Let me explain before I tell you this story from my recent travels that I don’t speak French. The fact that I don’t speak French is actually wrapped deeply into the way I first became a Foreign Area Officer, but that is another story. Those who know me, know that I am a polyglot, a rare beast that speaks more than a few languages. Those that know me very well are probably already snickering over the “rare beast” comment. One of the languages I do NOT speak is French, or perhaps it is more correct to say, French is not one of the languages that I speak.

I do understand a little French when it is spoken to me, and I do know one or two or ten phrases, but this is not the same thing as speaking a language. For the purposes of telling this story, I shall translate all the French I do not speak into italics, so that you will know that it was French I was hearing or speaking at the time. Understand? Hope so. Okay…

I was flying from Algeria to Paris in the final day of my 15 day travels. I sat in the aisle seat and was working patiently on the most difficult Sudoku puzzle I have ever worked when I was latched on to by a young Algerian boy about seven or eight years old.

In the way that only a child or someone from certain parts of the world (and especially a child from certain parts of the world) has a different idea of personal space, I soon found myself looking at the top of a small head that was attached to a body completely bent over my tray table and intervening between the puzzle and my face. The head turned up to look at me, still blocking my puzzle.

“A very complex and difficult question in French that I didn’t understand?”

I looked down at him apologetically. “I’m sorry, I don’t speak French,” I said in French.

“You just did,” he said, amazed. He smiled as though he’d heard a funny joke.

“No, I understand a little French, but I don’t speak it,” I replied, quickly using up my Norman vocabulary.

“You just did it again,” he laughed. Okay, this was going nowhere fast. I pulled back from him and he pulled back from me, giving me a little bit of personal space to think, but he was still standing with both hands on my armrest.

“Another very complex question in French that I would have absolutely no chance of understanding,” he asked?

I stared at him blankly and began to speak. “I’m sorry,” I said in French. “You don’t speak French,” he finished for me in French, “yes, we’ve been through this.” I admit that he was growing on me.

He took a deep breath, bit his lip then asked, “The same very complex question in French that I would have absolutely no chance of understanding only louder and much more slowly,“ he asked?

I laughed and shook my head no.

“Do you speak Arabic?”

“No,” I replied. I began to count on my fingers for him, “English, Spanish, German.” Then because I had no clue how to name them in French, “Hindi, Urdu, SInhala,” I added in English. He stared at me in amazement.

“Lots of French words that clearly meant, you speak all those languages but you don’t speak French or Arabic?”

“Sorry, no.”

He gave me a nonverbal look that any linguist would have interpreted as “What planet are you from? Who ever heard of someone who doesn’t speak French or Arabic. That’s so weird.” Then he looked back at my puzzle and asked me the same question he had started with. I just stared at him.

“Airplane,” he said in French, pointing all around.

“What?” I said, in English?

“The Airplane is flying,” he said. “Then the airplane will go down.”

He pointed all around and looked at me quizzically. OMG, I thought, he’s trying to teach me French!

“The airplane won’t go down soon,” I said. He laughed and clapped his hands.

He then asked me the puzzle question again. He can’t possibly believe that I now know enough French to understand him. That’s fairly ridiculous. Then I stared at him, because I actually DID understand his question. He wanted to know if it was difficult! Fortunately it was in the Air France in-flight magazine and was one of five puzzles that were labeled in French. Easy, Medium, Difficult, Hard, Difficult and Diabolical.

“Diabolical,” I said, “This one is diabolical.”

At this point an Algerian man came up behind him in the aisle and asked him (in French) what he was doing.

“I am talking to this man,” he replied. “He doesn’t speak French. He speaks, what was that again?”

I listed them for him. He looked at the Algerian man as if to say, have you ever heard of such a thing in your life?

“Is this your first trip out of Algeria?”

“Yes”

“And you don’t speak English?”

“No”

“So how are you talking to this man who doesn’t speak French?”

His eyes widened in exasperation as he spread both hands to point out that I was sitting right there, could hear them and, in spite of the fact that I claimed not to speak French, was communicating with him all the same. Grownups! his look said.

“You don’t know any English words?”

“No”

“Do you know your continents?

What!?! I thought.

What,” the boy asked?

“Your continents! Name your continents!”

Apparently it is the job of every Alergian to teach something to someone else on the plane. The boy was teaching me French, the man was teaching the boy Geography (incidentally the boy could only name two continents, Africa and Asia, even though he was flying to Europe, but I liked him anyway), and I was deciding that it really was high time I learned French.

At this point, the bathroom “occupied” light finally turned green and the boy raced forward to claim his opportunity. The man lingered a moment to glance down at my puzzle, then said, “I’m sorry if that boy was bothering you.”

“It is good,” I said in French.

“I thought you didn’t speak French,” he exclaimed.

“I don’t,” I explained.

“I see,” he said, though he clearly didn’t.