More on the congitation side - on language

The national languages of Congo are French, Lingala, Kinkongo, Kiswahili and Tshiluba. An increasing number of peoople speak some amount of English, including members of the administration, but it is not widespread or especially useful.

I remember back when I was in Peace Corps training. I was going to be teaching biology and chemistry in French. Other colleagues were math teachers and more still were "english as a second language" teachers. An significant amount of the training was dedicated to teaching us French. I had taken French classes in high school and college, but we had a wide variety of talents as volunteers.

One day, the trainers annouced at dinner "from this moment forward, total immersion. We want to hear no pockets of resistance speaking English". One of the math teachers immediately stood up and enthusiastically started greeting everyone around him in French. I assumed he was one of the advanced classes. Imagine my surprize when I - one of the worst pockets of resistance - walked past the class of rank novices and there he was. He went on to enjoy 2 years of teachning math and his French never got beyond the most rudimentary if enthusiastic level.

I'm reminded of this by 3 people I have had the recent pleasure of with in Congo. One has thrown herself into the work, going far and wide within the country, never hesitating to volunteer for a mission here or in other francophone countries. Imagine my surprize when I heard her speak. She could barely put a sentence together and her vocabulary was more spanish than french. Everyone we met and owkred with understood her, waited patiently for her to finish and provided appropriate answers to her questions. They even seemed to prefer to be interviewed by her than by me with my intermediate french.

The other 2 colleagues speak at least as well as me, but are much, much more worried about the proper grammer, gender, conjugation. They constantly beat themselves up and study to speak more perfectly. They are probably harder to understand than the first as they search for just the right word, repeat the verb until it is the correct conjugation and apologize repeatedly during the shortest conversation.

So, firm in the belief that language is about communication and not the mechanics of sentence construction, I hereby commit to never learning to speak better French.