Hola! Bonjour! Ciao!
Pretty impressive, huh? I’m a veritable chameleon of languages.
OK, I’m not – but I’ve always wanted to be. I can’t even remember how I did in Spanish class in school, but I’m not fluent now, so clearly I wasn’t a prodigy. Between that and an episode of ‘Sesame Street’ (featuring dancing Muppet fruit and vegetables singing en Español), I could flawlessly order a roast beef sandwich from a lovely Honduran woman at the local supermarket, and that was about it.
It was only when best friend Lynne and I began to travel beyond the confines of Miami (where Spanish can be extremely useful, in fairness) that I really longed to converse in something other than English.
About 20 years ago, we booked a three-week driving trip around France, Italy and Switzerland, so it was then that I decided I was going to make an effort to learn at least some basic phrases. Paris was the first stop, and after hearing horror stories of no discernible lanes around the Arc de Triomphe (“deathtrap”, etc.), we figured we’d only rent a car when we were leaving the city. Despite driving in Paris being high on the danger scale, that actually was a distant second to not attempting to speak French to Parisians. I get it – I’m sure years of having people yelling slow English to you – combined with exaggerated gesticulations – would make the best person intolerant of such behaviour.
Back then, there weren’t the apps you could just download on your phone, so I did what research I could through books and other media. We bought a Fodor’s Travel Guide on France, Italy and Switzerland, boning up on travel tips and ‘tourist beware’ advice. By the time we were flying out to Europe, I had a treasure trove of foreign words and phrases under my belt and we knew to be purse-aware in public areas, lest our pockets got picked.
Paris was stunning – no surprise there – although the hotel room was a revelation after countless vacations in the US. It was tiny and had two single beds draped in a sort of red satin. If it hadn’t said Best Western over the front door, I would have thought we’d booked a brothel by mistake. I didn’t know enough French to ask for a bigger room, or even how to say, “This is it?” so we just accepted we’d have to stand up in shifts and left it at that.
Over our few nights in The City of Light, I grew more confident with my brief lexicon of the native tongue. That was enough for our Parisian servers, hotel staff and bus drivers to see that we were trying, and then start speaking to us in English in order to end the misery of our painful pronunciation. We also bandied “Je ne parle pas bien Français, parlez vous Anglais?” (I don’t speak good French, do you speak English?) about a lot. We didn’t have to do too much convincing.
I even sang karaoke in French at a small Parisian bar. The bunch of teenagers – the only other patrons in the place – seemed amused by my ‘Mamma Mia’ attempt (“Mamma mia, c’est la même rengaine… ”), but clapped enthusiastically at the end. Merci beaucoup.
We left Paris by rental car, as planned, and drove through the country, making stops in Marseille and Nice. A server at a restaurant tried to pull the wool over our eyes by adding a handwritten gratuity to our bill, but thanks to our Fodor’s guide, we knew we were being swindled. We called him on it and he immediately retracted the additional charge. We weren’t born in the Louvre yesterday, buddy.
We loved France, but just before I bought myself a beret, it was time to cross the border into Italy. Immediately we had to switch gears (literally – the driving speeds were nuts; and figuratively – time for another language to kick in), and asking for the bill at the end of a meal went from “L’addition, s’il vous plaît” to “Il conto, per favore”. The easy part was saying “hello” and “goodbye”. When in doubt, just say “Ciao!”.
I didn’t become quite as comfortable with Italian as I was with French, probably because it wasn’t long before we were making our way into Switzerland and driving through Mont Blanc. I wasn’t even going to try learning Romansh (the national language of Switzerland), but luckily French was well-recognised there. However, the currency was now different. No more euros – time for the Swiss franc. They were gonna get us somehow.
Despite wrestling with languages and beds the width of popsicle sticks, I can honestly say that our trip through Europe was one of our favourite vacations. I thought of it recently, which is why I’ve downloaded the Duolingo app on my iPhone. Every day it reminds me to take a French lesson, and little animated characters celebrate my successes.
I might be taking a jaunt to France later in the year, so let’s see what I’ve accomplished by then. Even if I can’t figure out the way to the bathroom, I should be able to sing some Edith Piaf karaoke. That’ll make me the toast of Paris.
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