24. Substitute French Teacher

Hi folks. As I may have hinted, implied, or just outright said before, none of our friends here, the people we hang out with regularly, are French. So we count amongst our friends in this country people hailing from Canada, the US, Israel...well, that's mostly it. But one of the things that comes up in conversation is stereotypes about people from other countries. What are the stereotypes of Israelis? Americans? The French? Israelis are super patriotic, tough, and funny. Americans are fat and stupid. And the French are snooty and hard to make friends with. Being stereotypes, it's possible to point at numerous examples of this being true, of course; the important thing to remember is that those are stereotypes, and not genotypes, of those people, to inaccurately use a term that fits lyrically.

If only I could have made Ted Nugent fat and given him
two extra arms to hold a cheeseburger and a bible... 

In my French class, we all began as individuals, all by ourselves in a room filled with other people. Some of us had languages in common, yet we were still strangers. But rather than be able to assign these people attributes based on where they're from, I'm starting to think of us as all being from the same place: People-that-don't-speak-French-istan. This past evening, as class progressed, I saw signs that we might be coming together as a class, joining together in our common lack of French-speaking.

To begin with, Caroline was sick. She's our teacher, the French person with whom we've begun to feel it's okay to admit that we're stupid and don't understand what people say to us half the time. So we're all sitting there, wondering where she is, and some other lady comes in and starts spouting French at us, asking us questions. I need to try to remember to look at the class more when teachers ask us questions, because seeing so many people with that exact terrified, hopeless look of incomprehension on their face is hilarious. We all sat there, slack jawed and furrow-browed, trying to figure out what she said but also not wanting to be the person that responded.

Eventually we figured out that she was our sub.

She asked us what we had already learned: how to say our name, nationality, country that we live in, marital status, job, and age. And then she gave us a very substitute teacher kind of assignment (I know, because I've bee one): get into groups and practice saying all that about each other, and then we'd present that to the class. In other words, just do what you already know how to do.

Well, not exactly. Because now, instead of saying je suis or j'ai (I am or I have), we'd be saying s/he is or s/he has. And so we were getting into the very basics of conjugating those two important verbs.

Right away the sub broke up the small pod of Spanish speakers so that they weren't in groups together, but she missed the Japanese and English pods. I was in a group with Denise (the Australian lady) and Daria (the Russian who spoke fairly good English). We cheated by writing for each other what to say about us, but we still met the spirit of the activity because we were using il/elle est and il/elle a instead of je suis and j'ai. Let me break it down for the people at home:

	Etre (to be)	Avoir (to have)
I	je suis	j'ai
you	tu es	tu as
He, she, it	il/elle/on est	il/elle/on a
we	nous sommes	nous avon
You plural/formal	vous etes	vous avez
they	ils/elles sont	ils/elles ont

Now, listening to the people in class, some of them know this chart; some of them can use the verbs but might not think in terms of “conjugation” (knowing through doing instead of being taught); and some of them have no idea. It was fairly easy for me to write my mini biography in the third person: Il s'appelle Nat. Il est amercain. Il vient de les Etats Unis. Il est marie. Il est un ecrivent. Il a 37 ans, et il nee 18 fevrier 1975. This is missing accents marks, as I'm still a little fuzzy on them and haven't figured out how to incorporate them in Open Office anyway. Besides, my focus for right now is being able to speak, not write, and Megan says French people mess that stuff up all the time, too. So I absolve myself of all responsibility when it comes to accents.

So I got my little bio written and was then helping Denise put hers together when the sub stopped by to check on us. I immediately switched to French, but Denise didn't even try so we got an earful on how we weren't supposed to be speaking English. It was funny seeing how quickly I slipped into the respectful student persona, automatically acting the way I'd like my students to act with me. Denise just told the sub that she couldn't do it in French and so had to talk it out in English. Daria sat quietly.

Not long after that the presentations began. I'm sure that the sub had thought we'd get through them all. There are only sixteen people in the class; how long could it take for each of them to say six sentences about one of the others? Well.

First up was Marina, the 60-something Filipina lady, who was partnered with Jecid, the Colombian guy who was the friend of jerk I sat next to the first night (who still hasn't returned, thank gods). The two of them came to the front of the class. Marina spoke first.

I have decided that Marina is what that muppet Janice would be like if she were Filipina and 60-something. She has a big grin all the time, and seems kind of clueless.

As Marina began describing Jecid, the sub started correcting her. Marina kept saying elle instead of il, calling him a girl. And as she went on, and the sub kept correcting her every other word, it became clear that Marina either didn't understand the concept-- though my guess is that Tagalog has different pronouns for guys and girls, as does English, her other (though halting) language-- or her pronunciations of the two words were indistinguishable from each other.

“El est Colombian-” Marina would begin.

“Il.” The sub broke in.

“El.”

“Il.”

“El.”

“...D'accord. Continuez.” The sub would concede defeat, or think she had made her point.

“El vient d'Espagne-”

“Il.”

“El...”

And so on. When she finished, smiling the whole time, the class applauded. Everyone was happy not to have been picked to go first, and we all now knew to really pronounce the hell out of the whole il/elle difference.

After Jecid had told all of Marina's information and they were getting ready to sit back down, the sub stopped them.

“You said everything else, but you didn't say how old she was.,” Is basically what she said.

Jecid sort of looked uncomfortable but nodded and allowed as how he hadn't wanted to ask her. I had felt the same way when getting Daria's information.

“But you have the year she was born. It is not hard to figure it out.” Again, this is what the sub meant. I don't remember exactly what she said-- it was in French, of course-- but it involved enough simple French and cognates that I could figure it out.

During Jecid's oratory I'd had to re-evaluate my impression of him. Sure, his buddy was a jerk, but he wasn't his buddy, and the way he had been talking with Marina indicated that he was at least a nice young man who was very polite to little old ladies. (the next class he saved a seat for her next to him, confirming my opinion). So I thought I should help him out.

“Mais, un gentil homme ce n'est pas demander!” I called out. I saw Jecid process through that for a second. Then he turned and pointed at me with a look on his face like, “Exactly! See, he knows! This guy gets it.” But despite our belief that “A gentleman doesn't ask” the sub still didn't rest until we had sussed out Marina's age. Marina didn't seem to mind; at least, that smile never wavered.

We only got to one more group that night, this one consisting of Hajime, Daisuke, and Janice (a Spanish girl, not a Muppet). I'm working on getting everyone's name memorized. By now, the empathetic response we'd all had watching Jecid and Marina go through their presentations, cringing in sympathy as they were corrected over and over, grateful their mistakes enabled us to correct the same ones we would have made, had gotten us a little loose, a little chummy. When we found out that Daisuke was a cuisinier- a cook- at a Japanese restaurant, we started asking where, which one, and joked about having class at his sushi bar one night instead of at the school. There was much laughter, and our comeraderie bar leveled up.

French electro punk. The lady tends to perform sans shirt,
according to the google image search I did.

But when we found out that Janice had a fiance and Swopnil called out, “What's his name?” The sub snapped, “Non! Argle bargle ferble bop vous etes indiscreet.” And whatever else she had said, she went and wrote vous etes indiscreet on the board. Then she spent a few moments telling Swopnil, essentially, that he shouldn't ask that. It was impolite. It was not his business. It was Janice's affair, not his.

It could have been an opportunity to get into some cultural stuff about French social interaction. But either the sub didn't want to derail the presentations further, didn't feel like dealing with what would be a level of complexity our grasp of French couldn't handle, or it just didn't occur to her. She slapped Swopnil down because he had committed a faux pas and it needed addressing, but only to the point that we understood it was a faux pas. You know, the way you'd admonish a child for cursing, but not go on to explain that yes, of course, everybody curses, but there are rules for when it is socially appropriate and until the child understands them he shouldn't curse. No. Just, “That is bad and you are not to do it.”

That dampened the class mood a bit-- Swopnil looked genuinely abashed-- but luckily class was almost over. A few minutes later we gathered our things and made our separate ways home. But a couple nights later, as we gathered outside the school waiting for the doors to open, several of us talked with each other, whereas before we would all just stand around, not making eye contact. We're coming together. We're coming to feel safe in our mutual difficulty and using that to forge...friendships? Hmm. Maybe not that, but some fellow-inmate companionship. And I almost have everyone's name down.