French, a la Vietnamese

I studied Japanese for about 7 years throughout high school and the beginning of college. In fact, Japanese took me to the University of Massachusetts and was my initial major. Needless to say when I began learning French over a year ago my Japanese was getting intertwined. Jamie said that I used to speak French with a Japanese accent…old habits die young I guess.

After mastering the Rosetta Stone (a gift from my father-in-law) I decided that it was time to take a formal class. I signed up for an adult education class through Salt Lake school district at my local public high school.

I walked into the classroom only to be greeted by a 5’ 6”, rail thin, Vietnamese woman in 2” heels, and a mini skirt that was a bit too ‘mini’ for my taste. Since I could barely understand her English I knew that this was going to be a long semester. For the entire fall of 2008 I struggled learning the French pronunciation, fumbled through the Vietnamese/English translations, and had difficulty understanding the sentence structure.

Her name was Nu Dang, and a life force was she. Her long, slender legs often gave distraction to my fellow male classmates, but did nothing for me. It was her cadence. It was her way of presenting herself that caught my attention. She was so stylish, yet so trashy at the same time. I couldn’t explain it. Since English was her third language – and French my third language – I had some difficulty in getting to know her. To my comfort, I found out that French was her first language. Her parents were immigrants from Vietnam to Paris a few decades ago and only spoke Vietnamese. Nu learned Vietnamese from her home. I was never quite sure what brought her to the United States, and not quite sure that I want to know either. Using her language skills, Nu was a translator (for both Vietnamese and French) for the state courts. She basically translated for all the Vietnamese and French hoodlums in Utah. I suspected, as you are now, that there are not that many Vietnamese and French hoodlums in Utah, so she picked up this French adult education class to earn a few extra pennies on the side.

…and so my formal language education had begun, a la Vietnam.