The Philosopher's Demise: Learning French

Richard Watson's book was an entertaining read -- it was hard to put down once I started reading it. It is not just about his struggle to learn French -- it is about how it feels to be on the outside looking in, and about how it feels to face unprecedented, inexplicable failure. The author is introspective, and he relates his experiences in an amusing and thoughtful way. Although he gives us a peek into a world most of us will never encounter (that of Parisian philosophers specializing in Descartes), we can easily empathize with his feelings of frustration, humiliation and cultural confusion. Since I am also struggling to learn to speak French for the first time, I was gratified to see I am not alone in my frustration.

What I particularly love about Richard Watson is that his francophobia has the breadth to include the French language itself: "The poem played on tape was about how to paint a bird. First you paint a cage, then you paint flowers and plants around it, a beautiful sky, and so on. You wait. Your painting is bad if a bird doesn't come and land in the cage. If one does, it is good and you can erase the cage and sign your name to the painting of the bird. Putting aside the cuteness of all this, what made me realize how much I disliked the sound of French was the continual, unctuous, caressing repetition of 'l'oiseau' ('the bird'). It is a word the French believe to be one of the most beautiful in their language. It is a word that cannot be pronounced without simpering, a word whose use should be restricted to children under five." Confere Anthony Burgess's hatred of the consonant deficiency of French: "The French seem determined to destroy their Roman inheritance by chopping up words until they become as short as possible, and as capable of being confused with other chopped-up words as only a genuinely morbid condition of language can allow. Even when a French word or name bears some visual resemblance to its classical original, the spoken form submits to the axe. I can never grow used to pronouncing 'Jesus Christ' as 'Jezu Cri', and I feel that if the French could cut the holy name down to something like 'Je Cr', they would."

When Richard Watson tries to learn to speak French decades after having learned to read it fluently, he has trouble. He tries very hard, hires a tutor, labors hours every day over exercises and audio tapes, but it just won't come. He spends months in France and still, he can't pass his exam. Watson is a philosopher, therefore he must analyze the situation to death. He dissects his failure, perhaps it is because French sounds un-masculine, maybe he doesn't like the French, perhaps it is something deeper. Well, seeing as how he has evidence that his French really has improved by the time he leaves France, maybe he just set his goals unrealistically high. The self-analysis gets tedious sometimes, but the story is interesting and understandable. Everyone has difficulty learning something, no matter how smart they are. And the observations of different cultures are eye-opening. Watson's story about an American who speaks fluent Japanese, traveling in Japan, being refused lodging in an inn because he didn't speak Japanese, even though the lengthy conversation with the proprietor took place entirely in Japanese, was amusing.