English, English Everywhere

There have been a couple pieces in the media lately (here and here) about European governments eschewing their native languages’ inundation with English. I find this attitude persnickety and therefore funny; the phenomenon is also very real and simply inevitable. Wake up, people. English has been the lingua franca for some time—and its assimilation into world languages isn’t going to slow down in today’s globalized economy.

I knew that well before I started learning French a year and a half ago, but it didn’t prevent me from being amused with just how many English words were part of the everyday vernacular. Hearing the French speak full sentences in their own language with some random English words (in pitch-perfect French pronunciation) peppered in is hilarious. Nearly all the classes at my Parisian gym had English names. One day I took a class without knowing what it was, so at the end I asked the teacher for the class’ name. “Buh-dee baaah-laaahnce,” she informed me. Huh? “Ahhhh, tu veux dire bah-dee ba-lance [in full-on American accent],” I said nearly automatically. Incidentally, she looked at me a little strangely. Overhearing ladies in the locker room exclaiming that “Le Struh-tcheeeeeeeng—c’est top!” always made me smirk, but my all-time favorite was hearing the Body Pump (strength-training) instructor scream “Encore PUEHMP!!!!!!!!” throughout the class. I would nearly drop my dumbbell due to my own little, private laughing fit.

It gets even more humorous in the realm of business. The following are all common Frenglish expressions I’ve heard on the go or from my students:
• C’est dans le planning
• Je vais check-er ça
• Il faut wait-and-see
• Il est le top, top manager
• J’attends les feedbacks [also, note the plural!]

The French government has been slowly awakening to the reality that French has been permeated by its linguistic foe, but not without putting up a fight. The Cultural Ministry launched a huge campaign in the 90’s to create its own words for technological terms--for example, using courriel for email--but those newfangled words never stuck (except in Canada). Today, in the Paris Métro, one can see many ads sporting English phrases (some of which don’t make a whole lot of sense). However, there is a French law that requires a translation of any English text in any ad into French. Granted, the translation usually appears in tiny font at the bottom of the billboard.

The government’s resistant attitude has trickled down to its citizens, too. To understand why, it's important to examine the average French person's educational experience with English. Most French students start learning English in middle school, if not before. They take English for about three hours a week, until they reach high school, where they take it for about five to six hours a week. They might continue studying English at university, for yet again a few hours a week. Then they might proceed on a lifelong path of honing their English, or they might never speak English again…until their company demands that they take English lessons to boost job performance. Along the way, the French educational system places a high emphasis on accuracy, thus training its pupils to be scared of being incorrect—a feeling that persists into adulthood. As an English teacher of adults, I encountered a scale of attitudes towards English: total openness to complete resentment. I could tell where a student resided on this continuum—essentially determining their “type”—from the moment they uttered their first sentence in English in my presence. And so here they are:

The Happy-Go-Lucky: While he may not always have gotten his diction, grammar, or syntax right, that was never the point. HGL approached a lesson fearlessly, unfazed by his errors and ready to learn from them. One HGL student of mine had low proficiency, but put a lot of effort into telling me about the wonders of Bretagne right before my vacation there. He informed me that the coast is very sunny, but “the sun, he pushes the clowns to the interior. Yes, the interior is very clowny.” I stifled a giggle, but also a wince (I am irrationally afraid of clowns…I just find them very creepy), before explaining his mistake. He laughed at himself and repeated the word “cloud” several times before continuing his monologue about Bretagne. Très adorable.

The Steamroller: Ever the motormouth, she will race through her thoughts, often making errors—the same errors, over and over again, in fact. You, the teacher, will make limitless attempts to correct those errors, all to no avail, as it never sinks in. It’s kind of a take-no-prisoners approach to English. I called my Steamrollers out on their steamrollery behavior all the time, and they’d grin sheepishly, apologize, and say, “I know, I know…I’m bad.” However, at the end of the day, the Steamroller’s inclination to speak so quickly in English was a direct result of her enthusiasm for the language, albeit sloppily demonstrated.

The Faux Debutant: This is the student who stopped learning English after school and then finds himself in the unfortunate predicament of having to relearn it from scratch for his job. He is known in France (not just by me) as The Faux Debutant, or false beginner, as he has some foundation that has atrophied. FD therefore has a Complex about speaking English, causing you, the teacher, to evolve into a psychoanalyst of sorts. Does the student always try to get you to talk about your personal life? It’s an evasion strategy. Does she always crack jokes during the lesson? A natural comedienne, perhaps, but it’s a cover for feelings of inadequacy. I taught a group of three FD’s, all middle-aged assistants, who constantly made fun of each others’ developing English skills—and also viciously corrected each others’ errors. Ding, ding, ding! An opportunity to feel momentarily superior. The FD’s might as well be called the Defense Mechanists.

The Perfectionist / The Wallflower: These are separate types, but they are two sides of the same coin. As the French education system places such a high value on correctness, some English students, even as adults, tend to clam up and be too timid to speak (The Wallflowers) or are overly concerned about speaking absolutely correctly and thus browbeating themselves if they make a tiny error (The Perfectionists). As a teacher, it’s hard to win with either type. All the self-confidence boosting methods that I’d strengthened teaching teenagers fell flat with adults, as their low linguistic self-esteeem lay quite deep. In some one-on-one lessons the mood could get so awkward that I’d have to handhold the student all the way through the lesson, essentially doing a grade school-esque fill-in-the-blank oral exercise. I am not an intimidating person—the Wallflowers just can’t handle the humiliation. On the other hand, the Perfectionists were more interactive, but they could create just as awkward a vibe as the Wallflowers. If they made an error that I then corrected, the uptightness would explode in a tirade of cursing and violent smacks to the forehead. (Think Philip Seymour Hoffman’s grossly uncomfortable “Stupid idiot!” bit in “Boogie Nights.”) I tried to pump up their self-esteem with encouraging words, and all I would get in response was, “Oh, but you are such a positive American,” which roughly translates to: You are naïve and therefore your opinion is worthless to me. See? You can’t win.

The Defeatist: Speaking of not being able to win, there’s the Defeatist, a distant cousin (twice-removed) of the Perfectionist. The Defeatist crumbles at the slightest hint of any linguistic challenge. Prepositions were the breaking point for one of my Defeatists. Granted, prepositions are difficult, but my student’s cascade of agonized sighs and holdling her head in her hands was just over the top. Many Defeatists would often complain that there was no use to them learning the language, as they would never make progress. A foreign language is not a crushing weight that will squash the universe down into a tiny little speck of dust, but no dose of “positive American” or even teacherly tough love could convince them otherwise. I think they, like the French government, are still bitter that français never lived up to its promise as lingua franca all the world over.