Predicate Nominatives

Twice a week I meet with my French teacher Gil (pronounced “Zheel”) for an hour and half lesson. This is the only time when I can freely speak French without worrying about embarrassing myself or making people wait for me to conjugate in my head. Gil is the most patient French teacher I've ever had.

Gil spent a number of years of his youth in Arizona, so his English is excellent. Although this doesn’t stop me from trying to stump him with modern slang and big, multi-syllable words. I rarely find a word he doesn’t know, which is a little humbling when I consider the number of French words I don’t know.

What’s weird about the French is that they’re all grammar freaks. Stop any Frenchman on the street and ask him to give you an example of a predicate nominative and he won’t bat an eye.

And, like the rest of his countrymen, Gil assumes that we Americans also have such an intimate knowledge of our grammar.

He’ll say, “Show me the direct object in this sentence”.

“What’s a direct object?”

“Well, what is it in English?”

“I don’t know what it is in English, either.”

Then comes the wide-eyed, incredulous, “You don’t know what a (grammar component) is?” look that I’ve been familiar with since I started working for a French company three years ago.

“You don’t know what a direct object is? Didn’t you learn this in school?”

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had this conversation. Not just with French teachers. With friends, colleagues, probably people on the street if I gave them the chance.

“I did learn it in school. Then I passed the test and promptly forgot it. Like calculus.”

Then I watch them pause and mentally evaluate me, a representative of the American school system, and wonder how America can be the leader of the free world when its people don’t even know what a direct object is.

I’m fairly certain that they also think about our president at this point, and probably consider the popular French belief that we’re all cowboys.

Aside from grammar, the French also have an extensive knowledge of their linguistic history. Every French person I know has taught me something about the history of some word. And again, they assume we know the same.

Hervé: What is the origin of the word “rave”? As in “rave party”?

Me: How should I know?

Hervé: It’s your language, isn’t it?

Me: No. We just borrowed it from the British and made it better. *wink*

Nothing irks them more than American arrogance.

They can’t believe that I don’t know the origin of every word in my English vocabulary. And they’re astounded when I tell them that all of us are this way, with the exception of those like my friend Adam, who is so smart he has extra hard drive space and memory in his brain to store that kind of stuff (when I told Adam this story he said “you don’t remember what a predicate nominative is?”). And English teachers.

Sometimes, to really get them upset, I tell them about my English department award in high school. That’s right, French guys: out of 150-odd kids, MY English was the best. Put THAT in your cigarette and smoke it!