LE MOT JUSTE

Alan Cochrane puts his French speaking skills to the test but soon realises that, despite his best efforts, the student has not become the master

Alan Cochrane is frustrated by his lack of linguistic expertise

If you were to grub around in your wallet or purse, which item would you feel most proud of and be determined not to lose? Pictures of your wife or husband, children, and parents would clearly take pride of place. But after that, what?

There’s one bit of plastic in my wallet of which I’m especially proud. In my case the little rectangle I would hate to lose is my membership card of the ‘Institute Francais Ecosse’.

Granted, it’s not exactly one level below the Legion d’Honneur and it signifies only that I’m a student member. It doesn’t even say – or at least mine doesn’t – that I’m fluent in the language of Voltaire and Zola, merely that I’m a student of French, trying desperately to improve my proficiency in that marvellous tongue.

What the card also doesn’t say is anything about my level of proficiency or that I’m improving because I’m not at all sure that I am.

I decided to enrol in the Institute last autumn after another holiday in France during which I reckoned I could just about get by and make myself understood in hotels, restaurants, car hire offices, bars and the like. But a normal conversation? Forget it.

And you know what, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed my ‘back to school’ days (and nights). Apart from the tuition, that wee card entitles me to a 10% discount in the bistro attached to the Institute’s HQ on Edinburgh’s George IV Bridge.

The classes are by no means all plain sailing. Two ninety-minute lessons each week, plus bags of homework (or ‘mes devoirs’ as I learned to call it), meant that it was often pretty tough going for someone whose last attempt at learning a new subject was five decades ago.

Sad to say, too, is the fact that a number of my co-learners at the start of proceedings 12 months ago have dropped out for a number of reasons, normally to do with the pressure of work from their day jobs. I especially miss one young Ulsterman who said he’d only joined the class because he worked for a French firm and wanted to be able to swear at his bosses in their own language. I can’t imagine where he picked up the requisite words; perhaps he paid for extra tuition.

And although I’ve always reckoned that I had a reasonable vocabulary and knew the meaning of a lot of words, two-way conversations were beyond me. My recent two and a bit weeks in the Ardèche proved that pretty conclusively.

Adding insult to injury is that all my daughters are good linguists and two of them gained degrees in French and the one on holiday with us this year has become hyper-critical of my fumbling attempts to make progress, especially of my pronunciation and supposed French accent.

This has undoubtedly given added weight to the family legend where I was allegedly presented with a half bottle of rosé at a roadside café when what I’d asked for was a café crème.

And of course there’s another downside to having someone around who has a near perfect mastery of French – certainly better than mine – in that it’s too easy now to turn to her when I’m stumped about, say, booking a table in a restaurant or sorting out bus and train timetables, especially when I’ve got into a muddle.

But that’s the trouble with clever children isn’t it? They’re great until they regard us as an embarrassment. N’est-ce pas?

‘I was presented with a bottle of rosé when I’d asked for a café crème’