Previous Challenge Entry (Level 4 – Masters)
Topic: Gender (07/06/23)
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TITLE: Frustrating French | Previous Challenge Entry
By Corinne Smelker
07/12/23 -
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“Why?” I asked.
Mrs. Marsden, my Standard 8 (10th grade) French teacher, frowned in my direction. It was our first day in her class, and none of us had learnt, yet, that she hated to be interrupted.
“Why what?”
“Why does the article change from la to les? Did the table suddenly change gender?”
There was a slight rumble of snickers from my classmates, but I knew I was only saying the quiet part out loud.
“That’s just how the language is constructed,” Mrs. Marsden said. “French is one of the Romance languages, like Spanish and Arabic. It allows them to be poetic and pretty.”
The next few minutes were spent with Mrs. Marsden explaining the origins of French, how it differed from the Germanic-based languages (vastly inferior according to her), and how heavily the English borrowed from the ‘language of the gods’ (her phrase, not mine.)
“It’s the reason why a man is blond, but a woman is blonde; why a man is a comedian, but a woman is a comedienne.”
I had been keeping half an ear on the diatribe but returned fully to the conversation. “Mrs. Marsden, let me ask this. What is ‘a woman’ in French?”
“La femme,” she replied.
“What if women is plural? What does it become then?”
“Les femmes.”
“See? Why do they suddenly become masculine because there is more than one?”
Mrs. Marsden sighed. “Miss Lennon, please tell me you’re not going to be like this the entire term. I don’t know all the ins and outs of how French developed as a language, but I need to teach you how to speak it. Will you at least allow me that?”
I nodded, suitably chastened. I held my tongue as Mrs. Marsden continued listing masculine and feminine words. I knew I’d likely never get used to or like that the masculine noun took precedence over the female, but I definitely was not going to change thousands of years and millions of speakers’ minds.
I might have ‘kicked against the goads’ a few more times with Mrs. Marsden over the following three years of school; and I may or may not have visited the principal’s office a few times for being ‘outspoken and a feminist in all the wrong ways’ but Mrs. Marsden got the last laugh.
Several years later, when I visited Paris, I managed to speak passable French, all thanks to her.
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Non-fiction
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