My partner announced that his family, in its entirety, would be descending upon us within week’s of my first baby’s arrival

JUST BEFORE I WAS DUE to give birth four years ago, my partner Stéphane announced that his family, in its entirety, would be descending upon us within weeks of the baby’s arrival to mark that very arrival. It shouldn’t have come as a surprise – Stéphane is French, it’s obvious I suppose with that cute little accent on the é – so I should have expected a family visit. I just didn’t expect it so soon after giving birth.

I’d never given birth before. I knew nothing about nappies or feeding, or babies for that matter. I was a tad apprehensive. I contemplated the prospect of having to endure the pains of labour, a lot. Now on top of it all there was to be a visit en famille and I knew it would mean two things. The first was that they would all be staying with us, all ten of them; the second was that they couldn’t speak English. Not. One. Word. So I was going to have to learn French and pronto.

When I say learn I really mean re-learn, as I studied it at school. But that’s the funny thing about learning. Like exercise, if you don’t keep at it, the benefits turn into flab.

I procured a subscription to the Rosetta Stone French language course and got on my merry way only to quickly discover that I remembered nothing except how to count. It soon became obvious that since completing my French Leaving Cert exam a mere 23 years earlier I’d undergone a systematic process of amnesia. I’d forgotten every word I’d learned and every rule – rules are an intrinsic part of the French language – like that pesky habit of assigning genders to everything. The sky is male, the garden is male and the rubbish bin is female – funny that.

And you might think the gender thing wouldn’t be something they’d get overly hung up on but you’d be wrong there. The fact that the moon is female as well as a street, a house and a car is important.

I got on with it, I gave birth to beautiful Sophie, the French family arrived and even though they couldn’t have been lovelier it was a challenging week for sure. Learning French in the comfort of your headphones is one thing, putting it into practise is another thing altogether.

The first day I was concentrating so hard on trying to pick out words I recognised so I could get the gist of a conversation I got a buzz-saw headache. The second day I spent so long agonising over the gender of a tea cup in a bid to get a sentence out that everyone lost interest in what I was trying to say and moved on.

But it did get better, even if I had to call on sign language quite a bit and indeed dip into role play. Hopping around our kitchen floor and gesticulating wildly to figure out if anyone wanted something to drink – tea, coffee, du vin – was not something I’d ever pictured myself doing a few weeks after having a baby yet there I was, hopping and gesticulating.

And of course there were several amusing incidents at my expense like the time I thought the word ‘preservative’ would translate easily into French the way some English words have the decency to but in this case I was let down. Préservatif is the French for condom. Oh, how they laughed.

My poor brain was fried from lack of sleep and feeds and changing and all the crying – mine mainly. But despite all that I do remember learning one thing through the haze of it all. That when it comes to French, it’s a case of why use one word when 35 words will do?

Brevity is not something the French go nuts over. They like using all the words they know, and regularly. But it’s what makes the language so beautiful, lyrical and pleasant to listen to. It’s also what makes it tricky to understand and learn.

Four years on and I’m still learning. And I‘ve been told that I always will be. French is an intricate language that even French professors don’t know the full rules and nuances of. But that’s okay. I’ve discovered that learning something as precious as another country’s language is a privilege, even if the irregularities of grammar might send you over the edge at times. I don’t get overly hung up on grammar any more. The key is to dive in and of course there will be floundering but when a few sentences flow it is glorious, like entering another realm.

Charlemagne said that to have another language is to possess another soul. The notion appeals to the writer in me. To have two souls would come in handy. So maybe when I get a firm grasp of this French business I could be two different writers altogether.

Quelle bonne idée!

The King of Lavender Square by Susan Ryan is published by Poolbeg and out now