My mother, now 70 years old, still holds a candle for Robert Redford. My dad teases her about all the heavy breathing he hears whenever they watch one of his movies. But who can blame her? His all-American good looks crossed with sensitivity, intelligence, and piercing blue eyes have made generations of women melt.My Robert Redford is Johnny Depp. And my Robert Redford speaks French! (He lives in France with the French mother of his two children, actress-singer Vanessa Paradis.)
But now that I'm occupied with taking care of a two-year-old, I spend a lot less time drooling over Johnny; I haven't even seen most of his recent movies. (Gasp!)So imagine my surprise this past week, when watching the 2004 French film Happily Ever After (original title: Ils se marièrent et eurent beaucoup d'enfants) in bits and pieces during Griffin's naps, it slowly dawns on me that the handsome, intense, slightly nerdy guy in the music store, who doesn't actually say anything in that scene, but reappears at the end of the film as a self-deprecating real estate client (and passionate kisser), is him.
Him! Johnny Depp!
This must be my reward for working diligently to keep improving my own language ability (and for seeking out French films that aren't freaky). 
I think that this particular motivation is one that exists for more people than many would like to admit, that is that someone finds members of the opposite sex of a certain country particularly attractive and wants to be able to talk to them. I'll admit that one of the reasons (not the biggest, but it was up there ;) ) I picked Spanish as the first language I wanted to learn was because I had a bit of a thing for latinas (my Johnny Depp is Salma Hayek, btw :D ).
ReplyDeleteDo you have any idea how many nerdy guys who are into anime and manga decided to learn Japanese because they have a thing for Japanese chicks??
Cheers,
Andrew
Interesting observation! Does anyone else want to admit to studying a language in hopes of impressing an attractive native speaker?
ReplyDeleteOh, wait, I do (again). When I was teaching English in France, I had a big crush on Pierre, one of the German teachers. We got together once a week for a language exhange: speaking French, he tutored me in German and I helped him with his English. Yes, I was living in Alsace and would have wanted to improve my German anyway, but I went about it much more enthusiastically than I would have otherwise!
(No romance ever blossomed, but I think of him fondly. I even looked for him on Facebook once, but his name was common enough that I couldn't figure out which one was him.)
can't say that I ever did that, learn a language to impress someone. Too much effort. I have told someone that I spoke a language just to impress them, even though I only knew like the most basic things.
ReplyDeleteI can however, vouch for the fact that nothing is sexier than guys who suddenly speak french, German or Russian, when you least expect it.