Linguistic ephiphanies

It was a couple of weeks ago that a little subjunctive first slipped out – it was ‘aille’, I think – and now Wilf is using these weird little constructions both accurately and with abandon.  I know there’s nothing surprising about hearing a subjunctive on the streets of Paris, but to hear one coming from a boy called Wilf...  That’s quite something.

This was a boy who’d been imbibing French since he was born but who had no intention whatsoever of speaking it.  I knew there must be a little French boy in there somewhere, courtesy of my side of the family, but it was clear the little Lewes boy wasn’t in any hurry to let him out.   And I had visions of slogging it out – me speaking French to him, him speaking English to me – forever, or at least until it was time for him to leave home, and it didn’t look like fun.  So I thought I’d up sticks and fix him right away.

So here I am, fixing him and doing a bit of a spit and polish on myself at the same time.  The linguistic epiphanies – only registered as such by me, of course – are coming thick and fast now, and the subjunctives are just part of an altogether different kind of a Wilf.   Along with the subjunctive, there’s the rolling ‘r’, strange words I didn’t know he knew, and idioms which have no place in a four-year-old boy.  But, to my ears, even when he sounds like a disillusioned French adolescent, it’s progress.  And he seems to like this new self, too.

As one would expect of a spit and polish, the change in me isn’t quite so immediately impressive.  And there’s something about being forty-something which means that progression doesn’t come in such big strides.  But now I know the French for words like ‘app’ and ‘download’, and I’m just that little bit shinier than I was before.