Mother tongue

Peur du jour- 1 Mars 2012: Teaching Frenchies the Chicago "A"ccent 

I'm assuming you guys can all hear in your mind the way that last word is supposed to sound.

So I have not yet talked about my experience volunteering at lycée Jules Guesde (the s is silent... weird, I know). Every Thursday morning (and soon to be Monday and Thursday mornings), I take the bus over to this lycée professional to help out in the English classes. The teacher I work with is really great and tends to like to give me a lot of responsibility.

Some of the funniest things that have happened are trying to get them to understand my "heavy accent." In France, they learn British English (because England is a lot closer than America), but I've never really thought that the way I spoke was difficult to understand. Of course I have an American accent (and even a little bit of a Chicago accent...), but I always assumed that if I at least spoke slowly and clearly, they would understand.

The first time I introduced myself and talked about where I was from and why I was in France and what I was studying, I had a room full of blank stares. And one girl stood up and said (in English) (very loudly) "I DON'T UNDERSTAND." I was reduced to drawing a crude map of the united states on the board and saying "home" while pointing at Chicago and "school" while pointing in the general direction of UNC. And then all the "oooh"s and "ahhh"s and "that's so far!"s started. Also, I mentioned that UNC has a great basketball team, but I'm pretty sure that some of them misunderstood and think that I play basketball for UNC.

Suffice it to say that I end up speaking a lot of French to them (which is fine by me!). I do help them with the tricky pronunciations, though. One of the business classes I was working with was doing a dialogue where one person worked in a clothing store and the other person was a client. The two boys I was helping were writing a dialogue about a "shirt," and they had to be hastily corrected (please, just think for a minute about what inappropriate word "shirt" can sound like). I'm starting to notice which sounds the French have trouble making, which is very interesting (and helps me understand why my name is so butchered. They call me Karlein. Not my name, but it's okay). I think to them, English must feel like spastic stuttering. I was correcting someone on how to pronounce the word "asked" and realized how many percussive sounds our language has!

My work with the lycéens has been rewarding thus far, but every now and again I realize that I may be influencing the way they pronounce English words for the rest of their lives! And then I get really self conscious about my Midwestern accent...