Morocco’s unofficial second language is French. (Arabic is the first language, and the Berber family of languages are second, officially.)

Anita says that it is like Florida for France, with all the French retirees in campervans for long vacations, and in the resorts for slightly shorter trips. That certainly appeared to be true in Agadir, a city rebuilt for the purpose of foreign tourism.

My first diagnosis was from a supervisor at one of the resort’s restaurants; she simply assumed I was German.

The next evening, a bartender started counting the ice cubes in my pastis in German. He was beaming with pride that he’d switched to my native language on his own. I chuckled, and that must have given me away.

“You’re German, yes?” he asked in English. When I said that I was American, he erupted with joy. “All my time working here, you’re the first American!”

He was a little unclear on the details (“Chicago is close to Boston, yes?”) but his next words were invaluable. “You speak French like a German you know.”

I’m not sure what to make of this. It’s good to know but I’m racked with curiosity. Is it my pronunciation? The rhythm of my sentences? Can I blame Luxembourg? Or my American Midwest French teachers?

The last full day of our time in Agadir, I stopped to chat with the security guard on the boardwalk. He said, “Too cold for the beach?” and I replied that it was much warmer than I was accustomed to.

“You are German? Germans never mind the cold,” he laughed. I couldn’t help but correct him, especially when he didn’t recognize the name of Chicago. (That was a first for me.) Then I went back to my chaise next to Anita at the pool. I closed my eyes and couldn’t help contemplating how I pronounced the ten words I’d spoken before his guess.

On the day of our departure, Anita introduced me to a Parisian couple that she’d befriended the day before. I attempted to verify my Germanic accent and maybe get a few details.

I can’t say that I was surprised when I received a Gallic shrug in response. A pair of shrugs, actually, and just as William Gibson described them: “that complexly French way that seemed to require a slightly different skeletal structure.”

Three full days in Morocco, each day a similar diagnosis of my French pronunciation. Good to know, but I’m feeling a bit self-conscious now that I’m home.

I came to Luxembourg with a dim memory of taking advanced French in high-school, and a few hours of practice during trips to Paris and Nice. It wasn’t long before I was reading signs and speaking easily with shopkeepers. (Lest I forget: There were a few incidents where I asked Anita to ask a question in English due to my fear of stumbling through a conversation in French.)

Now, when I want to express myself in French, I can find most of the words I need without effort. I don’t compose a sentence in English in my mind and then translate it into French. Occasionally, I struggle to find the word I want, especially for abstract ideas. According to most metrics, I’m an independent speaker (with working proficiency, i.e. probably B1 per CEFR).

And I’m not counting unusual or technical terms, even ones that French children would know. For example, I recently went looking to buy a coat-stand. So, I looked up the word before I set out. As it turned out, the stores don’t use the term I learned: they were labeled portemanteau rather than cintre. (Fans of English etymology should find that pretty funny.)

I don’t know the precise words for animals, types of trucks, or other things that a young child would probably learn from picture-books.

Here’s the challenge at hand: I make grammatical errors frequently. When I want to speak French well, it feels like there are dozens of rules to keep straight. Those rules seem like obstacles to expressing myself.

Here’s where golf comes in. In terms of how it feels, it is very close to the way that I feel when I stand before a golf ball when playing with in a foursome much better than myself. I need to do so many things right — and remind myself to do them right — in order to hit the ball well.

• keep your wrists straight
• swing smoothly
• don’t reach with your hands
• don’t lift your head
• and so on

And when I swing, I fail to do one or two of those things. That’s the nature of the game.

Right now, speaking French feels like swinging a golf club. In each sentence (of some complexity), there are so many little rules (and exceptions) that may or may not apply. I know those rules and exceptions pretty well. When writing French (slowly), I can apply them with few errors.

But when I’m just trying to tell a story, those rules are like good advice for my golf swing: they don’t come all together and I make a mistake. A mistake that, strictly speaking, I “know better” than to make.

There are several techniques for getting over this hump in learning French. It won’t be easy.

What’s tempting is to adopt my attitude to golf. Years ago, I decided that I didn’t want to spend the time and money to become a golf enthusiast. I could see the pleasure in swinging the club well more frequently, but I could also see how much effort it would take to get to that point.

So I stopped at a different level: the point at which I could strike the ball — with irons but not woods — well enough to keep from being an annoying companion to better golfers.

In general, I hit the ball straight, so there’s rarely a need to search for my ball in the rough. In general, I hit the ball a distance which is unimpressive but not pitiful. (Well, nearly pitiful, given my frame.) As long as I don’t touch my woods, I don’t get too frustrated. (With the usual exception of one or two nightmarish holes per eighteen — I am human, after all.)

I feel like I am at the analogous point in my knowledge of French at this point. I can tell a story in French, and get the point across. I commit many grammatical errors that make me sound a bit stupid. Occasionally, I make errors that render a sentence unclear to the listener. My interlocutor needs to speak slowly for me. I ask for clarification from time to time, when a fluent person would not need to.

It’s tempting to declare victory and quit the field. I don’t think I will, because this is a great opportunity since, unlike golf, I have the time and resources to do it right. But it is tempting to move on to something new — something fascinating and probably easier.

Ireland scored that goal in the 35th minute, and played an outstanding game for all of regulation. After two matches of 90 minutes each, the score was 1-1. So they played into extra time.

In the 13th minute of extra time, the superstar Thierry Henry got a fast-moving ball under control and passed it to William Gallas. Gallas scored and the entire Irish team turned to the referee and called for a “hand ball” foul. No foul was called, the goal stood, and France beat Ireland to qualify for the World Cup.

Somehow, the fact that Henry admits the handball makes it worse.

I don’t know what the Irish fans did that night in France, but I do know that the main flight this morning from Charles de Gaulle airport to Dublin was delayed by more than three hours.

Out of fellow-feeling for our Irish friends, and a bit of sadness ourselves, we decided to watch the Irish morning television show and see what the newspapers had to say online.

Anita observed that the television personalities appeared to pass through four stages of grief:

1. The first stage, obviously, was anger. They was robbed! A blind referee in a system biased toward the big countries! We played our hearts out and we was robbed!
2. The second stage was depression. They were lucky to get this far, with the sad bunch of players that Trap had to choose from. We’ll never see the likes of this team in our lifetimes, and now it’s all over.
3. The third stage was self-blame. We shouldn’t have let it go to extra time in the first place. If we’d played, in Dublin, like we did in Paris, like we can play, then there’d be no extra time. In fact, we should have won our division outright, and it should have been Italy versus France in the playoff.*
4. The fourth stage was rationalization. With the economy as it is, this is actually a blessing. We can’t actually afford to go to South Africa, so it’s good we lost.**

The newspapers brought out their most lurid prose for their sports coverage today, as you can imagine. The Bugle Staff are busy collecting the choicest turns of phrase for your pain, or pleasure, or both.

A note at press time: The latest news is that Ireland has lodged an official complaint with FIFA, calling for a replay of the second match.

* – Yes, this is actually what one soccer commentator said, on RTE, this morning.
** – Yes, this is also a close paraphrase to what was said on RTE.

Tutor: When you drink very much, it gets cirrhose.

Me: Eh?

Tutor: When you drink very much, it will be hurt. It is here. [Points to her side.]

Me: Ah, I understand. This is the section of the geese that one has eaten when it is fat, too fat.

The staff apologize for the appalling pun in the title of this post. Will just can’t help himself sometimes. For the record, superior movie references include: Body Shots, Body Double and Body Count.

Other passable titles:

Thank you for your consideration.

For months, she practiced one and only one phrase in French:
Je suis desolée. Je ne parle pas français.
What does it mean, in English? “I’m sorry. I don’t speak French.”

Anita’s pronunciation is so good (and effortless) that people don’t believe her. Usually, they switch to English (although sometimes with an intrigued look). Sometimes, they continue to talk to her in French! Once in a while, they switch to German, leaving her with no reply whatsoever.

Despite Anita’s quandaries, we recommend that everyone who plans to visit a French-speaking country take a few moments and learn this phrase. We’d like to think that it conveys a certain respect for others, moreso than “Parlez-vous anglais?”

That’s a polite way to ask someone to speak English, but it’s also a demand of sorts. It just seems a bit curt — imagine the following little skit, between an American grocery cashier and a French customer who knows little English.

Customer Marcel: Hello. I want to pay.

Shopkeeper Ned: Hello! That’s a great brand of ice cream you’ve got there. Did you see that we have it in chocolate and rocky road as well? My daughter loves the chocolate kind.

Customer Marcel: Do you speak French?

Marcel was a bit abrupt, don’t you think? I think Ned would be more inclined to try his high-school French if Marcel said, “I’m sorry. I don’t speak English. Do you speak French?” (Anita and I are thinking about skits a lot right now, since our French lessons are underway.)

We often need people to switch to English to accommodate us (or at least we need them to tolerate our bad French supplemented by charades). So we say “Parlez-vous anglais?” all the time, and we find that it works much better after we say the magic phrase.

To help you learn it, here’s a recording of Anita’s impeccable rendition:
Je suis desolée. Je ne parle pas français.

And, should you need it, her quite passable request:
Parlez-vous anglais?

First, the phrase — “faire le pont” — can be translated literally as “to make the bridge.” Not very interesting so far, as it sounds like a lot of back-breaking labor and possibly a waste of taxpayers’ money. But let me give you some context, a conversation between two friends last week, in the French town of Thionville:

So here’s the scoop. Bastille Day fell on Tuesday this year, and it’s a public holiday. So, if you want a nice, long weekend, you can take Monday off and “bridge” the weekend with the holiday.

Thus, the French phrase, “I’ll make the bridge.” I’ll take Monday off and fly to Iberia on a four-day trip. What a lovely idea!

If you want to use it for yourself, say, “Je fais le pont.” (Click here to hear an MP3 file of my heavily-accented pronunciation.)

It’s getting late, so I’ll save the photoset for tomorrow. Until there, here’s a photo of a bridge (“un pont”) that I passed under today…