Madame Pourquoi
Learning a new
language is like entering a desert with blindfolds. You have no
knowledge of what to expect. There are sand blasts and wind gusts from
every side, yet you keep trudging along. That is a mild description of
my road to learning French. The only tool I took with me was fun. I
wanted to have fun on the journey. Fun here translates into: ask
questions.
Why did I decide
to learn French?
First, it was the desire to have a mastery of another
language. Well, learn something different from the known. Having spoken
English, Yoruba and a bit of Pidgin for a great part of my life; it is
a bit boring, don’t you think? A part of me thought: wouldn’t it be
great to gossip in another language? Wouldn’t it be absolutely
interesting to maneuver two world languages well, to hit their heads
together as if in a duel?
Yoruba and English
are languages that just stumbled on me, or was it I who stumbled on
them?
Bottom line is, I do not really understand or appreciate the
process of learning them. For Yoruba, I grew up in a Yoruba-speaking
environment, my parents speak my native Ijare dialect at home; and yes,
I studied Yoruba as a subject in school. For English, the imposed
lingua franca, it was spoken at every other place: school, on TV, with
friends. Despite this, my mastery of both languages has been questioned
at different times. My Yoruba can only take me through basic survival.
Yet, among young people of my age, I am a pro. And please don’t ask me
to do “ayan ogbufo”, or proverbs, in my native Yoruba language. I do
not speak any accented English; you know, the kind of English spoken at
fashion shows and on many radio shows these days: British accent in
conflict with American, you get me?
I may have studied
English throughout my university years, yet to get a PhD someone thinks
I need to take a Test Of English as Foreign Language (TOEFL) or
Graduate Record Examination (GRE). Someone thinks my English needs to
be assessed. Trouble is, my Yoruba tongue always gets in the way of my
English tongue, especially with the ‘H’ factor. I do not much
appreciate these languages because I more or less grew into them. It’s
different with French. Maybe it’s just my way to consciously master the
process of acquiring a new language.
Learning French is
like forcing an old man who has eaten all his life with the right hand
to use the left. It is forcing that part of my brain that thinks in
English to process thoughts in another language, a strange one. The
process is a tough one, one that has taken discovering similarities and
differences between the familiar (Yoruba and English) and the strange
(French). The road has been filled with questions. This desire for
answers earned me the name ‘Madame Pourquoi’ in class. It literally
translates to ‘Madam Why?’ For every rule, I ask, “Why?” Why do I have
to force my tongue to roll upwards whenever I have to pronounce ‘R’?
Why does French genderise everything?
For crying out loud, it’s a
thing; why personify it? We are in a language class, not a poetry
class. Why should a crowd of women with a boy be addressed with the
masculine plural “ils”? Often, I get answers like: that’s how the
French do it and you are here to learn French the French way. I still
wonder, how can I learn French the French way when I am not French? I
will never be, anyway.
‘Madame Pourquoi’ is about these questions, not some theoretical
postulations. Every other week, I hope to take you along with me into
my confused world of speaking French the French way. Follow me on that
blurry road where thoughts in English merge with the French and a
Yoruba accent. Welcome to my world of blindfolds.
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