The Man Who Didn't Speak English

The receptionist at the Bordeaux campsite didn’t speak any English.  My Australian and Canadian friends tried to buy some ice at the head office, but the French man didn’t understand.  Murray, a tatted-up Aussie with a penchant for partying, sought my aid.

“Can you ask the guy if we can put our drinks in his fridge?” he asked.

I switched my brain to French and searched for the appropriate words all the while muttering to my calculations to myself.  I was nervous to have an audience watch as I struggled with the foreign language. I had been an excellent student in high school and could comfortably chat en français with my Togolese friends who didn’t mind my incorrectly conjugated verbs and my stories that were usually told in the present tense even if they happened yesterday. 

For some reason, when I spoke French with strangers I suddenly lost my confidence and made simple mistakes.  Diction in any language often depends on confidence, and regaining my confidence was only a matter of practice.  The more words that rolled off my tongue, the crisper they sounded.  Switching the conversation to a foreign language is like driving through a tunnel with the radio on.  You lose the words you can recognize, and then you hear static as you near the tunnel’s exit.  Once you’re on the other side, the words are clear again.

The Aussies and Canadians led me to a bespectacled, white-haired man in a small, wooden office.  We greeted each other in French.  First I asked him if he had any ice.  I was careful to use the polite “you” form because he is my elder. He had no ice, so I started my next question, which I had rehearsed in my mind a few times before meeting the old man. 

“May my friends put their drinks in your...” My voice trailed off as I searched for the correct pronunciation of refrigerator.  The French equivalent “réfrigérateur” looks like the English word and the syllables are divided in the same manner, but the inflections are radically divergent.  If you weren’t entirely sure how to pronounce refrigerator in English and you mumbled your way through it, the result would sound like the French translation.  In both languages, the word is incredibly too long, which is why we both shorten it to fridge.

Ah, le frigu? the man suggested.

Oui, I affirmed.

D’accord. “Okay,” he said.  I motioned to my friends that he would allow them. 

Quand est-ce qu’ils reviennent pour leur boissons? the old man asked me. 

I turned to my friends and asked them: “When are you coming back for your drinks?”

“After dinner,” they replied, and I translated.

The old man turned his wrist and checked the time.  Je pars a six heures mais je reviens a huit heures.

“He said he’ll be gone at six and come back at eight,” I said, and I couldn’t believe I was actually transmitting correct information.  I envisioned myself asking the old man to repeat himself over and over again, and then when I translated half of the material I’d make something up for the words I didn’t recognize.  But I didn’t have to lie about my imperfections because I actually understood each word the old man said.

Everyone agreed the time was suitable.  My friends ambled back to camp, but I stayed behind to speak with the old man. 

“You were in Paris?” he asked in French.

“Yes.  We were there for only two days, but I wish I could stay for a long time.  But when the bus goes, I must go.” 

Although my phrasing was often child-like, my language was proper and efficient because my vocabulary could only stretch so far.  If I had the same conversation in English, I would’ve described the nature of my trip in fuller detail, but some of my sentences would’ve been redundant.  My limited word bank was teaching me to be economical with my speech.     

“Now you will go to Spain?” the old man asked.

“Yes. To Pamplona.  Where there are the...” I was trying to say the running of the bulls, but I didn’t know the word for bull. 

“...where the male cows run,” I offered as consolation.  “I don’t know the word for male cow.  What is the word?”  I pantomimed horns.

“Ah!” the old man exclaimed.  “Le matador.”  He thought I was describing the bull fighters, but it was close enough to me.  I resolved to look up the correct translation later and continue with the conversation rather than stumble over a small detail and risk losing the old man’s attention. 

At that moment, Liz, a psychiatric nurse from New Zealand, approached the old man behind the counter and asked if there was any toilet paper.  The toilets were without this essential, as the French bathrooms contained bidets instead.  I was unfamiliar with the equipment and did not desire a demonstration.

“Do you have any toilet paper?” I asked the old man in French.

“Not in the bathrooms,” he responded. 

“There is none in the bathrooms?” I asked redundantly, not because I misunderstood, but I wanted to practice negation. 

“Is there a market——” I began.

Magasin.  “Store,” he corrected.

 

“——that sells toilet paper near here?”

Non, he said, but then he searched in the cupboards and found a roll. 

He handed me the roll, which I gave to Liz, and we thanked him. 

“My friends don’t speak French, but I can translate for you,” I said.

“You speak very good French,” he said, and I celebrated quietly in my head.  As the old man was locking up the office, we said goodbye, and I sauntered off back to camp, where I met Murray. 

“You saved the whole camp, man,” he said.  “We’d be lost without you.”

I was overwhelmed with a sense of empowerment during my brief role as translator.  When I spoke with the old man in his native language, I felt in control in this foreign place.  To have a firm grip around those who feel confused because they can’t speak or read the local language, this is a steroid for the ego.  The pleasure is intoxicating, but there is also the danger of thinking too highly of oneself, a peril I wanted to avoid especially around new friends.

I never imagined my four years of high school French classes would culminate in a conversation regarding toilet paper and refrigeration, but at least I could put all that practice into use, rather than storing information for hypothetical situations or embarrassing monologues.  I was sad to be leaving France just as my confidence and my vocabulary was growing.  I was rapidly learning new words as my fellow campers asked me to read labels on bottles of lotion, hand cream, and shampoo. 

There is a refreshing quality to reading a foreign language imprinted on common household products that awakens the child in me.  When I was a kid, I was developing habits of the way I spoke.  Both my accent and the words I chose contributed to my forming identity, which was gradually solidifying into a body less bendable.  When my behavior became more rigid, I ignored things I knew I wouldn’t absorb into my personality, and I gravitated toward my preferences. 

But in France, everything was new to me, even the shampoo bottles I rarely stopped to read at home in the States.  My environment offered unlimited possibilities to build a new identity——a separate self who uttered strange-sounding syllables.  In French, my IQ was probably on par with a fifth-grader’s, but, like a young child with little awareness of social pressures, I didn’t care what people thought of me.  I had no fear of failure because a mistake was inevitable, and progress was easily made because there was so much I didn’t know.  I wanted to fully immerse myself into a foreign land devoid of English, so I could watch my personality disappear and witness a new form emerge.