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When in French: Love in a Second Language
A language barrier is no match for love. Lauren Collins discovered this firsthand when, in her early thirties, she moved to London and fell for a Frenchman named Olivier—a surprising turn of events for someone who didn’t have a passport until she was in college. But what does it mean to love someone in a second language? Collins wonders, as her relationship with Olivier continues to grow entirely in English. Are there things she doesn’t understand about Olivier, having never spoken to him in his native tongue? Does “I love you” even mean the same thing as “Je t’aime”? When the couple, newly married, relocates to Francophone Geneva, Collins—fearful of one day becoming "a Borat of a mother" who doesn’t understand her own kids—decides to answer her questions for herself by learning French.
When in French is a laugh-out-loud funny and surprising memoir about the lengths we go to for love, as well as an exploration across culture and history into how we learn languages—and what they say about who we are. Collins grapples with the complexities of the French language, enduring excruciating role-playing games with her classmates at a Swiss language school and accidentally telling her mother-in-law that she’s given birth to a coffee machine. In learning French, Collins must wrestle with the very nature of French identity and society—which, it turns out, is a far cry from life back home in North Carolina. Plumbing the mysterious depths of humanity’s many forms of language, Collins describes with great style and wicked humor the frustrations, embarrassments, surprises, and, finally, joys of learning—and living in—French.
When in French is a laugh-out-loud funny and surprising memoir about the lengths we go to for love, as well as an exploration across culture and history into how we learn languages—and what they say about who we are. Collins grapples with the complexities of the French language, enduring excruciating role-playing games with her classmates at a Swiss language school and accidentally telling her mother-in-law that she’s given birth to a coffee machine. In learning French, Collins must wrestle with the very nature of French identity and society—which, it turns out, is a far cry from life back home in North Carolina. Plumbing the mysterious depths of humanity’s many forms of language, Collins describes with great style and wicked humor the frustrations, embarrassments, surprises, and, finally, joys of learning—and living in—French.
256 pages, Hardcover
First published September 13, 2016
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September 15, 2016
This book started out as a memoir about Lauren Collins attempting to learn French after marrying a Frenchman and moving to his home country. Then it became a history of the French language. Then it turned back into a memoir. This switching back and forth continued through the rest of the book. While both the memoir and the history were interesting, she needed to focus on one aspect or the other for the entirety of the book so we could get a full story, rather than just snippets of two different ideas.
July 26, 2016
Collins, a journalist from North Carolina, married a Frenchman named Olivier she met while working in London. They then moved to Geneva, Switzerland, a mutually unfamiliar place but one where French reigned. For the first time, she was forced to learn a new language to survive. I love how she blends her own story with the philosophy, history and science behind language use.
As she learned how to do things she never expected to have to in French – deal with her in-laws and give birth, for instance – she developed a new appreciation for the marvel that is bilingualism and pondered whether she was the same person in a different language. “At Olivier’s family table, deprived of the tools of discernment, I didn’t have the option to be cutting. I felt like a fool, but a sweet one—opened, in my wordlessness, to the possibility of an uncomplicated kind of love.”
My favorite section recounts a holiday to Corsica that brought her family and Olivier’s into close quarters and cast her in the unforeseen role of translator. There’s a perhaps surprising amount of linguistic detail here, but Collins incorporates it well. I was reminded most of Only in Naples, another thoughtful memoir about cross-cultural relationships that made me grateful I fell for a fellow English speaker. Releases September 13th.
As she learned how to do things she never expected to have to in French – deal with her in-laws and give birth, for instance – she developed a new appreciation for the marvel that is bilingualism and pondered whether she was the same person in a different language. “At Olivier’s family table, deprived of the tools of discernment, I didn’t have the option to be cutting. I felt like a fool, but a sweet one—opened, in my wordlessness, to the possibility of an uncomplicated kind of love.”
My favorite section recounts a holiday to Corsica that brought her family and Olivier’s into close quarters and cast her in the unforeseen role of translator. There’s a perhaps surprising amount of linguistic detail here, but Collins incorporates it well. I was reminded most of Only in Naples, another thoughtful memoir about cross-cultural relationships that made me grateful I fell for a fellow English speaker. Releases September 13th.
August 22, 2024
A reviewer here named Beth got this exactly right: "This book was really good, but was done a horrible disservice by its subtitle, the frothy “Love in a Second Language.” Not only will it attract the wrong type of reader, who will feel tricked, it will repel the readers who would actually like it (they’ll be too embarrassed to pick it up)."
* * * * *
Americans, a tribe to which I undeniably if uncomfortably belong, cannot help but make sex jokes about the French. In his book 'Panzer Soup,' John Gimlette (who's English and not American, but never mind) writes that the ideal life of a Burgundian "is to live a life of red wine and cream and die aged forty-two under someone else's wife." Which, actually, doesn't sound half bad. The author notes that the expression "have your cake and eat it too" is rendered by the French as "you want the butter, the money and the ass of the dairywoman."
Collins, a staff writer for The New Yorker, is truly a talented writer. Anybody who has found themselves as an adult living in a new place with a different language will feel right at home with this story. As a memoirist, she is peerless, effortlessly able to wrench laughter or pathos, longing or envy from the reader with a light touch. At first, she plays the American noticing the sorts of things Americans notice about the French: "...[a nurse] led a strike wearing scrubs and three-inch heels." I like the way she writes respectfully of the small city in North Carolina she grew up in; brains are not the exclusive gift of big cities. With time, while respecting the (ultimately minor) differences in culture between Them and Us, she writes well of the impact of joining a new family through marriage, emphasizing the underlying humanity we share, regardless of birthplace. Americans are so used to stories of people coming here to build a new life that its a bit discombobulating to hear a story of Us joining Them.
Much of the book is actually about language qua language, though. Some of it is great -- "A language is the only subject you can't learn by yourself." The only sections of the book that dragged arose from her investigation into whether the way you think is actually determined, or at least affected, by the language in which you're thinking. She appears to believe that this is true, that "a new self is created when you learn a new language." I'm skeptical, but more to the point, we are nowhere close to understanding the brain well enough to really answer this question, so the whole discussion seems a bit masturbatory to me.
But back to the fun parts:
But I enjoyed it. And a closing quote, for those of you who stumbled onto this book thinking it was something like Eat, Pray, Love:
* * * * *
Americans, a tribe to which I undeniably if uncomfortably belong, cannot help but make sex jokes about the French. In his book 'Panzer Soup,' John Gimlette (who's English and not American, but never mind) writes that the ideal life of a Burgundian "is to live a life of red wine and cream and die aged forty-two under someone else's wife." Which, actually, doesn't sound half bad. The author notes that the expression "have your cake and eat it too" is rendered by the French as "you want the butter, the money and the ass of the dairywoman."
Collins, a staff writer for The New Yorker, is truly a talented writer. Anybody who has found themselves as an adult living in a new place with a different language will feel right at home with this story. As a memoirist, she is peerless, effortlessly able to wrench laughter or pathos, longing or envy from the reader with a light touch. At first, she plays the American noticing the sorts of things Americans notice about the French: "...[a nurse] led a strike wearing scrubs and three-inch heels." I like the way she writes respectfully of the small city in North Carolina she grew up in; brains are not the exclusive gift of big cities. With time, while respecting the (ultimately minor) differences in culture between Them and Us, she writes well of the impact of joining a new family through marriage, emphasizing the underlying humanity we share, regardless of birthplace. Americans are so used to stories of people coming here to build a new life that its a bit discombobulating to hear a story of Us joining Them.
Much of the book is actually about language qua language, though. Some of it is great -- "A language is the only subject you can't learn by yourself." The only sections of the book that dragged arose from her investigation into whether the way you think is actually determined, or at least affected, by the language in which you're thinking. She appears to believe that this is true, that "a new self is created when you learn a new language." I'm skeptical, but more to the point, we are nowhere close to understanding the brain well enough to really answer this question, so the whole discussion seems a bit masturbatory to me.
But back to the fun parts:
Before I met Olivier, my most intensive exposure to the language had occurred during ten days I'd spent camping in the Sahara, on assignment with an American photographer and his crew. The Algerians -- half a dozen young men -- had been superb company, despite the language barrier. But they simply had not been able to figure out what I, an unaccompanied woman, was doing there in the middle of the desert. Neither of the two words I knew in French, oui and non, seemed exactly the right answer to their repeated enquiries as to whether I was virgin.For those of you keeping score, then, the memoir part, the learning-a-new-language-and-culture part were solid wins, the theorizing-about-language less so.
-----
After a month or so of heavy use of public transit, we decided to buy a car. We purchased insurance, which included coverage for theft, fire, natural disasters and dommage causes par les fouines -- damages caused by a type of local weasel...(later, at the dealership) It was pouring, each drop of rain a suicide jumper, hurling itself onto the ramp's tin roof. We circled the car, hoping to project a discerning vibe, as though any painted-over weasel damage would never get by us.
But I enjoyed it. And a closing quote, for those of you who stumbled onto this book thinking it was something like Eat, Pray, Love:
French is said to be the language of love, meaning seduction. I was finding in it an etiquette for loving, what happens next. I had once interpreted Olivier's reticence as pessimism, but I now saw the deep romanticism, the hopefulness, of not wanting to overstate or overpromise. Vous and tu concentrated intimacy by dividing it into distinct shades. I understood, finally, why it made Olivier happy when I wore makeup; why he didn't call me his best friend; why I had never heard him burp. Love was not fusion. Je t'aime was enough.
September 19, 2016
I found myself skimming through this book because while it was witty and intelligent, with lots of facts about the English language, as well as French, I found it lacked the warmth of the writer. I could only feel surface accounts of her life, not really the emotion. It just left me 'cold.'
I see that she writes for The New Yorker and this style of writing is appropriate for that kind of reportage. It isn't something I look for in a novel.
I see that she writes for The New Yorker and this style of writing is appropriate for that kind of reportage. It isn't something I look for in a novel.
March 30, 2017
When I saw the review in the NYT book review for this book, I thought that I might look into it at some point. Then turning to our local paper, I saw that the author would be at our local indy in the coming week, so I went and listened and bought a copy. She was charming and I really wanted her book to be, too.
It isn't. It isn't "Love in a Second Language," as the sub-title describes, and it isn't a charming account of how the language barrier in the star-crossed relationship was ultimately overcome to compose an even greater whole than the sum of the parts.
What it is is a protracted treatment of language, linguistics, culture, and translation generally, and the history of French in particular. It reads like a New Yorker article (surprise, surprise), and I found that my capacity for saying, "Oh, really?" had expired by about page 100 (of 230). By page 180, I was in skim mode. The author has a lively mind that hops about; as the reader I sometimes had difficulty following. Also, the prose often has $3.50 words injected into it that seem labored, as if in response to a challenge to 'use this word in a sentence.'
There are maybe a dozen pages worth of what I thought the book was about. Sorry they are not enough to retrieve the rest of the book from being a long magazine article that is not focused enough on any of its subjects to be a free-standing work.
It isn't. It isn't "Love in a Second Language," as the sub-title describes, and it isn't a charming account of how the language barrier in the star-crossed relationship was ultimately overcome to compose an even greater whole than the sum of the parts.
What it is is a protracted treatment of language, linguistics, culture, and translation generally, and the history of French in particular. It reads like a New Yorker article (surprise, surprise), and I found that my capacity for saying, "Oh, really?" had expired by about page 100 (of 230). By page 180, I was in skim mode. The author has a lively mind that hops about; as the reader I sometimes had difficulty following. Also, the prose often has $3.50 words injected into it that seem labored, as if in response to a challenge to 'use this word in a sentence.'
There are maybe a dozen pages worth of what I thought the book was about. Sorry they are not enough to retrieve the rest of the book from being a long magazine article that is not focused enough on any of its subjects to be a free-standing work.
September 29, 2016
This book was really good, but was done a horrible disservice by its subtitle, the frothy “Love in a Second Language.” Not only will it attract the wrong type of reader, who will feel tricked, it will repel the readers who would actually like it (they’ll be too embarrassed to pick it up). Instead of a light memoir of a romance with a dashing Frenchman (5% of the book), it’s a detailed look at the French language (the other 95%). Think French Lessons by Alice Kaplan rather than Bringing Up Bebe.
December 11, 2019
This book was more about linguistics and the history of language than about the author's personal experiences. Much of the history and linguistics was interesting, however it constituted far too much of the book and I found myself frequently wishing the author would get back to the story or at least tie it into her own experiences.
Although the book grappled with contrasting ideas on the importance of language and how it affects one's perception of the world, I felt that it never made any decisive or insightful conclusions.
I also would not recommend this book to anyone that does not know French at a basic level. Words, phrases, and even entire conversations were often written in French without any explicit translation.
Although the book grappled with contrasting ideas on the importance of language and how it affects one's perception of the world, I felt that it never made any decisive or insightful conclusions.
I also would not recommend this book to anyone that does not know French at a basic level. Words, phrases, and even entire conversations were often written in French without any explicit translation.
April 4, 2017
This book can't quite decide what it wants to be - a cute little memoir about falling in love, marrying and living with a Francophone, or an examination of sociolinguistics, or a discussion about what makes France and the French so..... French. As a result, it jumps around a lot. I like all those things, but it never settled on anything. (Part of that is also her writing style, where she would suddenly launch into some non sequitur story, and only a page or two later would reveal the drawn-out metaphor that related it to her subject at hand.) It was just all hard to pin down, somehow.
April 1, 2017
In When in French we are invited into the world of American New Yorker staff-writer Lauren Collins, as she moves to Geneva to live with her new French husband Olivier, struggling to learn French and the customs and traditions of Switzerland as well as her new in-laws.
When in French is an interesting read for any language nerd; in large parts, it reads like an essay, full of historical anecdotes and facts about the science, study, and art of language.
But the book is also a memoir, mapping the confusion and alienation that comes with the inability to understand and make oneself understood in the language of your place of residence. Fortunately for Ms. Collins, her husband speaks fluent English, and helps her translate as needed, but since he works long hours, she feels the need build up for herself to learn French, especially as this would also help her feel closer to her husband who tells her: “Talking to you in English is like touching you with gloves.”
Ms. Collins enrolls in a French class with students from all over the world, where her ideas on language and society are challenged. Slowly, as she immerses herself into the new language, she feels herself change into a different person, a change that she initially resists, wanting “to speak French and to sound like North Carolina.”
After the birth of her first child, she spends a summer in her home town Wilmington, the first time she spends more than a week in her home country in the five years that she has lived abroad, and is shocked by the familiarity with which American strangers speak to her, asking intimate questions about her baby and sprinkling their sentences with words like awesome and amazing. To her this is the “ultimate tutoyer.” Learning French has changed her after all, much to her own surprise.
The structure is delightfully innovative and quite suitable for a book on language, with the seven chapters’ headings borrowed from the French Grammar book’s section on verb tenses: from Le plus-que-parfait to L’Imparfait and all the way to Le Futur. Within these chapters we learn of such different things as why the Statue of Liberty is a woman, why Mandarin may be better suited for learning math than English, why Corsica is a part of France, and why there’s a small town called Paoli in Pennsylvania (the neighborhood right next to where I used to live).
Nuggets of knowledge like these have always been irresistible to me, and when Ms. Collins tells us about the Australian people—about a thousand people in the far North of Queensland—speaking Guugu Yimithirr, my curiosity knew no bounds, especially as I was just returning from a trip to Australia. Apparently, this people only use cardinal directions when describing spatial matters, to the point where they turn into human compasses, and could navigate themselves out of the densest fog, forest or storm. This is only one example from the book, making the case that the way we speak influence our thinking, a notion that has been debated among linguists during the ages, and a debate that is covered surprisingly in depth in When in French.
Indeed, having lived outside of my native Sweden for many years, and having struggled to learn such different languages as English, French, German, and Bahasa Indonesia; I could identify with Ms. Collins struggle to learn the French language in all its written, spoken and unspoken manifestations. When in French is witty and intelligently written. When she shares personal observations, the language can be glimmering, and especially readers interested in linguistics will find a gem in this book.
NB: A French version of this review is available on the literary blog Le mot juste en anglais: http://www.le-mot-juste-en-anglais.co...
When in French is an interesting read for any language nerd; in large parts, it reads like an essay, full of historical anecdotes and facts about the science, study, and art of language.
But the book is also a memoir, mapping the confusion and alienation that comes with the inability to understand and make oneself understood in the language of your place of residence. Fortunately for Ms. Collins, her husband speaks fluent English, and helps her translate as needed, but since he works long hours, she feels the need build up for herself to learn French, especially as this would also help her feel closer to her husband who tells her: “Talking to you in English is like touching you with gloves.”
Ms. Collins enrolls in a French class with students from all over the world, where her ideas on language and society are challenged. Slowly, as she immerses herself into the new language, she feels herself change into a different person, a change that she initially resists, wanting “to speak French and to sound like North Carolina.”
After the birth of her first child, she spends a summer in her home town Wilmington, the first time she spends more than a week in her home country in the five years that she has lived abroad, and is shocked by the familiarity with which American strangers speak to her, asking intimate questions about her baby and sprinkling their sentences with words like awesome and amazing. To her this is the “ultimate tutoyer.” Learning French has changed her after all, much to her own surprise.
The structure is delightfully innovative and quite suitable for a book on language, with the seven chapters’ headings borrowed from the French Grammar book’s section on verb tenses: from Le plus-que-parfait to L’Imparfait and all the way to Le Futur. Within these chapters we learn of such different things as why the Statue of Liberty is a woman, why Mandarin may be better suited for learning math than English, why Corsica is a part of France, and why there’s a small town called Paoli in Pennsylvania (the neighborhood right next to where I used to live).
Nuggets of knowledge like these have always been irresistible to me, and when Ms. Collins tells us about the Australian people—about a thousand people in the far North of Queensland—speaking Guugu Yimithirr, my curiosity knew no bounds, especially as I was just returning from a trip to Australia. Apparently, this people only use cardinal directions when describing spatial matters, to the point where they turn into human compasses, and could navigate themselves out of the densest fog, forest or storm. This is only one example from the book, making the case that the way we speak influence our thinking, a notion that has been debated among linguists during the ages, and a debate that is covered surprisingly in depth in When in French.
Indeed, having lived outside of my native Sweden for many years, and having struggled to learn such different languages as English, French, German, and Bahasa Indonesia; I could identify with Ms. Collins struggle to learn the French language in all its written, spoken and unspoken manifestations. When in French is witty and intelligently written. When she shares personal observations, the language can be glimmering, and especially readers interested in linguistics will find a gem in this book.
NB: A French version of this review is available on the literary blog Le mot juste en anglais: http://www.le-mot-juste-en-anglais.co...
November 29, 2016
I thought this would be insightful and interesting.
I think there is a lot of good material here, but initially Collins comes across as whiny. She's having an adventure, but is grumbling about her isolation with no apparent effort on her part to learn the language prior to her arrival in the French speaking country! Who wouldn't pick up Rosetta Stone the moment you fell in love with a Frenchman? She didn't.
It should be a memoir, not a biography (my personal distinction is: the author isn't famous PLUS there is a lot in here about linguistics). As an ESL teacher I'm interested in linguistics, but thos specific observations and details were sort of stuck in here amongst her experiences while trying to learn French so she could communicate with her husband.
Maybe this just needed a better editor. Anyway, I just wasn't interested in finishing it. But if you are a linguistics expert or language teacher, you might like this.
I think there is a lot of good material here, but initially Collins comes across as whiny. She's having an adventure, but is grumbling about her isolation with no apparent effort on her part to learn the language prior to her arrival in the French speaking country! Who wouldn't pick up Rosetta Stone the moment you fell in love with a Frenchman? She didn't.
It should be a memoir, not a biography (my personal distinction is: the author isn't famous PLUS there is a lot in here about linguistics). As an ESL teacher I'm interested in linguistics, but thos specific observations and details were sort of stuck in here amongst her experiences while trying to learn French so she could communicate with her husband.
Maybe this just needed a better editor. Anyway, I just wasn't interested in finishing it. But if you are a linguistics expert or language teacher, you might like this.
February 7, 2017
There are some people who can write so well that I don't even care what they write about; Lauren Collins is one of these people. I love France, but this book really isn't much about France. I'm somewhat interested in languages but I don't know much about the details of learning them. And often I am bored with memoirs. Nevertheless, I read this book, start to finish, in a wave of absolute fascination. I was fascinated with Collins' observations about trying to make one's way in a world where one can't communicate, especially when one prides oneself on one's proficiency in a first language. I was fascinated with Collins' relationship with her husband, though there were many, many miscommunications. I was fascinated with Collins' thoughts about the confusions and difficulties of people who are trying to learn a language. Collins is a brilliant writer.
October 19, 2016
2.5 This book had my name written all over it - I lived in Geneva! I learnt French! I love Collins's work in The New Yorker! But when in French is much more academic than I was expecting. I loved the Geneva observations (though thought she was a little harsh) and I shared all her frustrations learning French. There's a lot here for Francophones and Francophiles - so much of the humour is in/at the expense of French. There's a lot about linguistics generally, too. I didn't want another American falls for French guy and hillarity ensues book but I would have liked more adecdotes and fewer explanations of etymology and historical origins of language. To learn a language you must wrestle with it and Collins certainly does that... sometimes to the point of tedium. She clearly loves/hates French and those are my sentiments exactly.
January 10, 2017
An utter delight. Especially recommended to anybody with more than one language or culture in your life. Monolinguals will certainly find the book eye-opening as well. And the writing is impeccable.
December 31, 2016
A more original book than the jacket copy might suggest. While Collins does chronicle her marriage and expat life, describes her ambivalent relations with her husband's family, and describes relationship woes, there is little silliness here. (cf. Danielle Trussoni's recent (awful) memoir). I thought this was both an interesting memoir that mixed personal impressions, interpersonal dynamics, that at the same time introduced/reproduced predominant theories of second-language learning. Add to that a short course on the history of French and an description of contemporary Geneva. (Nope, she's not in France.) Marked passages:
And she's good on capturing that feeling of being in a room with people all conversing in a language you barely understand:
It is often assumed that the mother tongue is the language of the true self. And in many ways it remains the primal vehicle, the first and most effective responder in moments of celebration or crisis. [...] But if first languages are reservoirs of emotion, second languages can be rivers undammed. A Swiss friend who speaks Spanish with her parents and siblings and French with her husband and children told me that she feels a certain freedom in English, where she occupies the role of neither sister nor mother. People are more likely to say they'd push a man off a bridge - in order to save five other people, about to be hit be a train - when the dilemma is presented in their second language. Scientists call this the emancipatory detachment effect.On the double standard of multilingualiusm:
while learning a foreign language is considered prestigious, acquiring one naturally is stigmatized. We think of foreign languages as extremely hard to learn, but we're incensed when immigrants don't speak English perfectly.I wouldn't go so far to say that it's stigmatized, but agree that we need to reconsider why we're seemingly more impressed by someone who learns a language as an adult than someone who "picked it up" as a child. And while the word "incensed" in the second sentence is too strong, she has a point about the double standard applied to what we expect of speakers.
And she's good on capturing that feeling of being in a room with people all conversing in a language you barely understand:
as soon as we sat down for dinner, the table exploded into chatter, followed by rebuttal, counterargument, rejoinder. That was my impression, at least, judging from the unsmiling looks, the disputatious mais nons, the blowing of air out of cheeks. [...] I felt like an explorer picking her way through a jungle, turning toward stimuli as they chirped and hooted. The language came in an oxytonic rush. It sounded like heavy rain, sluicing down a roof.
April 16, 2020
Though Lauren Collins seems like a nice enough person, I am now thoroughly chafed by her overwrought writing style. Reading this was a bit like watching Keira Knightley act. Every sentence felt like a strained little performance.
There are some great tidbits here that could have made for a satisfying article. She's definitely clever. But the book is so tedious.
There are some great tidbits here that could have made for a satisfying article. She's definitely clever. But the book is so tedious.
September 2, 2017
This book is about an American woman's journey to become a French-speaker after she married a French man. He speaks fluent English, but her premise is that they can't truly understand each other unless they both speak each other's languages. Also, as the story begins, they are living in Geneva, Switzerland, and she feels isolated by the language barrier.
Collins is a very good writer. Her stories about her language education are well-written and entertaining. But I felt that the book was not well-organized. Similar to another book I read recently, A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson, she alternates her personal story with more general exposition about, for example, different theories about whether language is innate. But, where Bryson gave you just enough, Collins generally gives you either too much or too little exposition on the topic, and she inserts it more or less at random. Also, the story isn't told chronologically, which made it hard for me to understand where she was in her journey at any given time.
Like my reviews? Check out my blog at http://www.kathrynbashaar.com/
Collins is a very good writer. Her stories about her language education are well-written and entertaining. But I felt that the book was not well-organized. Similar to another book I read recently, A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson, she alternates her personal story with more general exposition about, for example, different theories about whether language is innate. But, where Bryson gave you just enough, Collins generally gives you either too much or too little exposition on the topic, and she inserts it more or less at random. Also, the story isn't told chronologically, which made it hard for me to understand where she was in her journey at any given time.
Like my reviews? Check out my blog at http://www.kathrynbashaar.com/
June 30, 2021
j’ai fini, dieu merci // this book was not what i had anticipated. i thought i had picked up a fun memoir about an american marrying a frenchman and their fun stories about their love abroad. in reality it swung back and forth between brief recollections of her life and lengthy sections detailing the history of france, french, and every linguistic fact related the two.
i was more here for the cover and something less academic post trick mirror, but i will say that some of the geeky linguistics facts where fun conversation topics.
i now know to check goodreads comments before picking a random book from the shelf at half price books.
i was more here for the cover and something less academic post trick mirror, but i will say that some of the geeky linguistics facts where fun conversation topics.
i now know to check goodreads comments before picking a random book from the shelf at half price books.
November 30, 2019
I didn't really like this book, but there were parts I enjoyed. I found myself zoning out on her rabbit trails about French history and the linguistic lessons, but I really enjoyed the memoir portions. I think she did great research and had a lot of interesting thoughts; but, overall the book lacked cohesion. I wish she translated a lot of her punch lines to English for us monolingual Americans. I am sure they were funny, I just haven't spent years learning French to enjoy them.
April 2, 2023
Language, as much as land, is a place. To be cut off from it is to be, in a sense, homeless. Without language, my world diminished.
French is a secret garden, but English, somehow, is everyone’s property.
A language carries within it a culture, or cultures: ways of thinking and being.
The subtitle of this book - part memoir/part linguistics discourse - is “Love in a Second Language.” I’m sure that the publishers came up with that one, but the book - which ranges across far broader territory than just one woman’s relationship - is American writer Lauren Collins’ analysis of learning intimacy in and with another language. Many of her points (also musings, also analysis) would apply to any two languages, but for me, much of the pleasure of this book comes from her specific analysis of the French language. I am not attempting to fall in love in French, but I would like to have a halfway meaningful conversation with my neighbours.
Although the author is much farther along the path of French fluency than I am, I am far enough along to derive a lot of pleasure from her observations. She’s enough of an insider, now, to be able to make a creditable translation. She also understands what makes the languages - and the language, as a mode and medium of culture - so different. There was something that I wanted to note or remember on nearly every page.
Collins is (or was) a staff writer for the New Yorker and her writing has a certain dense quality to it - I keep thinking of the word ‘filigreed’. It has lots of extra curlicues and flourishes. It is smart and clever, and I can imagine some readers finding it ostentatiously so. I didn’t, though; I thoroughly enjoyed it.
I overpaid and underasked - a tax on inarticulacy. I kept telling waiters that I was dead - je suis finie - when I meant to say that I had finished my salad.
Translation occurs both across and inside languages. You are performing a feat of interpretation anytime you attempt to communicate with someone who is not like you.
. . . English and French are opposing systems as much as they are languages - the former global, convenient, and casual; the latter particular, hierarchical, and painstaking.
Every couple struggles, to one extent or another, to communicate, but our differences, concealing each other like nesting dolls, inhibited our trust in each other in ways that we scarcely understood. Olivier was careful of what he said to the point of parsimony; I spent my words like an oligarch with a terminal disease. My memory was all moods and tones, while he had a transcriptionist’s recall for the details of our exchanges. Our household spats degenerated into linguistic warfare.
French is a secret garden, but English, somehow, is everyone’s property.
A language carries within it a culture, or cultures: ways of thinking and being.
The subtitle of this book - part memoir/part linguistics discourse - is “Love in a Second Language.” I’m sure that the publishers came up with that one, but the book - which ranges across far broader territory than just one woman’s relationship - is American writer Lauren Collins’ analysis of learning intimacy in and with another language. Many of her points (also musings, also analysis) would apply to any two languages, but for me, much of the pleasure of this book comes from her specific analysis of the French language. I am not attempting to fall in love in French, but I would like to have a halfway meaningful conversation with my neighbours.
Although the author is much farther along the path of French fluency than I am, I am far enough along to derive a lot of pleasure from her observations. She’s enough of an insider, now, to be able to make a creditable translation. She also understands what makes the languages - and the language, as a mode and medium of culture - so different. There was something that I wanted to note or remember on nearly every page.
Collins is (or was) a staff writer for the New Yorker and her writing has a certain dense quality to it - I keep thinking of the word ‘filigreed’. It has lots of extra curlicues and flourishes. It is smart and clever, and I can imagine some readers finding it ostentatiously so. I didn’t, though; I thoroughly enjoyed it.
I overpaid and underasked - a tax on inarticulacy. I kept telling waiters that I was dead - je suis finie - when I meant to say that I had finished my salad.
Translation occurs both across and inside languages. You are performing a feat of interpretation anytime you attempt to communicate with someone who is not like you.
. . . English and French are opposing systems as much as they are languages - the former global, convenient, and casual; the latter particular, hierarchical, and painstaking.
Every couple struggles, to one extent or another, to communicate, but our differences, concealing each other like nesting dolls, inhibited our trust in each other in ways that we scarcely understood. Olivier was careful of what he said to the point of parsimony; I spent my words like an oligarch with a terminal disease. My memory was all moods and tones, while he had a transcriptionist’s recall for the details of our exchanges. Our household spats degenerated into linguistic warfare.
May 8, 2024
I loved this memoir of North Carolina Lauren and her French Olivier. So many side excursions on language, which I found delightful, that some complained about it being a memoir.
Lauren's vocabulary is rich, including the word of my lifetime, concatenation. (My Latin tutor 25 years ago pointed out this important word and I rolled my eyes because I'd never even heard of it. But I come across it regularly — and always bless Dr. Fenik when I do.)
I'll be back with a fuller response soon.
Lauren's vocabulary is rich, including the word of my lifetime, concatenation. (My Latin tutor 25 years ago pointed out this important word and I rolled my eyes because I'd never even heard of it. But I come across it regularly — and always bless Dr. Fenik when I do.)
I'll be back with a fuller response soon.
October 23, 2017
I really enjoyed this book, which was significantly more linguistically-nerdy than I expected. With the word love in the title, I expected more a memoir and love story. However, I was pleasantly surprised at all the linguistics-lite. I learned things about French as a language, even though I've already got two degrees in it. It made me want to be back in the French classroom again (where this knowledge might be useful)! Not to mention back in France... I always enjoy a good trip back to France via book.
January 3, 2025
This book was a cool read for me as it’s about a woman who moves to Geneva to be with her French boyfriend and her ensuing love/hate relationship with learning French. How timely!
That said, I found her writing style stilted and her word choice needlessly large. It detracted from her overall storytelling and the reflections she was trying to provide about how language and culture meld together and the history of language.
Regardless, very interesting insights to me. But be aware - not a love story!
That said, I found her writing style stilted and her word choice needlessly large. It detracted from her overall storytelling and the reflections she was trying to provide about how language and culture meld together and the history of language.
Regardless, very interesting insights to me. But be aware - not a love story!
December 22, 2022
This was billed as a charming memoir about acquiring a second language - the language of your love. But the reality is that it read more like an academic treatise on language and language acquisition. The personal bits were lovely. Unfortunately for me, that was less than a third of the book. Disappointing.
July 28, 2019
An interesting look at language. It was a little piece-meal, though. She jumped around a lot, and I didn't get a lot of her references. It would have been nice if the author included footnotes for the meaning of the French she used and the very big words she used as well. It's hard to keep up with the flow when I had to stop to look things up regularly.
August 13, 2021
While the title / cover may seem cheesy, I really loved this book!!
It had a fun story and her research on language was fascinating.
It had a fun story and her research on language was fascinating.
January 15, 2020
4☆ clever, funny account of an American learning French that also serves as a primer in linguistics. Highly recommended for anyone who has learned, or is trying to learn, a second language.
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August 1, 2018I liked very much but didn't love it. Or perhaps I should say it was "tres bon, mais ne pas bon."
That's one of the quirks of French: "good" expresses greater value than "very good."
This is a mix of memoir and essays on language. The memoir: Lauren marries Olivier (for some reason none of her family can pronounce his name -- they never talked about Laurence Olivier in their home?) and they move to Switzerland where she decides she needs to dive into her French studies. Along the way, she realizes what it means to not have known Olivier in his first language and their culture clash (American vs. French) is seen as a language clash.
The essays are diversions on topics like the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (does our language influence our understanding of the world), untranslateable words, the history of the French language, and the number of words for snow that Inuit use. In other words, while focused on French, she goes global with the language study.
Collins is a good writer, but I was left with "like" not "love." The memoir sometimes felt like TMI and others as not enough, the essays were full of great anecdotes but didn't make any strong arguments. Comme ci, comme ca.
That's one of the quirks of French: "good" expresses greater value than "very good."
This is a mix of memoir and essays on language. The memoir: Lauren marries Olivier (for some reason none of her family can pronounce his name -- they never talked about Laurence Olivier in their home?) and they move to Switzerland where she decides she needs to dive into her French studies. Along the way, she realizes what it means to not have known Olivier in his first language and their culture clash (American vs. French) is seen as a language clash.
The essays are diversions on topics like the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (does our language influence our understanding of the world), untranslateable words, the history of the French language, and the number of words for snow that Inuit use. In other words, while focused on French, she goes global with the language study.
Collins is a good writer, but I was left with "like" not "love." The memoir sometimes felt like TMI and others as not enough, the essays were full of great anecdotes but didn't make any strong arguments. Comme ci, comme ca.
July 10, 2018
French is "Latin, but make it fashion." Ah, I loved reading about the intricacies of French and life in another language. Fascinating to think about how innately tied together are the French language and culture, and how this plays into figuring out how to live in that culture. (Collins lives one of my dream lives.)
Minus one star because of the book's marketing, which makes it seem like only memoir. It's really part history, part memoir, part linguistics theory. Had I known that this book contained so much language history and linguistics, my language nerd self would've read it much sooner!
Minus one star because of the book's marketing, which makes it seem like only memoir. It's really part history, part memoir, part linguistics theory. Had I known that this book contained so much language history and linguistics, my language nerd self would've read it much sooner!
January 19, 2021
Definitely cannot judge a book by its cover. The title was misleading. More about the history of the French language than a memoir. Too much of my time was already wasted in hopes it would get better. I finally quit reading halfway through. Hard to follow as the author bounces back and forth too much from a partial memoir to the history of the French language. Then throws in a lot of French phrases that if you don’t speak French are useless. It could have been a nice touch if she were to translate them.
August 1, 2016
I was pleasantly surprised by this book. Originally I thought it was going to be another one of those woman meets Frenchman , woman marries Frenchman and amusing anecdotes ensue. While it was that, there was so much more to the story and Collins uses her relationship with her husband, family & friends as a jumping off point to explore the way in which language effects our relationships and our lives. Very well written, amusing and informative. I enjoyed this very much
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