But it is a beautiful, supple, and romantic language, although it may not quite deserve the reverence that inspires a course of French lessons to be described as a “cours de civilisation” by those who regard it as a national treasure and a shining example of how everyone should speak. One can imagine the dismay of these purists at the foreign horrors that are now creeping into everyday French.
The rot probably started when le weekend slipped across the Channel to Paris at about the same time that a nightclub owner in Pigalle christened his establishment Le Sexy. Inevitably, this led to the naughty institution of le weekend sexy, to the delight of Parisian hotel owners and the despair of their counterparts in Brighton and other less erotically blessed resorts.
The invasion of the language hasn’t stopped in the bedroom. It has also infiltrated the office. The executive now has un job. If the pressure of work becomes too much for him, he will find himself increasingly stressé, perhaps because of the demands of being un leader in the business jungle of le marketing. The poor, overworked wretch doesn’t even have time for the traditional three-hour lunch, and has to make do with le fast food. It is the worst kind of Franglais, and it goads the elders of the Académie Française into fits of outrage. I can’t say I blame them. These clumsy intrusions into such a graceful language are scandaleuses; or, to put it another way, les pits.
The gradual spread of Franglais is helped by the fact that there are many fewer words in the French vocabulary than in English. This has its own set of problems, because the same word can have more than one meaning. In Paris, for instance, “je suis ravi” will normally be taken to mean “I am delighted.” In the Café du Progres in Ménerbes, however, ravi has a second, uncomplimentary translation, and the same phrase can mean “I am the village idiot.”
In order to disguise my confusion and to avoid at least some of the many verbal booby traps, I have learned to grunt like a native, to make those short but expressive sounds—those sharp intakes of breath, those understanding clickings of the tongue, those mutters of beh oui—that are used like conversational stepping-stones in between one subject and the next.
Of all these, the most flexible and therefore most useful is the short and apparently explicit phrase, ah bon, used with or without a question mark. I used to think this meant what it said, but of course it doesn’t. A typical exchange, with the right degree of catastrophe and gloom, might go something like this:
“Young Jean-Pierre is in real trouble this time.”
“Oui?”
“Beh oui. He came out of the café, got in his car, ran over a gendarme—completely écrasé—drove into a wall, went through the windscreen, split his head open, and broke his leg in fourteen places.”
“Ah bon.”
Depending on inflection, ah bon can express shock, disbelief, indifference, irritation, or joy—a remarkable achievement for two short words.
Similarly, it is possible to conduct the greater part of a brief conversation with two other monosyllables—ca va, which literally mean “it goes.” Every day, in every town and village around Provence, acquaintances will meet on the street, perform the ritual handshake, and deliver the ritual dialogue:
“Ça va?”
“Oui. Ça va, ça va. Et vous?”
“Bohf, ça va.”
“Bieng. Ça va alors.”
“Oui, oui. Ça va.”
“Allez. Au ’voir.”
“Au ’voir.”
The words alone do not do justice to the occasion, which is decorated with shrugs and sighs and thoughtful pauses that can stretch to two or three minutes if the sun is shining and there is nothing pressing to do. And, naturally, the same unhurried, pleasant acknowledgment of neighborhood faces will be repeated several times in the course of the morning’s errands.
It is easy to be misled, after a few months of these uncomplicated encounters, into believing that you are beginning to distinguish yourself in colloquial French. You may even have spent long evenings with French people who profess to understand you. They become more than acquaintances; they become friends. And when they judge the moment is ripe, they present you with the gift of friendship in spoken form, which brings with it an entirely new set of opportunities to make a fool of yourself. Instead of using vous, they will start addressing you as tu or toi, a form of intimacy that has its own verb, tutoyer.
The day when a Frenchman switches from the formality of vous to the familiarity of tu is a day to be taken seriously. It is an unmistakable signal that he has decided—after weeks or months or sometimes years—that he likes you. It would be churlish and unfriendly of you not to return the compliment. And so, just when you are at last feeling comfortable with vous and all the plurals that go with it, you are thrust headlong into the singular world of tu. (Unless, of course, you follow the example of ex-President Giscard d’Estaing, who apparently addresses even his wife as vous.)