Parlez-Vous le Français ?

Do you speak French? I sure don't, never have, and probably never will. The old "french is a dead language" speech has gotten a little old, but let's face facts, out of all the countries in the world, only a handful of countries have French as their primary language, though due to a mental block, I am not able to currently look up the exact statistics. Suffice it to say that for worldwide use of first languages, a rough estimate puts English at 1,125,664,397 people who learn it as a first language. Compared to French, which finds trouble pulling 400 million people at a measly 381,193,149. I've been to some Wal-Marts out here in A-Merica that could house that many people easily in just the produce section. If you're going to throw your lot in with any language, make it Mandarin (aka Chinese). They come in at a whopping billion and a half.

Don't get me wrong, I have no beef with the French. In fact, I'm a quarter or eighth french, which means a lot to me, given that the size of the individual parts of my genetic makeup mostly consists of decimal places and zeros. I'm a mixed bag of tricks, to be sure. No the reason I don't speak French is because I'm currently taking Spanish as my language of choice in high school. In my mind Spanish is great because I grew up in California, and though I was closer to the Bay Area than down south, I grew up surrounded by a warmer South American culture, a culture which is all but non-existant out here in New England. I love Mexican food, and can tell you truthfully that it does get better the closer you get to the border. I'm also a big fan of sombreros, but then again, it's hard not to like those.

The reason I'm talking about all of this is because today I joined the French club at my school. This was an incredibly rash thing for me to do, and I did it because I have a few friends in the club, a few friends who...you guessed it! A few friends who speak French. At the beginning of the session, the leader, a French teacher, asked who was taking French this year. A healthy smattering of hands rose into the air. She then asked who had taken French in the past. Another large chunk rose thier hands. At this point I was getting nervous. My friends had assured me in the most sensitive way that I did not need to know French to join the club.

"Don't worry Andrew, you don't need to know French. We love all people at the French club."
"I hope so."
"And don't mind the brain washing equipment in the corner. We only use that on really dedicated members."
"............."

So you could see that, though well intended, the total sincerity of my friend's assurance wasn't completely conveyed to me. And there I sat, in a room I had never been in before surrounded by French propaganda, and I was truly nervous. Of course, my face had long since assumed the look of a non chalant peice of cabbage. The teacher spoke again asking who had never taken French before. I rose my hand along with a another girl in the room. The girl spoke up. "But I take Latin." The teacher said. "Whew, that's a relief."

That was just about the high point of my day. I had exact proof, finally after years of prowling, that there WAS a secret alliance between the French and Latin clubs. And the had excluded us Spanish speaking hombres. Those bastards. Didn't France and Italy learn the lesson of secret alliances after two world wars. At this point you may be thinking, "Andrew, you ignorant fool, Latin was the language of the ancient Romans not modern day Italians." Yes, I know they don't speak Latin over in Italy anymore. In fact, Latin isn't spoken anywhere any more, except in school. Outside of high school and college, the only people who speak Latin are Latin teachers who do so in a private chatroom online every other thursday at three in the morning.

So yes, I do have a slight thing against Latin, but I have many friends who have taken Latin and I've never had any problem with them. Of course, none of them have put me in the awkward position I currently found myself. The teacher turned towards me. "And what is your name?"
"Andrew."
"And do you take a language?"
"...yes."
"Which is what?"
"Spanish."

SILENCE

"What?"
*trying to sound in control* "I said Spanish. I take it."
"Oh, well that's nice. Welcome to the FRENCH club."
"Thanks."
"This is the FRENCH club."
"Yeah."
"What do you think of the FRENCH club."
"I'm not sure yet."

SILENCE

At this point I believe I might have blacked out, but when I finally realized I was conscious again, they were discussing in English mixed with French the details of the year end trip to France. This was initially what I had been interested in, but I later began to seriously consider the Islam club's annual pilgramage to Mecca which costs only $173 compared to the couple Ben Franklin's north of three grand it would cost for me to take a plane ride that would normally cost on the south side of six hundred for a round trip ticket.

At this point, you may be thinking, "Andrew, you culturally unaware bigot, don't you understand that Paris is the center of the international fashion, movie, music, and literary industries. I would personally give my left big toe just to visit there for one day!"

You must have more big toes than I do, or else make more money than I do. The thing is, I plan to go to college, and maybe own a bicycle when I grow up, and such a high expense trip this early on in my childhood is sort of out of the question. Not to mention, this is France. I would love to visit there, but not for that much. Especially if I don't speak French. I don't even speak Spanish well enough to pass for a tourist from Spain. They will immediately pin point me as an American, and then it would be all fun and games anymore. I will immediately be arrested by the French police and taken to some tourist friendly American part of Paris with a name like "le America" where I will be surrounded by McDonalds, Nike, American Flags, Nintendo, and Ford Focuses, and where I will be assured in extremely unaccented English, that I will feel just like I did in my "native land". This is not something I want, nor is it something I'm willing to pay over three thousand dollars for. Not to sound rude, but a visit to France isn't worth that much.