Alors

Lately I’ve been watching a lot of French television, particularly the last season of Call My Agent! (Dix Per Cent), a submarine thriller called The Wolf’s Call (Le Chant du Loup), plus episodes of Capitaine Marleau, a whodunit series featuring a kind of gender-flipped Columbo.

All this viewing and listening has encouraged a dangerous illusion, which is that I speak a foreign language.

While it’s true I took French in school (and Greek in college), any fluency has faded in the decades s...