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Ebook269 pages4 hours
When in French: Love in a Second Language
Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
3.5/5
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About this ebook
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 accidently 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 accidently 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.
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Author
Lauren Collins
Lauren Collins is a staff writer for The New Yorker. A native North Carolinian, she lives in Paris with her family.
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Reviews for When in French
Rating: 3.564814824074074 out of 5 stars
3.5/5
54 ratings5 reviews
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5More of a fantasy of wild privilege with asides about language and history than a memoir...
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Not bad, but not at all as advertised. At least half, if not more, of this short book is focused on linguistic theory about many languages (other than French), and the author's early family life (not in France). The author's travails learning to speak French like a native and her relationship to her French born husband seem like an afterthought, not the main story.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Interesting, in-depth look at language and expressing one's personality from a unilingual American woman who married a French man and gradually became bilingual
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A delightful book for anyone interested in language and linguistic theory; made even more readable by the personal story of the author falling in love with a Frenchman and moving to Geneva.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I really liked this book and found that a lot of the things Collins has to say about cross-cultural marriages resonated with me. (My husband and I speak the same native language, but I was raised Southern Baptist and he was raised Jewish, and I found that many of the frustrations Collins describes apply.)
It's very well-written, as one would expect of a New Yorker writer. I think it could have been a little tighter, but it's a pretty short book so I suppose she felt the need to stretch. Perfect Yom Kippur afternoon reading -- interesting but light enough that it didn't tax my tired, hungry brain.