Usually luck does not favour me, and so it was when we arrived here in Switzerland. The laws were changed around the time we came here to make it mandatory for the accompanying spouse to learn French. 

The official logic is that the better (in our case the lesser) half needs to integrate with the local community as the lesser (in our case the better) half would be too busy in productive economic activity or working.  

Since I, the unproductive one, am expected to run the household, visit the supermarkets, attend PTMs, interact with parents and teachers, deal with electricians, plumbers, gardeners, neighbours, I need to be socially integrated.

All better/lesser halves who arrived little earlier than us have got away without learning French. Unfortunately for me, my French speaking skills are now linked to my right to remain in the country. If not, my Permit can be withdrawn and I can be sent back.

Anyway, resigned to my fate and usual bad luck, I started to learn French, merci beaucoup. Progress has been very slow.  Before I get into details of why French is such a complex language let me first warn about some uncomfortable experiences, that can possibly happen after a few lessons. Online, in the current Covid-19 scenario.  

First, after putting in a bit of effort one is inclined to test one’s newly acquired linguistic skills, in a real life situation. And, here is where it can get tricky. 

In response to a query that you might have rehearsed several times in front of the mirror, the person you are speaking to could rattle off phrases and sentences in French, assuming that you are a fluent local resident. 

Such situations can result in a brain freeze as you are unlikely to process a single French word spoken at great speed. Et, a, en, au, aux, est, will all sound the same. The word blank will not do justice to your expression. 

Second, it is possible that the reply is in English. It will be easy to recognise that your French is quite imperfect, so the person you are speaking to could choose to make life easier for you by replying in English. This will defeat your objective of the first meaningful French conversation.

The English reply could also be due to a perceptible change, especially among the younger generation here that feels the need to learn the Queen’s language, be less insular, integrate with the rest of the world to become globally enabled citizens.

Hence, it may happen that just as you want to practise French, the other person sees it as an opportunity to test his/her English on you.

Third, it is quite possible that in your eagerness to showcase your newly acquired knowledge of French, you could embarrass yourself. It has happened to me a few times. The one instance that stands out is when I went to buy garbage bags at our local supermarket Denner.

Switzerland has a system of garbage disposal that requires residents of different localities (referred as communes) to buy garbage bags of a specific colour. I intelligently combined my efforts at vocabulary and grammar and asked the sales person, “Je suis ordure sacs.” What I meant to ask was, “I am looking for garbage bags.” 

What I actually said was, “I am a garbage bag.” For a brief moment the eyes of the young salesperson popped out as if I had asked her out for a coffee date. The other big faux pax was during the test drive for my new Swiss Driving License. 

The test , that lasted nearly 45 minutes, was quite uneventful.  I, however, did make one big mistake. Some Indian habits die hard. Keen to please the examiner, I kept a bottle of mineral water next to his seat inside the car. 

Also, keen to impress that I knew French, I asked him a few times to drink the water that he kept refusing. All of that was fine except that I had fed Google translate horribly wrong. What I was asking the examiner was to take a bath with the bottle of water. Thankfully, I passed the test. 

I will explain why French is such a complex language in my next blog post.