By Tejas Yadav
I hear a group of young French students attempting a faux American accent. I am not sure what the subject of their conversation is. Sitting in a trendy café in central Paris, I eavesdrop with lazy superficiality, preoccupied with my thoughts and the comfort of a blueberry muffin. I often come to write and work in this coffee-shop. Today, I hear the words “poster-boy” and “Hug a Tree” articulated in the most un-American intonations. Hug, for example, is enunciated with the incorrigible French knack for adding an aspirated “H” when entirely unnecessary (twice in “How many Hours?”) and removing it wherever crucial in English (“I am ‘appy when I am at ‘ome.”).
Hug then, spoken by the casual-chic-Parisian youth, only serves to remind me of the international brand that sells warm furry winter boots. Something Parisian fashion would frown upon. “Ugg a Tree”. The Yellow Vest protestors would hardly approve: Ugg-ing trees! That is too much capitalist fervour, even for Americanah.
For the last ten years of my life, I have been an immigrant. Born in India, I moved to England right after my undergraduate degree. I was twenty years old then. Two years later, I moved to New York City for grad school. Nearly five years later, I jumped across the pond again. I have now lived in France for more than two years now and I do speak French. No — not the broken, tourist-guide-book-level imagined of expats coming to this hexagonal country run over by striped t-shirts and a billion pharmacies. I speak French with the casual ease of someone who no longer needs to conjugate verbs in his head. I made (read: am always making) tremendous efforts to pick up linguistic nuances. Currently, I am learning Spanish as my fifth spoken language. I do not state this with hollow pride or vain pomp. If anything, it is a demonstration of personal effort, ability and sincere motivation to integrate and appreciate. Language, after all, is our bridge to a new culture. And I have always loved languages.
So it perturbed me when, earlier, the café server addressed me, assuming that I cannot speak French. I stood out in that café full of white-skinned, lanky French teenagers. What the server saw was an Indian, brown skin, black hair, in his late twenties. What he said, in his version of English, was:
“Excuse me, would you mind to move pleez by ze window? I ‘av three peoplezz waiting.” Polite, although his accent was no better than the absurd grammar.
This happens to me in Paris, over and over again. I know it happens to other immigrants, especially people of colour.
I simply replied in French, “Not a problem at all”. I admit, I enjoy dashing people’s preconceived ideas of an immigrant’s abilities, in any sphere. The server provided hurried excuses, faltering pretexts as to why he took me for a non-francophone without me having spoken a word.
I let it pass.
French self-proclaims (or is masterfully marketed globally) to be the “most difficult to learn” and, in the same sexy breath, the “most beautiful” language in the world. One can easily debate those claims but beauty and difficulty are subjective perceptions. I do think, however, that the cultivated legend of its difficult pronunciation, inscrutable grammar and unachievable accent has enveloped French in elevated charm and ever-lasting mythology. What we cannot learn must be, one thinks, beauty beyond reach. It makes me wonder if the French could be made to learn Mandarin Chinese or sing with the mellifluous tonality of the Italians. Beauty and difficulty, then, are not the prerogatives of any one language or culture.
A few minutes after settling in my window-side seat, I went up to order a muffin. This time, the same server offered food suggestions. He was trying to compensate, perhaps, for his insidious profiling of me. Only, he started speaking in English. Again.
“Oui ‘av two tips of moofin twoo-day...shokolaa end blubhhery.”
I winced. Without changing my level tone, I placed my order in faultless French.
“I’ll have a blueberry muffin, please”.
His face contorted as he realised his compounded error. Was it shame? Or the risk of exposure? Was it a harmless French ‘faux pas’ or signs of intrinsic shortsightedness? Only he could say.
Blundering, he apologised (now, finally, according me the honour of his native French): “There are so many English-speaking tourists in the neighbourhood, you know? I keep forgetting to switch.”
Sure, monsieur Moofin. Except, only two minutes ago, I had spoken to him in French far more fluent than his arduous English. I said nothing to him.
If spoken to, I can comfortably carry out an entire conversation in French (as I do with French friends and family). So why do people in cafés, shops, other public places assume I cannot speak French, without giving me a chance to open my immigrant, Indian mouth?
As much as I adore languages, I love words. I try to learn as many of them as I can, digging up their etymology, even in a foreign land. I grew up in a country with nearly thirty official languages. Cherishing words has taught me to understand their deeper value. Words bring us closer to each other. Settling back in my chair, I was reminded of tourists who come to France. Many of them, eagerly brushing up their “Bonjour, merci, au revoir” until the flight lands at Charles de Gaulle Airport — only to have their hopes of assimilation dashed by English-speaking French staff in a local Parisian boulangerie. I used to be one of those travellers. I was crushed by their indifference, their inability to reciprocate my efforts.
I was told there are several reasons for this familiar occurrence: many of the French living in Paris speak fluent English, others merely wish to practice their English with native speakers and yet others want to save you the trouble of running out of vocabulary after the initial pleasantries. They are doing you, earnest visitor, a benevolent favour. The best explication I read once on an online forum was a French teacher saying, “Don’t be disheartened. And in any case, French people are not your professors, they are under no obligation to help you progress or feel intelligent.” Bruising, apathetic logic.
For me though, this is no longer the convoluted scenario I encounter. I have exited that purgatory to a whole new circle of exclusion. Why, why now that I speak your language?
I am blithely provided a parsimonious explanation: “well, you don’t look French!”. I find this reasoning, although likely accurate, to be deeply problematic. It hinges on the assumption that “looking French” equates to a certain physiognomy. Does phenotype trump phonotype? And what does it even mean, in the public conscience, to “look French”?
Bluntly put, it means “looking white”. Whether we like it or not, this is the rampant, facile conclusion. What then of the innumerable Sri Lankan and Bangladeshi second-generation French citizens whose external features are not unlike mine. Interestingly, many of them only speak French, not even English. Why am I not mistaken as one of them?
The other hypothesis says that tourists frequent my neighbourhood and, consequently, everyone is greeted with horrendous English. Welcome to Paris! This too is categorically untrue. For one, I cannot see the French casting away their linguistic pride so easily, so willingly for hordes of unnamed tourists. And today, the very clients who came in to the coffee-shop before me were two Swedish girls (with the hallmarks of Scandinavian appearance). The server welcomed them in chaste French, which they had neither bothered to learn or speak. “We are from Sweden”, one of them said in a thick accent.
We all have accents, except that some of us use ours to speak multiple languages, albeit with great care. Accents are acquired heirlooms, mirrors of our past and our histories. They say where we come from. But they do not represent where we can go.
So why care about these quick judgements in transient interactions? While linguistic exclusion in this context might seem benign, it is the implicit bias and endemic racial profiling that I find frustrating. I wonder if I looked different (paler, wearing blue-white striped t-shirts, straw-coloured hair), would people mistake me for a French person?
The only time someone mistook me for being a native Frenchman was when a group of middle-aged American tourists shouted gleefully (after I helped them with street directions in English) to compliment me: “Good English, good English!”. Patronising and unnecessary. Is it okay to tell someone they speak “good English” unless you know, explicitly, that they have acquired it as a second language? Perhaps, the intention counts more when it is married together with a complimentary remark.
Words are powerful. Words are portals — doors to the bridges that can leads us to each other. And language is that bridge. We can meet each other halfway if we try.
As I leave the coffee-shop, I wish people would not block others on the other side of these bridges, without knowing how many door-keys someone else might have. Keys polished and hewn with care over weeks, months or years.
So next time, give someone a chance — don’t assume they are a specification based on features before getting to know them as an individual. Maybe I will surprise you, maybe I do have the right key, not the perfect key but one that fits.
You have to let me open the door. You have to let me lay down a bridge between us. Meet me half-way.
By Tejas Yadav
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