They say that as we grow older, people like me (i.e. people who have acquired a second language after childhood) tend to revert to their mother tongue in later life. This has certainly been my experience. My French, always a matter of wonder if not of admiration, seems to be disappearing at a rate of knots as I get on in years. Is it being adequately replaced by a resurgent English? Or is it the precursor of a more general decline involving both languages? Will I end up like those Englishmen sent out to tend the British War Cemeteries in Flanders after World War I, married French girls, and over the next 20 years forgot their English without every really learning French?
Your French accent might well have been (was, amongst your own children at least!) the subject of mirth but you did acquire a proper command of the language.
ReplyDeleteUnlike our unfortunate great aunt who did indeed end up having lost memory of her native French and never replacing it with much English, to the extent that her own sisters could no longer understand a word she said, and her English in-laws never did.
I can't see this happening to you, Mr. Dunn, but perhaps you will start conversing in Franglais soon?
It can't have been much fun for poor Aline, Smoc, could it!
ReplyDeleteBut I believe Aline (who incidentally was great fun to know) was constantly put down by Reg. Cross threading to our grandmother's diaries - what could be the explanation for her being instructed by Reg to see to Joan's wardrobe rather than Aline? Who after all might have applied a little Parisian chic!
ReplyDeleteYou should write a book ...