Je Ne Parle Pas Bien le Français

When I was in high school, I was in the International Baccalaureate program, which is a rigorous and intense program intended to bring the US education system to an equal level with Europe and some other places in the world. Part of that program is rooted in language skills, and at my school you could choose from French and Spanish.

I have been taking French since I was in middle school and I’ve always taken to the language pretty easily. Plus, I’m pretty good at accents, and pronunciation and accent always impress a French professor. The final set of exams consisted of a written assessment you do at home, an oral exam, and a proctored exam kind of like AP exams.

Not to toot my own horn, but I got the highest score in my school. The only thing I didn’t outscore my classmates in was the written assessment because all of them just copy and pasted from Google translate and I actually wrote mine. My language skills aren’t on par with a computer I guess.

We all took a fluency test as well at some point during my time studying French and I scored highly on that. After that, I took two semesters of French in college and was not only a top student, but also a teacher’s pet. Everyone looked to me for study sessions and homework help. My mom lived in France for a little bit and still speaks it and my grandmother worked as a translator for the Quebec embassy in Atlanta.

Here’s my point. I speak French. Like, I SPEAK FRENCH. That’s a huge reason why I wanted to go to Belgium in the first place.

However, when I went to work in Brussels, I just couldn’t break into the conversation. When people talked to me, they would speak English because they were beautiful polyglot angels, but sometimes they would speak French and I would feel a little inferior. Not because I was left out or anything like that, but because they all spoke at least three languages, and I have a child’s grasp of classroom French.

I would like to think that if I had been able to stay in Belgium for more than two months I would have gotten better. In fact, I know I was already getting better. But still, not where I thought I was with French.

And I think language is one of those things that separate Belgian workplaces from US workplaces. In the United States, if you know another language, it is more a fun fact than a necessary skill. In my group of friends at school the only times my French has come in handy is reading wine bottles at restaurants and that’s about it.

I felt unprepared and not very smart when I realized how easily my coworkers could switch languages and communicate with one another. I could only work on English accounts, and I only participated in conversations in English. I am inadequate.

But is it really my fault? Should I feel so inferior to my Belgian coworkers? Yes, they have more skills than me, but it’s not for a lack of trying. I care more about languages than most of my friends from the United States. I try to pick up as much of a language as I can before I go to a new place in order to navigate and show respect to the culture.

But I gotta say, I didn’t have the privilege of growing up in a multilingual area. I was given every privilege of my situation, of course, but I didn’t grow up in Belgium. I was never immersed in French and Dutch, so why am I so hard on myself for not speaking all of those languages?

If anything, I should be angry with my parents. How dare they not be multilingual and not dedicating much of my childhood to learning languages. Apparently Dora wasn’t enough, mom and dad.

But I’m not mad. Because I live in the United States, where it doesn’t matter. I have a great French accent and enough French to string some sentences together about pretty much anything in around a middle school level. And that’s enough for me.