Now the Frenchman Wants to Learn English

&Quot;...gowns," promptly responded the ... "They are only ... so they can't learn ... themselves on account of ... most nearly watertight ... for touring abroad has already made clear the necessity of guarding against the French of our schooldays. You can't help picking up answers in English of a cockney flavor that you could not comprehend yourself in the original."

The Englishman smiled. "It is just for our kind, however, that the waiter has spent as much as two years in a West End hotel or a Soho restaurant learning the language. A French waiter will tell you it is useless to apply for a position without some knowledge of English; England is full of French garcons and valets de chambre looking for diplomas."

"Exactly so, and now they are looking forward to taking a post-graduate course in America," said the American man. "As a result your carefully constructed request for milk in French is replied to by 'Yes, sir, the butter? Certainly, sir. Thank you, sir.' All this is really a sinister design to cover you with confusion and force you to resort to your own language for his ultimate benefit."

"In your apartment building the elevator man no sooner encloses you in the 'lift' the size of a telephone booth than he turns upon you a well thought out commentary in English on the weather. The speed at which his machine creeps upward would make a snail suicide with chagrin, but this gives its conductor a distinct grammatical advantage over the other servitors."

"It travels up and down all grades of society," remarked the American woman. "English is looked upon by the French as a taxe de sejour to be extracted from the foreigner. Your washerwoman will one day surprise you with 'How do you do, madame?' and simultaneously her bill will begin to surprise you. The mechanic stops prodding into your automobile to discuss the bearing of the past participle on the work he is doing on the gear box."

"All your French women friends now want you 'au pair.' 'Au pair' is the mode of the moment, an exchange of languages, you to speak English with... do you like my accent? Mamma has just engaged an English governess for me.'"

"...retiring, shy and overchaperoned French girls got into the compartment of my train the other day, guarded by one of the two, whether directed at the train or myself I never knew."

"It just shows what the entente cordiale..."

"...surreptitiously jotting down English expressions dropped by clients, little modistes now spend their lunch hour arm in arm poring over an English phrase book. I expect soon to see a notice up in the Paris shops reading 'No French exchanged here.'"

"The favored trick is to quote you the price of an article in the money of Great Britain. Intended as a delicate compliment, but more especially to facilitate some mental training for their own financial benefit. It is hard to see why you English should feel flattered and loosen up when an article is quoted to you at 'two shillings, tuppence, thank you, sir'; but why this should be expected to appeal to the American is difficult to analyze," remarked the American man, "except that we both run an equal chance of being seasick in getting here."

"Oh, English is English to them, and is dispensed impartially to those who speak with the high 'a' or flat 'a' either; and it is undeniably connected in the French mind with people who spend money foolishly travelling about," said the American girl flippantly. "As for the romance of travel, what has become of it?"

"Gone forever for the enterprising woman tourist is the excitement of braving the terrors of gay France and the audacious Frenchman. You arrive at the railway station of a great city; you and your luggage are put into a taxi and you gather all your Berlitz training and lay it at the feet of the chauffeur in order to tell him to go to a certain address. In the struggle to make him understand, which may be the work of some moments, you notice that a chic young Frenchman has stopped beside you and earnestly hangs on to your words.

"Horrible thoughts tie your small vocabulary into a hard knot. Are you going to be followed? Will you be insulted? Is he there to rob you?

"There is no need for flight when any young, middle aged or elderly Frenchman moves toward her in a conversational attitude.

"She may dismiss all of her traditional suspicions of the past. She may now discount any and all of her attractions hitherto looked upon as snares from which the bold foreigner could not escape. Whisper it into her ear gently, for it may be a shock: this wicked foreigner, this bugbear of the lone woman traveller, this Frenchman who has been the bogy with which she has been frightened in past generations, this gay and unprincipled deceiver ready to pounce upon the stranger 'miss,' is simply trying to learn our language; he is obsessed by the desire to speak English at our expense.

"Take, for example, the young Frenchman who looks across so longingly at you. Is he a designing enemy? He is devouring you with his imploring glances simply because he wants to capture the English accent. He is hoping to seize on any stray word you let fall that may solve the mystery of an irregular verb.

"He basks in your presence, hoping that you may inadvertently drop a clue that shall lead him out of the labyrinth of the preposition. He is looking for a chance to connect with the conjunction. He is preoccupied with the movement of your rosy lips in an endeavor to ensnare the treacherous 'th' whose sound has so often baffled him. You are but the modern fair princess from whose mouth are dropping pearls of speech and diamonds of syntax. He regards you as impersonally as a dictionary."

"Yes, it is quite true," sighed the American girl pensively as she sipped her tea and the final strains of the 'Marseillaise' floated from the red uniformed orchestra in the kiosk. "Paris isn't at all what it used to be before the French began to speak English."