Is David Sedaris Fluent in French Now?

Analysis
In Me Talk Pretty One Day, David Sedaris, an acclaimed writer and comic, discusses how learning a new language in a new country can be difficult and frightening. Sedaris explains his struggle to learn French when he moved to Paris, with the use of hyperbole and imagery. He uses the former throughout the text to describe his trouble learning the language.
At one point in the text, Sedaris says "Learning French is a lot like joining a gang in that it involves a long and intensive period of hazing. And it wasn't just my teacher, the entire population seemed to be in on it (22)." This is a very obvious hyperbole. He exaggerates how hard it is to learn French by likening it to something as violent as being hazed by a gang. He also says "Her reaction [to his mispronunciation and assignment of the wrong gender to some French words] led me to believe that these mistakes were capital crimes in the country." Evidently, Sedaris is just magnifying his feelings of that event to show how serious his teacher was.
Sedaris also uses imagery. One instance of this, is in the beginning on the text. "...I was issued a student ID, which allows me a discounted entry fee at movie theaters, puppet shows, Festyland, a far-flung amusement park that advertises  with billboards picturing a cartoon stegosaurus sitting in a canoe and eating what appears to be a ham sandwich (1-2)." This sentence gives the reader an image of the things Sedaris was allowed to do as a student. It also illustrates the billboard in detail. Another example is Sedaris' description of his classmates. He refers to a Polish woman named Anna as having  "front teeth the size of tombstones" (8) and  Hyeyoon Cho as "a shy Korean woman" (28). His use of imagery helps the reader envision his surroundings and companions in Paris.


Response/opinion to one of the issues in the essay
I would say that one of the issues brought up in the essay was understanding. In the text, Sedaris makes it clear that learning French was an arduous task, and that one of the reasons for it was because he just couldn't understand certain things e.g. words being male and female. I can relate to that because when I first started learning Spanish, I didn't understand words having a gender either. Like Sedaris, I found it stupid that my pencil was a guy while my pen was a girl.

Comments

  1. UnknownNovember 27, 2016 at 10:53 AM

    This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  2. UnknownNovember 27, 2016 at 10:57 AM

    Hey Jeraya, I like the title of your blog post:)
    (I messed up on my other response so I deleted it haha)
    I agree with the issue you brought up in your last paragraph. I feel as though Sedaris also struggled with finding his place due to his lack of understanding, and his teacher's remarks certainly didn't help. Although the comments were funny to the reader, I don't know how I would react if someone said spending everyday with me was "like having a cesarean section." This is easy to relate to because I also learned Spanish in school and found it to be "meismslsxp" in the beginning like Sedaris said.

    ReplyDelete
  3. UnknownNovember 28, 2016 at 5:06 PM

    Hi Jeraya, I do agree with you about the understanding issue your speaking of in the last paragraph. I certainly could relate to your issue and the author's issue since I was taking French. It was difficult to understand the concept on how everything had a gender when I first began to learn French.

    ReplyDelete
  4. UnknownNovember 28, 2016 at 5:07 PM

    This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Olivia Wolter LoganNovember 29, 2016 at 4:20 PM

    I really enjoyed reading this post. Your use of humor and observation made for an amusing ending to a well thought piece. I think that a lot of other people will be able to relate to this.

    ReplyDelete
  6. UnknownDecember 1, 2016 at 1:27 PM

    I totally agree with you about how learning a new language is difficult sometimes. I started learning Spanish in kindergarten and French in the 7th grade and it was so weird for me when I learned that inanimate objects had genders unlike in the English language. I really enjoyed how you included your personal experience with learning a new language to empathize with Sedaris.

    ReplyDelete
  7. UnknownDecember 1, 2016 at 1:49 PM

    i very much enjoyed reading your analysis of Sedaris's work. It was very well structured, and the pieces of the text that you referred to worked very well in your analysis. The explanations you gave were good.

    ReplyDelete

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