For reasons that shouldn’t have to be explained to anyone over the age of six, I occasionally make a visit to Paris. I usually am able to invent excuses for these trips. “What’s the use of having a passport if you don’t use it?” is one good one. Another is, “The French were very good to us during the Revolution, I feel I owe them something.” So from time to time I go.
This experience has taught me that the French look on any language but their own, with the disdain of a Rockefeller looking down his nose at a nouveau like George Soros. If you ever make the mistake of telling a French cab driver in halting French, “Je veux aller au Place St. Michel,” you unleash a torrent of French which surges past your ears like a tidal wave sinking a Pacific atoll, leaving no trace. “Lentement, s’il vous plait,” you exclaim, but the cabbie has no intention of slowing his cascade of French to please an ignoramus who can’t speak his beautiful tongue. It isn’t his fault that you can’t speak French. If he has taken the trouble to learn French, why can’t everyone else? Especially Americans, who have no culture of their own and must perforce adopt one from a superior culture. It can’t be that difficult; in France, even small children speak French. Given this, the cabbie is forced to assume that Americans are not, in general, as smart as the average French six year old, except of course that there is nothing average about French six year olds, they are, after all, French. With a sign, he decides he must communicate with you in his fluent English, “Eet is terrible country, America, n’est-ce pas?”
“Expliquez, s’il vous plait.”
“Le violence. Toujours machine guns. Ah-ah-ah-ah-ah.”
“Avez-vous ever visiter les States-United”
“Mais non, M’sieur.”
“Pourquoi pas?
“En Amerique nobody parle Francais.”
“That makes us even. In France nobody speaks English.”
“Ah, mais M’sieur, eet is not necessaire parle Enleesh en France. Ici everybod’ parle Francais.”
This is going nowhere, so you try a change of subject. “I saw in Le Monde that you had snow in Paris a few days ago.”
“Mais non. Certainement non. Eet jamais snow a Paris.”
“Le Monde said it snowed last week.”
“Pah,” the cabbie exclaims. “Le Monde est merde.”
“Most people seem to think Le Monde is a very good newspaper.”
The cabbie shakes his head firmly. “Eet jamais snow à Paris.”
This isn’t going anywhere, either. I search my head for a subject on which I might know more than the cabbie. “Que pensez-vous de President Obama?”
“C’est tres amusant, n’est-ce pa? He ees Africaine, oui? Il parle Eenglish? “He speaks Eeng—English very well.”
The cabbie shakes his head. “Formidable.” He shakes his head some more. “Mais he no parle Francais.”
“I don’t know. Perhaps not.”
“Quelle dommage. Eet necessaire parle Francais.” He sighs. “But he ees Africaine.”
“I think he considers himself American. Especially as he is the country’s president”
The cabbie shrugs. “Ca ne fait rien. He ees not French.”
