When I first started at Boise State in the fall of 2004 I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. The catalog came in the mail and I found myself lost, trying to plan a semester that would build a good scholastic foundation and not interfere with the either of my two jobs. Finding work in a teaching field sounded rewarding perhaps, or maybe something in political science like diplomacy. So mindful of those goals a schedule was meticulously plotted, arranged and registered.
Language had always fascinated me. To be able to communicate in a larger part of our world couldn’t hurt and it seemed like a foreign language would dovetail nicely into either of my potential interests. Even better though language was a gen ed requirement so there was a zero downside. A huge fan of the French New Wave cinema movement and the film Amèlie I decided French 101.
“This is one of the most difficult European languages,” was the first thing my professor said and I cringed just a little bit. I knew French was tricky, but the most difficult? The class was supposed to fill out my schedule and take care of a gen ed credit. It wasn't supposed to entail hours going over tables that indicate the thousands of ways that verbs can be conjugated or figuring out all of the arcane rules by which the French carefully guarded the tradition of their language and by extension their national identity. By the end of the second class however I was hooked. And less than six weeks later I had formally declared French as a major.
I have never looked back. There has been a bounty of bad ideas and lots of regretful decisions during the course of my life rushing into or out of things, but the decision to try to achieve fluency in French will never be among them. After another short time this lead to the start of the process of becoming a teacher. And it was only after spending a cold dark miserable winter in Quebec that I started to question that decision. A plan catalyzed from that northern hibernation to try for film school. A decision that led me to the sunny coast of California and eventually to the French Riviera where I spent a winter and spring on the mediterranean. C’était joli là et je passais mes jours parlant avec des amis internationales en train de changer ma pointe de vue sur le monde entier. C’était grâce à ces moments où je decidais de faire confiance en moi même.
As time went on I continued to become more and more fluent until after my time in France I was certified Niveau B2. Basically, fluency had been reached. Over the next 7 years however I worked in the film industry in LA surrounded primarily by native Spanish speakers, and so the Français I had worked so hard to learn slowly disappeared. Realizing this caused a small crisis, after years proclaiming French fluency to realize how much of it had been lost, felt like a piece of my identity had been lost too.
Luckily in our modern era, radio stations broadcasting in French can cover the globe and phones in pockets anywhere can access them all. So an ear that might have lost its ability to comprehend a language it once knew, can re-acclimate itself, which is exactly what I have been doing. The last five weeks have been spent listening almost exclusively to France Info, France Culture, France Bleu, etc…
This has practical implications, as I hope to try my hand at international aid work, or as an teacher of English to foreign speakers, should I be given the opportunity for either. But it also has to do with the with the way language can reveal new perspectives, allowing a point of view of the world that is much more intimate. Being able to experience another culture not just passively as a spectator, but as a participant. If time permitted I would dedicate my life to becoming a polyglot, learning every language in the world. Truly discovering the nuance each culture has imbued into the way in which it communicates. Next month is the start of my basic Italian classes, to hopefully compliment my French studies. And then on from there.
There are multiple studies that show learning and speaking multiple languages helps with abstract problem solving and may even combat the effects of Alzheimers. Those are no small benefit to being bilingual but the truest benefit I have discovered is the way it has enriched my interaction with the world. Compared to one human being the planet is enormous and covered pole to pole with more than six billion human beings each with a unique story and each with a unique point of view. When the world seems to be dividing itself into this group or that group, it's easy to feel more and more compartmentalized and isolated, even as communication puts all of humanity into our pockets. But in the midst of a chaos that feels like it is always on the verge of overwhelming who we are, the ability to communicate with an even larger section of this mad planet’s inhabitants is a wonderful gift we can give ourselves.