Francais, je le kiffe

Most of my spare time is occupied learning French... I just used the word occupied. I’d never have said this three weeks ago, I’d have said ‘I’ve been busy’, bien sur, je suis occupé.  Already these false friends are creeping into my English. Hemmingway deliberately used literals in his writing to give a better impression of the music of a language. For example, the Spanish word raro, he translated as rare rather than strange. It’s closer to the original but doesn’t convey quite the same sense in English, but that's Hemmingway for you.

Anyway, I’ve decided to learn French the 93 way, named after the tough, gang-infested Paris department. I suppose it’s a bit like Ali G English, but way cooler.

Voltaire would Hate the sort of French I'm speaking

For example, I don’t aime things anymore, I kiffe them. The verb kiffer is a gift from France's north African immigrants. French slang also likes to invert words, so a sexy bird is known as a meuf (from femme) or a bangin’ party is a teuf (from fete). In the less salubrious street markets you can buy t-shirts with neon pink print reading “Je suis une meuf trop bonne, tu vas me kiffer”. I suppose it’s the equivalent of our “amateur porn star” or “all this and my dad’s loaded”... or this rather shocking example.

Hell in a hand cart... a t-shirt on sale today as modelled by a toddler

I unwittingly spoke some inverse street slang at Carre Four when I asked where are the chiche pois... naturally, I meant pois chiche but I looked way cool with the teenage shelf-stacker.

I’m doing four hours of lessons each morning and then another four hours practice in the afternoon. At least an hour of this is spent reading French literature, mostly novellas. I’ve had mixed results.

The first story I read was about a disillusioned teenager who bought a new pair of rollerskates to try to recapture his lost childhood. While out skating he sees a girl he fancies and suddenly feels like a prat so to escape he grabs the back of a Renault 4. The pace is jarringly interrupted with some back story about the Renault 4 driver being dissatisfied with life and his cheating wife. Anyway, the driver tears off through Paris with our helpless teenager clinging on for dear life. The boy falls off and dies. Then follows an existential discussion about life with lots of symbolism about hanging onto the speeding car. It probably wasn’t a good place to start. It also contained a word not even my French tutor had heard of. A penisard. From context he concluded it meant a stereotypical right-winger - a support of Jean-Marie Le Pen.

The next story was even more outre. It was about the son of a collaborator who’d been bullied at school for his mother’s crimes. Suddenly we land in some sort of dystopian future where the government restricts alcohol production. An illegal, underground distillery industry thrives. The hero of the story - le fil de Bosch - is a bootlegger who drives his car at breakneck speeds to avoid the police. He too dies in a road traffic accident. This time he ploughs into a plane tree (the author is very specific about genus) at 120kmh in a ball of burning methanol. There’s supposed to be some symbolism here too, but I admit it was lost on me.

I was ready to give up on French literature altogether. Apparently to become a published author in France, all you have to do is string together a baffling series of disillusioning events, culminating in a fatal RTA. Fortunately, the next story I read was a corker. Of course, it was filled to the brim with the now familiar alienation, boredom and despair. However, it took a radical departure by introducing characterisation.

It was about a lonely boy living in the Arab slums of an faceless French city with a single mum struggling to keep her small family together. In fact at the point we join the story she’s just failed. Her eldest son had run away from home, never to return. The book’s eponymous hero sets off to find him and bring him home... never to return. He believes in angels, he identifies with the giant-slaying David, he sniffs glue and nearly gets molested by a paedo... these are just some of his adventures. It’s not exactly Tin Tin.

I hope I'm never accused of becoming a guilt-ridden leftie swatting mosquitoes with a rolled-up Guardian in my holiday home in Tuscany... but this doesn't sit very comfortably

To finish, a few fun French words I learnt this week. The oldest son is called the aîné. That's me. The middle son is the cadet. So that's Sam. And the youngest son is the benjamin. Bad luck Max.