suis à Québec, je me souviens aussi.

The Journey Back to Quebec: Part I, Go on Up to Jackman

Bonjour, mes amis!  I'm sorry I have been away for so long--from my own blog and from yours, too. This is the longest blogging break I have ever taken.  It wasn't expected, but it was necessary. Summer swept me away this year with weekly visitors at our home in Portland, lots of work, and then, at last, a long-awaited journey to Quebec City avec Monsieur Magpie.

We are lucky here in Maine that Quebec is our neighbor to the Northwest.  This means we have a little taste of Europe just a short drive away.  Still, it had been many years since either Todd or I had been to Quebec City.  In fact, neither of us had been there since we were children.  We suspect that perhaps we both visited during the same summer back in the 1970's.  Maybe we passed each other on the same street, no?  A romantic thought, and one I choose to believe.

This year it just felt right to both of us that we make a pilgrimage there to celebrate our 17th wedding anniversary, summer, childhood memories, and life in general.  My heritage on my father's side is French Canadian, and Quebec City is the place where my own parents spent their honeymoon 50 years ago this summer, so what better place to visit?  And what better time to do it?  

When I was a girl, my parents packed us kids into the back of the faux-wood-paneled station wagon, and we headed up to Canada during a heat wave.  Back in those days nobody in our part of the world had air conditioning in their cars, so it was a sticky, grumbling trip through logging towns and the low mountains of the Kennebec River watershed.  Moose country.  Lumber country.  The maple-sap and pine-scented world of my roots.

Then we hit Jackman, Maine, the last real town before the Canadian border, and even my eight-year-old self knew we were at the edge of anything familiar.  Border towns tend to be edgy in more ways than one, and Jackman didn't disappoint with its diners, roadhouses, and ramshackle motels.

And all these decades later, Jackman feels nearly the same.  I won't lie.  For me it possesses a slightly ominous air that was only enhanced on this trip by the fact that when I walked over to take photos of the abandoned train station, a young man pulled up next to the station and stared at me from his car.  He just sat there in the empty lot, watching me, one finger tapping the steering wheel.  I edged as far away from his car as I could as I made my way back to the convenience store where we'd parked, but he never took his eyes off me.  It wasn't until I met back up with Todd at our car that the creepy guy finally drove away.  This, coupled with the motel in Jackman that doubles as a place for all your taxidermy needs, lent our fifteen minutes there a distinct Hitchcockian flavor. 

Once we were on our way, though, our temporary case of the heebee-jeebees disappeared as we sang songs about Jackman to the tune of the Johnny Cash/June Carter Cash song "Jackson," dove back into practicing our French, and tossed around possible plans for our stay in Quebec.  Other than our B&B reservations, we had no firm itinerary, for Mr. Magpie and I are avid travelers, but not very good tourists.  What I mean is that we bristle at itineraries and pamphlets listing the requisite "attractions," preferring to stumble upon wonderful surprises as we go and to strike up conversations with locals and fellow travelers alike.  Quebec, we would discover, is one of the best places in North America to do just that.

Next Installment: Part II, How to Recover Four Years of Forgotten High-School French in Four Days