A fun way to learn a funny language

When my sister was studying French at a Berlitz school in Brussels, I gave her a piece of advice: No matter how poorly you speak French, use the word neanmoins. It’s just a fancy way of saying “nevertheless,” but it seldom fails to impress French-speakers.

Frankly, I’m lucky if I can keep them from laughing in my face when I try to parle francais, though, I must say, even the French in France seem less touchy than they used to about their vaunted language. I studied French in high school and college and attended part of a session last year at the Alliance Francaise in Los Angeles. I get along well enough as a tourist, especially in Francophone countries outside of France, where French-speakers seem a little more forgiving. But when I decided to spend several months in Paris, I knew I needed a higher degree of fluency.

My first idea -- an excellent approach, I still believe, for anyone seeking to learn a foreign language -- was to attend an intensive, two-week French course at the Monterey Institute of International Studies on the Central Coast. At $1,250 (plus living expenses), it seemed affordable, and I liked the idea of immersing myself in language study. But I was the only person who signed up for last January’s intermediate level course, so it was canceled, and I found the school’s custom-designed, one-on-one programs too expensive (about $5,000 for two weeks).

It seemed clear that I’d have to study the language when I got here, which has its virtues, of course: They speak French here. You can’t get away from it.

Fortunately, I had about a month of vacation time I needed to take, so I decided to devote it solely to language study, if I could find a good school.

I considered the Sorbonne and the American University of Paris, which offer long-term programs for serious students of French, as well as such usual suspects as Berlitz and the Alliance Francaise.

While chatting with Valerie Sutter, an American French teacher and the owner of a Montmartre apartment I almost rented, I found out about Paris Langues. It is a small, independent school that teaches French to foreigners, and it’s in the southern part of the city, near the hospitals around Denfert Rochereau (just in case I expired while conjugating verbs).

By e-mail, Paris Langues director Brigitte Verpraet suggested a four-week, semi-intensive program for me: three hours of group study every weekday morning and four hours of one-on-one conversation and instruction every week, for about $1,645. I like things that are small and independent, so I enrolled.

Paris Langues was started in 1990 by the Centre des Exchanges Internationals, an organization that seeks to foster contact between the French and foreigners. The school is in Le Fiap Jean Monnet, a sort of meeting center in a ‘60s-era high-rise, with 200 guest rooms, a restaurant and cafe, tourist information office and helpful reception desk. To Fiap come students in virtual gaggles, from all over the world, speaking a Tower of Babel of languages. When you really need to communicate with someone from Slovakia or China, English prevails. Everyone at the Fiap speaks the language of Shakespeare; more and more, everyone in Paris does, though without his fluency.

Which begs the question: Why learn French at all? Though long considered the most beautiful of languages, spoken by about 175 million people from Quebec to New Caledonia, it is languishing, by any account. To stem the tide, France proclaimed March 20 International Francophone Day and is offering crash courses in French to new European Union officials, whose second language is English, not French. Moreover, spoken French is now so full of Anglicisms -- OK for d’accord -- that Americans in Paris can manage well enough without a word of French.

But if you have to ask why learn French, you probably should spend your vacation in Phoenix, not Paris. Speaking French makes you feel part of the city, not just a tourist, and you can leave your hotel without a pocket dictionary. There’s freedom and power in it. My efforts seem to endear me to the French, no matter how badly I mangle their mother tongue.

They’re a funny people, the French, and they speak a funny language. I can manage the simple past tense, but, please, don’t expect the subjunctive of me. Moliere’s tongue requires expressiveness -- faces, gestures, intonations -- because the vocabulary is about half as large as that of English. It has politically correct euphemisms similar to ours (such as people sans domicile fixe, or “homeless,” for clochards, or “bums”), more acronyms than a crossword puzzle, formal and intimate pronouns, not to mention feminine and masculine nouns.

I’ll never get it right. But I loved taking French classes at Paris Langues, where students in my morning sessions came from all over the world and were mostly under 25, like the cast of that wonderful French film, “L’Auberge Espanole,” about a group of international students sharing an apartment in Barcelona. Together with my demanding but animated and amusing teacher, Veronique Delabre, they made language study fun.

There were no books, scant homework and a rotating agenda at Paris Langues. New students started every Monday and generally stayed a month. Lessons on photocopied pages were distributed in class, emphasizing a verb tense, vocabulary (say, for renting an apartment) or the correct use of pronouns. There was lots of role-playing.

Paris Langues director Verpraet says the school is mostly about contact between teachers and students because it’s small. In summer there are about 150 students, in winter about 60, taking classes at a variety of levels. Verpraet can arrange accommodations for students at Le Fiap or offer individuals placement in the homes of teachers. Most of her students come in groups and are Japanese, Spanish or Mexican, though there are the occasional Americans.

After about a week at Paris Langues, I hit the wall. I couldn’t remember anything in English and stayed awake at night forming sentences in French, which I could never remember the next day. And now, I’m finished with my courses, leaving me to worry about regressing.

I asked Valerie Sutter what to do to keep my French up now that I’m no longer a full-time student. Here’s what she said:

* Leave the television or radio on. “Although it seems like blah-blah-blah in the beginning, it is really very helpful in accustoming one’s ear to the sounds of the language.”

* Get rid of your inhibitions. “Use all the words and phrases you know, no matter how clumsy you feel,” Sutter said. “If you lapse into English, you can always excuse yourself.”

* Go to the movies, foreign or American with subtitles. I do this every weekend. It makes me happy, though the French don’t understand popcorn. Neanmoins, I learn a great deal, make friends and impress people.

*

Check it out,

s’il vous plait

For information about French language courses in France, check the Internet site www.fle.fr, which is translated into English.

Monterey Institute of International Studies, 460 Pierce St., Monterey, CA 93940; (831) 647-4115, www.miis.edu.

Paris Langues, 30 Rue Cabanis, Paris 74014; 011-33-1-45-65-94-70, www.parislangues.com.

Susan Spano’s “Postcards From Paris” are posted at www. latimes.com/susanspano. She welcomes comments at postcards@latimes.com but regrets that she cannot respond to them individually.