On Language, Part 3.5
I live my life in Senegal in the present tense.
This is not a metaphor. I’m not explaining my personal philosophy or trying to give an inspirational speech about experiencing each and every day to its fullest.
No, when I say I live in the present tense, I mean the actual present tense. You know:
I study abroad in West Africa. I eat baguettes. I talk in bumbling, awkward French and employ the simplest verb conjugation.
Yes, that present tense.
When it comes to speaking English, well, I don’t mean to brag here, but over the last 20 years I have become damn good. Pretty much any verb structure you need, I’m all over it. Want the present progressive? I’m doing it now. How about the future perfect? You will have had it in no time.
But put me chin-to-chin with a French verb—a heavy, angled contraption bursting at its seams with superfluous vowels—and suddenly I’m choked. It’s like being a five year old all over again. If only five year olds had terrible accents and no innate sense of their own language.
Continue reading Out of Africa, my dispatch from Senegal in this month’s issue of Towerview magazine.
