English was not my Grandpa Brow’s first language; French was. Rather, I should say a version of French spoken by French Canadians was what Grandpa spoke at home growing up near Lake Leelanau, Michigan. His French was like hillbilly English, considered uncouth. He found that out when he was in the army on the Western Front during World War I. Real francophones in France and Belgium laughed at his accent and funny way of speaking. The experience embarrassed Grandpa so much that he refused to speak French anymore, and he refused to teach it to me.
Ferdinand and Ellen Gauthier Brow and some of their children in front of their house in Centerville, south of Lake Leelanau, MI. Grandpa Napoleon Brow is the 4th person from the right, in the back row.
That’s why when I was a child and asked him to teach me French, the only answer was “va coucher.” That means, “go to bed” which is not particularly useful for normal French conversation. But it did leave me wanting to learn French.
Fast forward almost 60 years to early August when I spent two weeks in Montréal going to language school to learn French. It turns out you can’t actually become fluent in French in just two weeks but it was a start. I can follow the news on French TV reasonably well. I can read articles in French Newspapers well enough. But I’m still at a loss for words speaking French.
Vacation Language School in Montreal
Which brings me to a point about bucket list dreams: often achieving your dreams has to be a work in progress. It would have been wonderful to come home from Montréal speaking French fluently. Likely I will never be mistaken for francophone no matter how hard I try. But that is still my impossible bucket list dream. I intend to keep chasing it with more French classes locally (e.g. at the Learning Exchange in Sacramento), by listening to French radio online (e.g., http://www.rfi.fr/ ), and maybe going to a French language meetup. This bucket list dream is a work in progress.
