Language and Caning

We arrived in France when our older two sons were 7 and 5 and they went straight into the local French primary school.  They had not been to school before as we had been living on a boat and educating them ourselves.   

They very quickly learnt French - much faster than their mother! - and we noticed something which I am sure is common in many bilingual families:  although we spoke English at home they would incorporate the occasional French word in a sentence without any hesitation at all.  This never happened the other way round.  The French words inevitably were words which for them existed only in that one language.  So for example they would say "Have you seen my cartable?" (bookbag) because they simply didn't know that there was another word they could use.  "My copin did something or other" was another example.  As our third child grew up (he was born in France) it was even more pronounced as he learnt the two languages side by side.

Well this week I began to understand how they felt.  As you know I've been caning.  It was a really good week and great fun despite the hotel being something out of my worst nightmare.  (I wouldn't give the supper I was presented with to the pigs but that's another story.)  I was down near La Rochelle learning with Denis Guerin who is a Maitre Artisan and has been in the business for 20 years or so.  There were five of us on the course and during the week we learnt to cane a chair seat and also how to take apart and reglue a chair, clean up the wood and so on.  I speak good French and wasn't worried about any language problems but I did buy a book on the subject in English which I took with me and that enabled me to read up different techniques in my own language which did help.  However, despite my "good French" I have NEVER been able to hear the difference between "dessous" and "dessus".  Over and under.  When you are caning a chair you are basically weaving the canes so there was an awful lot of dessous and dessus.  By Tuesday afternoon I was going mad with frustration;  there comes a point when it really matters that you get it right.  Finally I drew a line on a piece of paper and wrote "over" and "under" in their respective places.  From then on it was fine.  Denis rattled off his explanations in French but would use these two English words for my benefit.  If it sounds pathetic please be kind;  the sort of thing he was saying was along the lines of "Ici, dessous, dessus, dessous, dessus, voila et la, dessus, dessous, dessus, dessous."  It never stopped!

By the time the week came to an end I had caned two chair seats and they looked ok.  I came home full of enthusiasm and described my new skill to my husband only to find myself using French words for all the new vocabulary involved.  It was truly bizarre.  I had to really stop and search for the word for "brin" (a long piece of cane) and various others and felt a right pillock. Just for once my youngest son was correcting my English instead of my French.   And that was when I remembered our children at a tender age and their ability to just talk using whatever words came along.  It takes you back!

Enough of the reminiscences.  I will be going back to Denis for part two of the course in November.  In the meantime, if anyone wants a chair re-caned get in touch!