If you are looking for a good read that makes you laugh,
smile, and even ponder about your own life, this is just the book for you. The
entire book is about William’s experiences wanting to become more than just a
Francophile. His biggest change is having to learn the French language in
order to truly become French. As the
inside flap of the novel says “Alexander eats, breathes, and sleeps French
(even conjugating in his dreams). He travels to France, where mistranslations
send him bicycling off in all sorts of wrong directions, and he nearly drowns
in an immersion class in Provence… While playing hooky from grammar lessons and
memory techniques, Alexander reports on the riotous workings of the Académie
française, the four-hundred-year-old institution charged with keeping the
language pure; explores the science of human communication, learning why it’s
harder for fifty-year-olds to learn a second language that it is for five-year-olds;
and, frustrated with his progress, explores an IBM research lab, where he
trades barbs with a futuristic hand-held translator.”
If that description still has not gotten you excited about
this novel, I do not know what else will. Before delving deep into the
storyline, I did not have many expectations of what this book could offer,
because I had wrongly assumed that I was very knowledgeable about the subject,
but even I was wrong. This novel combines scientific evidence and facts, real
life experiences, history, culture, linguistics, and modern language into a
mere 260 pages. You not only learn about the history of the French language and
how it has evolved over time, but also about the culture that is associated with
it, which ultimately determines how language is used. He also did a significant
amount of research about how he would go about self-teaching French at “such an
old age” by consulting with many polyglots and language experts. You even learn
a thing or two about how linguistics, therefore getting a small taste of what
that field entails.
No matter how old you are, what prior knowledge of French or
other languages you have, or lack thereof, I recommend this book to any reader,
especially one who is interested in languages as much as I am. I will warn you
that it may be hard to understand some of the nuances, words, phrases, or jokes
that Alexander mentions throughout the book, as they are written in French, but
do not fear if you have never had contact with the French language. He italicizes
everything that is written in French, making it easy for you to look up what he
is saying if you so desire. If you have studied French before, or, better yet,
speak it well, you will find this book to be very enjoyable and entertaining. It
may even help you brush up on your French.
I hope that you enjoyed reading this post and that you give
this book a try. I promise that if you have accidentally or purposely come
across this post, or even this blog, you will not be disappointed. Happy language-learning!
