Excuse my French (asshole etc.).

Almost every day, I listen to French radio podcats at work. Amongst others, I’ve listened to interviews of Umberto Pasti, an italian man who was talking nature and gardens, or Marjane Satrapi, an iranian woman mostly famous for her comic book film adaptation. (If you haven’t yet, you should watch Persepolis now.) Both were speaking an excellent French, hard to tell from that of a native speaker save for their accents.

Both sounded bright and educated and yet… both also sounded pretty rude at times, happily using words such as conard, salope, nichon… (asshole, bitch, tit). It did surprise me at first but the more I think about it, the more sense it makes. After all, I used to be pretty damn rude in English too.

Even though I used to know the exact meaning of all the swear words I was using, they were some sort of abstractions. I used to know their signification but not necessarily feel it, they were disconnected. They wouldn’t disturb me enough to prevent myself from using them. Some would say: ‘You’ve seen the shapes, but you haven’t understood them.’ The signifier was striding ahead of its signified.

That reminds me of this day at college when I referred to T.S. Eliot as ‘this guy’. I made my tutor and fellow british students giggle. Oh well, of course I had read him and he’s that brilliant, sensitive, mind blowing poet who writes so beautifully he makes me emotional. (If you haven’t yet, you should read Four Quartets now.) But hey, I still described him as ‘this guy’ because… I don’t know. Because it was the usual expression I would have used to describe ‘a male person’ at that time so my brain picked it for my mouth to enunciate. Because the form didn’t really matter, I was just trying to get to a point. Because a foreign language demands so much time to properly get into you, slip into your mind, pounding in your headaches, running through your fingerprints, breathing every time you inhale and gasping when you hold your breath, growing up with you as you nurture it lovingly. Like a plant, like a child, like something you take care of.

Did I tell you? In September, my British child will turn eight years-old. I’ve taught him not to use naughty words.