Making Sense Of French Accents
Welcome to the next daily installment of this true story, which you can find posted here each afternoon until it comes to an end.
Chapter 63: Changing The Tenor
In that corner a young man Danny, and a Moroccan girl joined me during the last leg of our trip. People dropped by. We wrapped presents for a charity activity I was doing.
Some people came through and passed by, knowing that I was the man who was doing the prayer services. I think that my prayer services changed the tenor on the train a little.
I watched an employee minister to the Moroccan girl a little later, speaking about Jesus as Lord to a Muslim woman. Do you know what a blessing that was to watch?
I think my job on that train was to be a chaplain. That was the role I was to play. It was fair to say during this part of the train ride, that the prayer service was continuing all day long. That was a very special thing to see. Our little corner of the train’s town square had turned into a special place to worship and pray.
Chapter 64: What Does The Conductor?
The French speaking girl from Morocco has a concern that needs raising with the conductor, but she’s had a hard time figuring out which of the various train staff people are actually the conductor.
They all look so official and to some extent have some overlapping responsibilities.
The French speaking girl from Morocco shows me a hand sign for driving a car and asks in heavily accented English, “Ehhh, ze kon doctor ehh he drive ze train?”
It takes me a moment to process.
She wants to know if the conductor drives the train.
“No,” I say.
“Ehhh zen what does ze kon doctor?”
She wishes to know what the conductor does.
“He is in charge of the train,” I say.
“Oh ze chef!” she says.
“Yes,” I say, “He is the chief, he is the boss, he is in charge.”
The French speaking girl from Morocco shows me a hand sign for driving a car and asks in heavily accented English “And what is men who drive ze train?”
“The front of the train is ‘the engine,’” I said. I presumed the word engine comes to English from French.
I saw that the expression made sense to her.
“Engine,” she repeats.
“And what is ze men who drive engine?”
“The man who drives the engine is called ‘the engineer.’”
That time it did not stick.
She did not make the same look that what I had said had registered. The difference in my pronunciation between “engine” and “engineer” probably was too subtle, especially across language barriers, and with the background noise of the nighttime lounge car.
She says again, this time in a little bit of an excitable mood “And what is ze men who drive engine?”
I repeat it clearer this time.
“The man who drives the engine is called ‘the enginEER.’”
Her eyes point toward her ears for a second as she is clearly replaying my last sentence a few times.
You do not learn as many languages as her without having an ability to replay details in your head, to replay the recordings of the spoken word in your head, over and over until they click.
You can see her lips mouthing the words that were said to her, building muscle memory for what was just said, creating comprehension from the muscle memory.
A few moments later her eyes return back to center from pointing at her ears. At that instant, her eyes register a flash of comprehension.
“Ahhhh!” she replies.
-Allan Stevo
This is a selection from my forthcoming book, “The Amtrak Vignettes.” A neat story began with the writing of “The Amtrak Vignettes” in October 2023. Every day until that story comes to an end, I intend to share a part of it here. It is a part of my faith journey as a Christian, a faith journey that has been deepened since the Ides of March 2020. Some of it gets pretty wild and nothing that a “reasonable” person would find himself in the midst of. Few will be scared off by it. Instead, many will grow deeper in their faith. I know that, because I know my readers well, and I know that few come here expecting me to give a milquetoast version of anything. Come here to be challenged. Stay here to have your life changed. That, I believe, is what will come of this work. You can support that work by signing up below.