Tassez-vous d'dela
Jun. 25th, 2005 01:37 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jawnbcBetween years 1 and 2 in grad skool I took advantage of a fabulous program, the Government of Canada’s Summer Language Bursary Programme.
It’s a simple idea: underwrite much of the expense of immersive language training in one of the National languages, English or French. So if you lived in a French speaking region you could study English; from a English speaking part, French. The bursary entitles a person to free tuition, room, and board for 5 weeks--one need to figure out transport costs and pocket money. Nearly every major university in Canada (and many smaller community colleges or CEGEP in Québec) run these programmes. And a suprising number of international students, from the US and Latin America, but even Asia and Europe, enroll as fee-paying students. The bursary is valued at about $2,200, and that’s what others are charged too. All in all, excellent value.
To learn French, while one can go to Vancouver or Edmonton or Toronto, it’s best to go to Québec--but not Montréal. The idea is to immerse one’s self in the other language, so going to a bilinqual city (Montréal and Ottawa, but also Winnipeg and Moncton) means you try your lousy French, everyone replies in English. I went to scenic Trois Pistoles, 7 hours east of Montréal by train. We were just over 2 hours from Québec City as well, on the South shore of the St. Lawrence.
Trois Pistoles, la plus plate ville au Québec: quatre bars, quinze dépanneurs, une cathédrale énormée. Trois Pistoles, the most boring town in Québec: 4 bars, 15 quickie-marts, 1 enormous cathedral. All for a town of 3,000 souls. I stayed with the Ouellettes/Bergers (in Québec women retain their maiden names). Onil (Ouellette) and Diane (Berger) had 3 daughters, aged 15, 13 and 8. I had a private bedroom, shared the toilette with 3 other students (all of whom were 18, all of whom were from London Ontario, all of whom were still in high school), and we took 3 meals a day with the family.
Now we were lucky: some families used the students as a cash grab, and fed their billets lousy cheap food. The Ouellettes gave us balanced, varied, but simple food. They were also exceedingly patient with us, helping us with language, laughing at our malapropisms (my classic “I miss my mother and I want to debase her” ou “Ma mere me manque puis je veux la baiser: except I mispronounced the verb at the end--d’oh!). Their daughters were each very different, but each also very kewl. It was fun.
And awful, in terms of the emotional toll. Because I tried to learn French--and I did. But jaysus was it a tough 5 weeks.
My housemates were typical of about 1/2 the students in town: high schoolers away from home for the first time. Who, for the most part, spoke as little French as possible, got drunk several nights a week, and engaged in that esoteric heterosexual hook-up ritual. Since I was: trying to learn French, sober, and not interested in any 18 puta of any gender, it got pretty boring pretty quickly. I channelled my energy into being a gym bunny: 1.5 hours a day, 6 days a week. An’ I was fine muthafuckas!
Oh but the isolation nearly killed me. First off, there’s all this heteronormativity. I’m out, I have no problem being out, but half the time the anglos didn’t understand when I came out en français. Lather, rinse, repeat--it’s the same damned word, you eejits: gai/gay! Now I wasn’t the only queer in town, but the only other queer old enough to remember when Madonna was new and different was the theatre teacher. Jean was a totally out there theatre fag, Gawd love him--and served as a beacon for me. When he appeared at the bar, he worked it like no one’s business. When he taught, he was all wrist. And he taught Tremblay, so everything had a queer element. He freaked a few 18 year-olds out, but he did amass a pack of fans. Including me.
Of course we started shagging: we were the only two men of....our....calibre? available. Aftter shag #2 I reminded him that it wasn’t sexy to correct someone’s grammar in bed. After that things were fine. Of course he could have been fired for fucking a student, even though I was older and not his student. To make it more fun, my teacher lived across the road, so I had to sneak out unless she saw us. And the one night I stayed over, I was caught doing the creep by Diane.
«John! Tu n’as pas dormi icitte? Avec qui alors?»
(silence)
«John! Dis-moi! Qui? Qui?»
«Diane, c’est pas pour moi à dire...»
*runs upstairs to shower before class*
Even with Jean, striking up some friendships with other students, it was still ultimately a tough shift from cosmopolitan, gay Vancouver, to TP. So on my first free weekend (between weeks 2 and 3), I bought a ticket to Québec City. First stop: McDonald’s (closest thing to Ma’s cooking). Next stop: Sauna Hippocampe, a gay bathhouse right in the old city. I learned a lot in the sauna--some dirty talk, some pillow talk, but mostly just how to find out a bit about someone and how to tell someone a bit about yourself. Contrary to how some folks frame things in monolingual francophone Québec, the people were--are--open, friendly, and very kind. Including one man who’s remained a friend ever since. He’s one of those scary separatists you hear so much about. Or was. We talked about politics--really talked--and found more commonality than difference. In fact we started a process of unlearning prejudices and biases about the other’s culture. Salût Marc!
Did I mention how un-fucking un-believeable gorgeous Québec City is? Oh my Gawd! Go now! Go now!
Immersions are funny: at some point (week 3 or 4) I fell between the 2 languages. My mind would get halfway through a thought and BAM it dropped. I’d be thinking in French (which happened surprisingly quickly) but the words were Franglais. I would have a thought in my mind but my mouth just wouldn’t work. Very frustrating. Add in trying to express one’s full emotional self with a very limited vocabulary and it’s really tough at times. Really tough.
So after 5 weeks I was ready to g home. When I got to Montréal (pour un dirty weekend), the men were surprised that I had been genuinely unable to speak or understand French a few weeks earlier. And when I got to Vancouver, I could finally understand (most of) what my francophone friends said when they spoke French.
It’s been tough trying to keep what I’ve got; it’s been even tougher in Australia because I understand Canadian French. It’s “real” French, but the intonations and idioms can be quite different--like the way NYers speak English. Very fast, very nasal, lots of contractions. I’m really looking forward to being able to watch Radio Canada, listen to French radio, and chat with other bilingual friends--that’s the kewlest thing, when a conversation rolls in and out of the two languages.
It’s a simple idea: underwrite much of the expense of immersive language training in one of the National languages, English or French. So if you lived in a French speaking region you could study English; from a English speaking part, French. The bursary entitles a person to free tuition, room, and board for 5 weeks--one need to figure out transport costs and pocket money. Nearly every major university in Canada (and many smaller community colleges or CEGEP in Québec) run these programmes. And a suprising number of international students, from the US and Latin America, but even Asia and Europe, enroll as fee-paying students. The bursary is valued at about $2,200, and that’s what others are charged too. All in all, excellent value.
To learn French, while one can go to Vancouver or Edmonton or Toronto, it’s best to go to Québec--but not Montréal. The idea is to immerse one’s self in the other language, so going to a bilinqual city (Montréal and Ottawa, but also Winnipeg and Moncton) means you try your lousy French, everyone replies in English. I went to scenic Trois Pistoles, 7 hours east of Montréal by train. We were just over 2 hours from Québec City as well, on the South shore of the St. Lawrence.
Trois Pistoles, la plus plate ville au Québec: quatre bars, quinze dépanneurs, une cathédrale énormée. Trois Pistoles, the most boring town in Québec: 4 bars, 15 quickie-marts, 1 enormous cathedral. All for a town of 3,000 souls. I stayed with the Ouellettes/Bergers (in Québec women retain their maiden names). Onil (Ouellette) and Diane (Berger) had 3 daughters, aged 15, 13 and 8. I had a private bedroom, shared the toilette with 3 other students (all of whom were 18, all of whom were from London Ontario, all of whom were still in high school), and we took 3 meals a day with the family.
Now we were lucky: some families used the students as a cash grab, and fed their billets lousy cheap food. The Ouellettes gave us balanced, varied, but simple food. They were also exceedingly patient with us, helping us with language, laughing at our malapropisms (my classic “I miss my mother and I want to debase her” ou “Ma mere me manque puis je veux la baiser: except I mispronounced the verb at the end--d’oh!). Their daughters were each very different, but each also very kewl. It was fun.
And awful, in terms of the emotional toll. Because I tried to learn French--and I did. But jaysus was it a tough 5 weeks.
My housemates were typical of about 1/2 the students in town: high schoolers away from home for the first time. Who, for the most part, spoke as little French as possible, got drunk several nights a week, and engaged in that esoteric heterosexual hook-up ritual. Since I was: trying to learn French, sober, and not interested in any 18 puta of any gender, it got pretty boring pretty quickly. I channelled my energy into being a gym bunny: 1.5 hours a day, 6 days a week. An’ I was fine muthafuckas!
Oh but the isolation nearly killed me. First off, there’s all this heteronormativity. I’m out, I have no problem being out, but half the time the anglos didn’t understand when I came out en français. Lather, rinse, repeat--it’s the same damned word, you eejits: gai/gay! Now I wasn’t the only queer in town, but the only other queer old enough to remember when Madonna was new and different was the theatre teacher. Jean was a totally out there theatre fag, Gawd love him--and served as a beacon for me. When he appeared at the bar, he worked it like no one’s business. When he taught, he was all wrist. And he taught Tremblay, so everything had a queer element. He freaked a few 18 year-olds out, but he did amass a pack of fans. Including me.
Of course we started shagging: we were the only two men of....our....calibre? available. Aftter shag #2 I reminded him that it wasn’t sexy to correct someone’s grammar in bed. After that things were fine. Of course he could have been fired for fucking a student, even though I was older and not his student. To make it more fun, my teacher lived across the road, so I had to sneak out unless she saw us. And the one night I stayed over, I was caught doing the creep by Diane.
«John! Tu n’as pas dormi icitte? Avec qui alors?»
(silence)
«John! Dis-moi! Qui? Qui?»
«Diane, c’est pas pour moi à dire...»
*runs upstairs to shower before class*
Even with Jean, striking up some friendships with other students, it was still ultimately a tough shift from cosmopolitan, gay Vancouver, to TP. So on my first free weekend (between weeks 2 and 3), I bought a ticket to Québec City. First stop: McDonald’s (closest thing to Ma’s cooking). Next stop: Sauna Hippocampe, a gay bathhouse right in the old city. I learned a lot in the sauna--some dirty talk, some pillow talk, but mostly just how to find out a bit about someone and how to tell someone a bit about yourself. Contrary to how some folks frame things in monolingual francophone Québec, the people were--are--open, friendly, and very kind. Including one man who’s remained a friend ever since. He’s one of those scary separatists you hear so much about. Or was. We talked about politics--really talked--and found more commonality than difference. In fact we started a process of unlearning prejudices and biases about the other’s culture. Salût Marc!
Did I mention how un-fucking un-believeable gorgeous Québec City is? Oh my Gawd! Go now! Go now!
Immersions are funny: at some point (week 3 or 4) I fell between the 2 languages. My mind would get halfway through a thought and BAM it dropped. I’d be thinking in French (which happened surprisingly quickly) but the words were Franglais. I would have a thought in my mind but my mouth just wouldn’t work. Very frustrating. Add in trying to express one’s full emotional self with a very limited vocabulary and it’s really tough at times. Really tough.
So after 5 weeks I was ready to g home. When I got to Montréal (pour un dirty weekend), the men were surprised that I had been genuinely unable to speak or understand French a few weeks earlier. And when I got to Vancouver, I could finally understand (most of) what my francophone friends said when they spoke French.
It’s been tough trying to keep what I’ve got; it’s been even tougher in Australia because I understand Canadian French. It’s “real” French, but the intonations and idioms can be quite different--like the way NYers speak English. Very fast, very nasal, lots of contractions. I’m really looking forward to being able to watch Radio Canada, listen to French radio, and chat with other bilingual friends--that’s the kewlest thing, when a conversation rolls in and out of the two languages.
no subject
Date: 2005-06-24 05:10 pm (UTC)I used to be amazed when I would have a conversation in French, and then thinking back later would realize that I had no conscious idea how to say some of the things that I knew I had said -- and been understood. It is very rewarding.