The progress of no progress

I've lived in France for five months now, and I am not yet Emile Zola. Yes, I am a bit of a perfectionist.

Perfectionism has retarded my language learning all my life, although only recently have I come to understand this. To learn a language requires making mistakes in front of real live speakers of the language: speakers who just might smirk, laugh, or call the police. The chances for humiliation are endless, and the fewer such chances you embrace, the less you'll learn.

My worst experience as a foreign language speaker occurred several years ago in Costa Rica. I was chatting, using my community-college Spanish, with a local man, and I was understanding maybe every third or fourth word he was saying. To cover my noncomprehension, I was keeping a foolish grin on my face. I'd devised this strategy some months before, and I was very proud of it... right up until the instant when it dawned on me that this kind man was telling me that his wife was terminally ill.

The me of many years ago would have thenceforth sworn off speaking languages other than English. But now it occurs to me: whatever faux pas I commit in French are unlikely to be worse than that one. Now I just plow ahead and try; I'm often misunderstood, and we try again. It's a constant battle to remember to say "Répétez, s'il vous plaît?" instead of just smiling and nodding; I would lose this battle more often than I do, but I try to hold in the forefront of my mind how I felt at the instant I heard my Costa Rican friend say cáncer.

I still think my French is terrible and am embarrassed by it every day. And yet, consider what I did this morning before 11 a.m., all in French and without a phrasebook:

• I advised my 4-year-old's teacher at his école maternelle that, yes, he'd peed before coming to school.
• I went to the boulangerie and bought two butter croissants and a loaf of bread (sliced please).
• I phoned a local doctor and made an appointment.
• I took a package to the post office and paid cash for the postage, even though the clerk told me the price orally (the register was on the fritz).
• I went to the town's municipal office (the mairie) and chatted with our local gendarme about a friend's minor immigration problem.

Not one of my interlocutors thought I was Zola, or Parisian, or French, or a non-bumpkin. None of these communications was hitch-free. But all worked, and nobody hit or arrested me, not even the police officer. These successes were based largely on one DVD plus some effort. Maybe there's hope that someday I'll parley-voo.