‘Je
m’appelle Shanthini!’ You must admit- it sounds far more lyrical than ‘My name
is Shanthini!’
My
sister, Suki, for quite some time had been toying with the idea of enrolling in
French lessons as she was very fascinated with the language. I certainly did
not share her enthusiasm because my brain which was already on overdrive with
school subjects was telling me ‘why on earth would you want to take up ANOTHER
studying subject? And a foreign one at that! Didn’t we have enough on our plate
already?’ I was having a lot of trouble with the Malay language- didn’t that
count as a foreign language? That was more than my fair share of ‘foreignness’
my lill’ole brain could handle.
My
parents however were very happy to hear that she wanted to study French when she
approached them with the idea, but there was a snag. They were not keen that
she would have to take public transport all the way to St John’s secondary
school on her own (she was 12 and I was 10 ½ ) to attend these classes. The solution
was simple; the BOTH of us would be enrolled for French class.
Come
to think of it I ended up doing a lot of things in my life because of this
pattern of thought from my parents…piano classes, ballet, ‘barathanatyam’ Tamil
language classes, the list goes on. I am now a ‘Jill of all trades’!
Being
used to this train of thought from my parents, this time I was ready with my
own arguments as to why I wasn’t going to do it:
1)
How often would we actually get to use French in our daily life - zero!
2)
How many people did we know who spoke or even had the remotest idea of the
language- zero!
These
unfortunately did not hold water with my parents. I later found out that the French
language was the choice when it came
to picking one if you had to of most children….. I should correct that
statement ….. The French language was the
choice when it came to picking one if you had to of most parents for their children when they wanted them to learn a foreign
language here in Malaysia. My sister was one of the rare species since it was the
child wanting to learn.
In
retrospect, I wonder what was going through her head. Maybe it was the fact
that we would be a minority in our community with the knowledge of a foreign language?
Or maybe it was the fact that we could perhaps b**** about other people in
French and no one would be the wiser? Difin’t wfe havfaf thfhe f’f
lanfanguafage? For those of you who
didn’t understand that line…..it is ‘F’ language…..didn’t it serve the same
purpose? Or maybe one day we would need it to order exotic sounding dishes
found only in French cuisine? You must agree Oeufs en Cocotte with Sauce Au
Cari conjures up a much more appetising meal than what it really is - baked
eggs with cream! Or maybe it was the fact it was the language spoken by the
fashionable people of ‘Gay Pari’ in the magazines she read that had the ladies
always portrayed with a long cigarette holders with a ‘Jitane’ cigarette at the
end of it? How cool was that! Or maybe because the people she saw on TV who
were French were always very debonair, bourgeois aristocrats and somehow she
was under the illusion that she would also become one if she acquired the
language? Okay enough of the maybes. The fact still remained that I had to take it as well.
I
must admit I soon became fascinated and attracted to the melodious lilt and the
‘upper class’ feel it had when spoken (correctly of course). It was far more alluring
than learning German (which was the class in the other room that was being
taught at the same time)! German with its guttural sounds ‘Ach(k) tung! REALLY!!!
It sounded like words that would come out of a person who was constipated! (to all
my German friends reading this …please note that I now know different, so do not send me any hate mail!)
Anyway
every Saturday from 10am to 12 noon my sister and I were at Saint Johns Secondary
Boys School for lessons with Mr. Boudville along with 15 other students from
different schools.
It
was quite a trek getting there. We had to take the # 72 bus from Overseas Union
Garden to Klang Bus Stand, then a one kilometer walk to board the next bus from
Pudu Bus station to St Johns school. The whole journey took us about an hour
and a half so it really was a very big effort on our part to make it to these
extra curriculum classes every week. Now I understand why my parents wanted me
to be there with her because some of the people hanging around these bus stops
were rather shady looking characters of dubious distinction!
Mr.
Boudville was a very strict, no nonsense sort of man in his 50’s. Although he
was Eurasian, he was very at ease when he kept spewing out the foreign words,
which I presumed to be French. He was a tough task master and expected all his
students to revise the rest of the week, the chapters that he covered each
Saturday. My sister who always was on top of her studies revised her French lessons
everyday as instructed. I on the other hand had a more relaxed approach. I
mean, really! The French were supposed to have a laid back attitude on life so how
difficult can learning their language be? A little ‘je suis’ here and a little ‘je suis’ there while sitting in the
bus every Saturday morning was definitely in keeping with their kind of
lifestyle…right?
Strangely
enough I did not encounter any problems during classes. Of course having my
sister sit next to me whispering the answers whenever I was called on in class was
probably the reason why I was able to ‘fool’ Mr. Boudville.
Here
are two more techniques that will come in handy for those of you who don’t want
to be called on in class to answer the teacher’s questions.
First
technique; bury your face in your book and don’t look up….remember no eye
contact….that is when the teachers pick you to answer.
Second
technique - drop a pencil/eraser/sharpener….anything that is on the table so
once again there is no eye contact. While you are busy picking up the objects
some poor soul other than yourself will be called on.
We
learnt to count- une deux trios (one two three etc)
We
learnt to ask – ‘how many’ – ‘combien la’
We
learnt what we were - ‘eleve’ – students
We
learnt classroom – classe
We
learnt ‘in the classroom’- dan la sale de class’
