UF in Paris, Summer 2022

I spent four weeks across May and June of 2022 in Paris, France, to study French sociolinguistics and art in an immersive environment. Though I picked up COVID, I also picked up better conversational skills in French, a respect for the rich culture that seeps from every corner of the city, and a love of good champagne.

Highlights

During the summer of 2022, I spent four weeks in Paris to study art history, observe the French spoken by native speakers, and to improve my own conversational French. The immersive experience was intense: my host mom only spoke French, so I was thrown into the deep end nearly as soon as I arrived at Charles De Gaulle airport. During breakfasts and dinners with her, I discussed my family and each day's experiences in Paris in detail. Oftentimes, I'd have to find a roundabout way of describing a certain object or phenomenon, and she'd supply me with the word in French.

In these conversations, I was exposed to not only new vocabulary but also cultural differences between Americans and the French. For example, the French generally aren't talkative with people they don't know well. As the daughter of two Midwesterners, this was surprising for me and definitely took some getting used to. At one dinner with a friend, I asked the server how his day was going and he looked at me with a stereotypically Parisian dose of disgust. I eventually appreciated the lack of pressure to make small talk. However, it took me a few more snubbed interactions to get there.

Unfortunately, after a week in the city, I caught COVID-19 (what timing!). While being forced to quarantine for a week did put a bit of a damper on the trip, it also proved to be an opportunity to engage with a part of French life that the average tourist might not interact with: the pharmacy. My symptoms developed the morning we were scheduled to do a walking tour of Haussmannian architecture on the right bank. I initially attributed my scratchy throat and fatigue to the air pollution, but quickly started feeling worse and had to end the day early. After my fever hit 103 degrees, my host mom had me take a rapid test that immediately turned positive. I subsequently visited the neighborhood pharmacy, tried to explain my symptoms without knowing the French word for fever, and had another test taken (...still positive). The pharmacists were able to explain the quarantine requirements and suggest a fever reducer, which was greatly appreciated as I didn't recognize any of the medications!

After my week of quarantine, I dove back into my classes. In the context of my sociolinguistics-focused class, the advertisements in the metro caught my interest. The metro is a part of daily life for Parisians, and the advertisements there thus have the goal of appealing to the majority of the city-dwellers who use public transport. Many of the ads in the stations used foreign words with French translations just below; it was evident that foreign languages are considered cool. Advertisers know that foreign words attract the attention of passerby, but also take care to include a translation in order to respect the French language. The exposure to not only spoken French but casual and commercial French during the trip deepened my appreciation for the French vernacular.

During this short stay, I visited numerous museums and monuments, gained confidence in my French, and listened to the differences between the French spoken in an American classroom and the Parisian vernacular (one can, for example, « aimer une femme » or « kiffer une meuf »). I left France with a richer understanding of French culture specifically and communication between distinct cultures in general. I don't know if or when I will return to Paris, but my experiences there will define my college years and inform my language studies in the future.