Language is Belonging

I’ve been walking to the beat of multiple languages this summer. French, English, German, Spanish, and others I don’t recognize. One Sunday, I landed at the Ferrari Festival on a trek at Mont Tremblant. The cars were impressive for the hubby, but I headed towards the voice of the Italian singer, where I stood longing to understand the words to his song. To know a language, you must immerse yourself. The rhyme of a poem, the music of a structured phrase, and the accent, tone, and intonation of music are little appreciated until you abandon one language to learn another.

Thirty-some years ago, as I wandered through the stark cement tunnels of Université Laval, I longed for the music of a structured phrase and the proper accent of the French language. After endless hours of grammar exercises, lab sessions, and oral discussions with bumbling comrades groping to utter something intelligent. I struggled and waited for the sounds of coherent words to flow through my mind. Language carries multiple levels, nuances, and complexities like our personalities. Translators value each word spoken or written because the mix with imagination adds a double vision to any text. If you dream in a new language, then the language belongs to you.

Later I moved to Arvida (aka Arvi-dul), previously an English enclave in Jonquière, Québec. There was only one English family left on our street. Nickie and her husband and their two boys were intent to engage my daughter as a full-time babysitter and see me become head of the English Alliance of Québec. I said no about leading any English event or taking Natalie on vacation with their family to Mexico. My English friends got the message; I was obsessed with French only.

I lived a guest life between cultures writing English stories, and speaking French in any group that would listen, A part-time job opened in the purse shop where my friend Hélène, another minister’s wife, worked. The manager was the first to evaluate my French passable if I sold the weekly quota expected from all employees. What could be so difficult about purses, bags, and polish? Before I entered pastoral life, I sold art – expensive art in downtown Vancouver. In this remote part of the country, I will sell purses and plug the polish in French only.

The news spread to the American Army base in Bagotville about the French speaking English woman selling purses – and just like that – my quota + soared. The women from the base were temporary exiles in need of an English kind of shopping trip. Ask me all the questions you want with your American sort of accent, I said. Since when had I been so cheerful? These ladies from south of the border were having fun. Resistance can be exhausting. Later, I knocked on Nickie’s door, and she invited me in for tea.

“I’m going home to Britain for the summer,” she said.

“I will miss you,” I said. “I’ll feed the fish and look after the aquarium while you are away.”.

Before the venture of selling purses, I tried a deeper dive into French through a linguistics course, thinking it would help with proficiency. It didn’t. I could barely understand the course material. I quit the program, knowing translation would never be a second career. And just when frustration about everything set in – the ladies from the American base showed up, and I laughed and felt very silly about being so needy. Language is belonging.