Here's Chris at our language school. He has not yet had his daily allotment of espresso, so the smile is a bit forced.
So far Chris wins. In our French class the other day, we were given pictures of an object, and then did a role-play in which we tried to ask a shopkeeper (our teacher) for the object by describing it, as though we didn't know what it was called in French. Chris's object was a toothbrush, which he knows is called a brosse à dents. He inventively described it as a manche avec chevaux, by which he meant "a handle with hairs", as close as he could get to "bristles". But manche avec chevaux means " a handle with horses". The teacher is admirably restrained at such moments and does not guffaw in our faces.
In the heat of the moment Julian is confusing Je voudrais (I would like) with Je suis (I am). So he has raised his hand and said to his teacher, "I am the toilet?" One day he wanted to ask for glue (la colle) but what came out sounded like Je suis l'école? or "I am the school?" OK, maybe Julian wins.
Some days I am bursting with confidence, feeling that fluency is just around the corner. Pulling a tidbit of vocabulary from nowhere is an absolutely wonderful feeling, as though the brain has as-yet unknown powers that are only beginning to be tapped. Other days I'm convinced it's hopeless and in each encounter I gape and clear my throat and am completely bloquée. But I can't give up, because the more I study French, the more my ability to speak English is impaired. I can't think of the English words for things, and I've started stumbling into phrases such as, "I will remember that to you," like I'm a French person learning English. I'm stuck between languages.
