Larning’ French

 

In 1965 I attended the Foreign Langue League program at the Universitie de Reims for 6 weeks. Classes were held in a hall at the university in a university lecture style. There were hundreds in the class and I remember the first thing we learned was to stand up when the instructor entered the lecture call, then to sit once he was in front.

 

But out flight was delayed and when we woke up our first day, the planned French qualification exam had be put off till the next day, so we were on free time on our own at the university campus. A group of us were just hanging out when a young girl passed us. We thought it would be interesting to try and have a conversation with her. During that discussion for some reason the talk turned to cats (chats) and we discovered that the chat does not ‘meow’ in France. Instead it goes “miaou”.

 

That may have one of the most instructive things I ever learned.

 

For one thing it showed how the ear of the individual using French in France hears a bit different, shaped I imagine by the language of their culture.

 

Though I studied French through High School, much of those studies was learning translation for terms and the conjugation of verbs and the like. IN college I studied several more years, but truthfully the classes were taught in English, the books we were to read, everyone got English translations of same, and the only time French was used was in the examinations.

 

Those books were interesting to understanding how things developed in France over the years, but most, and myself, were in class just because we had a language requirement to fulfill to be a student.

 

It would be 20 years later before I touched French again. About 1990 I was asked to do some translation of French works which were in turn translations of Mabuni’s books.

 

That led to Patrick McCarthy asking me to translate Roland Habsetzer's work on the Bubishi and finally Kenki Tokitsu’s work “Historie Du Karate”.

 

I spent much of my free time with my French/English dictionary yelling at it for not being clear. I did not have trouble understanding Japanese martial terms in the text. But it became very clear that the French I had studied had nothing in common with the way French was used in book for the French.

 

The prime example was one passage where Tokitsu compared various karate systems to types of cheese.

 

If you have trouble understanding that it would only make sense if you had actually been to France and understood the passion of the French for cheeses.

 

The examples I have given explain some of the difficulty to understand what is being said/written in a different language.

 

I would suggest there is a parallel that was experienced in understanding terms from Okinawa and assigning meaning into English.

 

Something to think about.