Warning: this post contains comments of a personal nature. They are my opinions and describe my life experience. If you are family, perhaps you should read them in order to understand me a bit more. If you are not my family, well, have a read anyway.
I speak as a bilingual adult. I learned French as a teenager and into my twenties. I wasn’t born in France, my parents aren’t French, I didn’t go to school in France (although I did go to University in France later). I learnt my second language the hard way. So was it worth it?
Slipping from one to another
I think what I love is the ability to jump seamlessly from one language and culture to another. This is always easier in the kind of bilingual work environment in which I found myself in the 1980s, but now my desk, computer(s) and my bookshelves are full of documents, audio and video in English and in French. All the clichés a true, it is a window on another world and a different way of seeing the environment in which we live. This may be pretentious but speaking another language teaches you humility and tolerance.
Career opportunity?
Not sure about that one. I spent 20 years living in France. For a long time, I thought that speaking two languages was an end in itself. Here’s a bit of careers advice, it’s not. Professional French (or any other language for that matter) speaker is not a job. For most of the first part of my time there, I was a travel agent in Paris where having English as a second language was a distinct advantage. When I got to Rennes it wasn’t. Lesson number one, in a working environment in France, English is a second language. You do actually need another skill in order to make it.
And what about your mother tongue?
Because of all my efforts to assimilate, I got to speak very good French. So good that people thought I was French. Well done me. That made me acutely aware of the language I was born with. This was probably the reason why I first became a translator (apart from being hungry) and then started writing. That was the other skill I needed.
It’s all about the culture
This is a vast area that can’t be covered in a few hundred-word blog post. My life would be poorer without my ability to understand Jacques Brel in the original. Ne Me Quitte Pas is simply the best love song ever written. The beauty of Le Plat Pays, Vezoule and Amsterdam describe places better than any travel book ever could. Brel has been badly served by his translators. Amsterdam and Next (Au Suivant) are exceptions, but If You Go Away (Ne Me Quitte Pas) simply doesn’t the desperation of the original and the mawkish Seasons in the Sun (Le Moribond) is just atrocious. Brel conveys pathos like no other. He’s happy and sad at the same time. He talks and sings about real things, real emotions and real-life situations. He’s as close as songwriting gets to poetry.
So what’s the conclusion?
Of course it was worth it. The thirteen-year old me who decided he wanted to speak fluent French would have been happy with the outcome. When I was in my 20s I wasn’t entirely sure where I belonged, I’d often say I had one foot either side of the English Channel. Even now, I’d like to be able to spend more time in France than I do. But I’ve got the identity thing sorted. I’m a European first and foremost. As Eddie Izzard says on his Twitter profile, a British European.
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