Now that I live in the great state of Texas in the US of A, the frequency of opportunities to speak French is about as low as you’re thinking.
However, I did find myself speaking French the other day in the only way in which this event is even more uncomfortable for me than it just naturally is: over the phone. (Second language speakers get it.)
After the 2 minute ordeal was over and everyone else had moved on, I, naturally, did not.
Alas, here we are.
This is not the first time I’ve thought about this, as it’s far from the first time the feeling has arisen. But when I felt the ick for the first time, it was deeply confusing.
Why, after falling madly in love with French as a 15-year-old high school sophomore in my navy blue American Eagle flare pants and illegally-untucked Aeropostale white collared shirt (with the lace cami peeking through the top, obviously) and then proceeding to actually learn the language, study abroad, successfully navigate the Parisian metro system and actually have health insurance in a foreign country, after finally getting to cross off “become bilingual” from my Lisa Frank-teenage-diary bucket list,
how was it possible, after all that, that I felt so insanely uncomfortable actually speaking the language I worked so hard to acquire?
There’s one specific setting where speaking French is uncomfortable for me for one specific reason. I call it the “Proud Parent” setting.
(Although it happened with my husband when we visited France, too.)
Upon hearing a story from my study abroad escapades, my mom, clearly tuned out to the details of my no-doubt incredibly fascinating and wild story, would interrupt and say, “And y’all were speaking French this whole time!? Wow. Say something in French!” Proud-mama googly-eyes and all.
Or, after meeting someone in the grocery store with a French-sounding last name (which he learned because this is just who my dad is: the man who comes home from Albertsons with more vegetables than he can eat in a week and the life story of the cashier) my father would unabashedly say “Do you speak French? My daughter speaks French!”
It’s the cutest. I hope it never stops. But at the same time, it makes me want to crawl out of my skin.
I used to compare the “Proud Parent” setting to feeling like a circus performer.
All eyes on me: go!
Except for, the same mother who loves to hear me speak French could also attest to me loving to perform as a child, which sort of contradicts that theory. I put on all kinds of living room performances, starred in all kinds of home videos, hoped for the lead role with the most lines in every school play, died to do read alouds in class, performed for multiple years in the elementary talent show.
So why not this stage? Why not this performance?
Perhaps because, as an adult woman, I have been tamed out of my innocent childlike ability to enjoy attention in that way. (Even just writing those words— “enjoying attention”— feels gross!)
I read something once about my Enneagram type (four) that helped explain this phenomenon a bit:
Fours want to be exceptional, but they don’t want to be seen in their exceptionality.
In other words: see me, but please don’t look at me.
(This actually seems way more universal than just a “four” thing.)
Recognize that I’m special, but don’t let me know that you’ve recognized it. Because shining a light on my specialness means I have to pretend not to see it. Because seeing it is too “I love myself.” And that’s gross.
Yes, I secretly like your undivided attention, but don’t acknowledge that you’re giving me your undivided attention. Because then it feels wrong. (Maybe we’re harkening back to my issues with wanting, or maybe this is more of our cultural messaging to women that says wanting is somehow selfish or otherwise unattractive. Probably both.)
One of the many reasons I find the Enneagram and all varieties of personality assessments satisfying regardless of whether or not they’re 100% accurate or reliable is the validation in discovering so many parts of me are, apparently, universal enough to be categorized and labeled. It is a hug to my embarrassed little lonely heart when I finally find words to describe a feeling I thought only I had.
So when I discovered that this feeling of ick when my exceptionality is called out is apparently felt by others, my heart felt hugged.
NOTE: If this feeling is not resonating or making sense, you know the feeling of standing there while someone is reading your list of accomplishments or accolades and you just have to stand there in silence like, “Yep. Thank you. Yep.” ? It’s that.
I’m not saying speaking a second language is some laud-worthy accomplishment, but being put on the spot to “say something in French” just feels like that situation.
But then there’s another reason speaking French just feels ulgh, and that is because in French, I am naked.
I am bare minimum. I am no frills, no deep feelings. Just grammatically correct, 5th grade reading level vocabulary conversation.
When you learn a foreign language, you learn how to ask and answer questions, express needs, order food, count to 100, say the alphabet. You learn how to conjugate a verb in 6 different tenses and where to put an adjective in a sentence (which is almost always after the thing it describes in many languages outside of English, by the way.)
You don’t learn humor or sarcasm or quick whit. You don’t learn small talk or generic conversation fillers that keep discourse flowing melodiously like jazz, pinging back and forth rhythmically like a game of tennis.
You don’t learn how to express a feeling that has no name, or how to describe a worry that sits in your throat and makes you acutely aware of your breathing. You don’t learn creativity. You learn how to follow patterns.
And that stuff— the whit, the humor, the emotionality, the creativity— that is who I am. In English.
I am not that person in French.
I lack the vocabulary, awareness of social norms, cultural references, idiomatic expressions. (I was much, much closer to being that person when I was living my life in French, but now, almost 10 years later ((🤯🤢)) that girl is long gone.)
When you suck all of those “extra” things out of a conversation that really aren’t “extra” at all but the very things that bind us, it very obviously goes from symphony to 3rd grade recorder practice.
No wonder it feels so icky and awkward. It’s an entirely different version of yourself! And it makes you confront head on the feeling of “feeling stupid” over, and over, and over, and over again. It’s so very humbling. Such a good reminder of all that you have and how quickly you can have nothing.
But that’s why I love her, in spite of—maybe because of—the discomfort she brings.
My “special”1 thing that has made me really think about being special and all the baggage I have around that. My mirror that has made obvious many parts of me that were always there but not always seen until I had to learn new words for them. My slice of humble pie that just keeps on givin’, even after a decade and counting of building this language in my head.
So the next time you ask me to speak French, or should we ever find ourselves in the presence of a French speaker where it’s appropriate to have a conversation (feel free to ask me for examples here), know that my Ego is wildly uncomfortable, but my soul is wildly alive and expanding ever larger, ever deeper.
To be clear, speaking another language is hardly special— 60% of the world population speaks more than 1 language according to the Journal of Neurolinguistics.