Me Talk Pretty One Day Essay

Me Talk Pretty One Day. The title already starts questions and as you get through the essay, it makes perfect sense and creates a meaning to the title. Sedaris is the narrator throughout the essay and nearly at the beginning of the story you finds his tone throughout the essay is kind of a depressed tone, it sounds like he is depressed and put down by the instructor of his french course. Sedaris is passionate in leaning French. He moves to France and starts school there, so that he would learn the language better than he could in America. On his first day Sedaris watches his fellow students catch up with each other, discussing their summer vacations and the latest news about mutual friends. He has a number of first impressions: they appear much younger (he is now forty-one years old), they are definitely much more attractive, and they all appear to speak French flawlessly. Sedaris soon feels a little out of his element, until his French teacher arrives and makes him feel like a complete imbecile. However, Sedaris is not alone in being belittled by his instructor for she did not just pick on him but the rest of the class. However, he still went home every night and studied everything so that he could go to class the next day and know just a little more so the teacher wouldn’t pick on him as much. You find the depressed tone again during class, that everyone wanted to be there but at the same time didn’t want to be there. The teacher rode on a high horse because she didn’t speak only fluent French but 4 other languages too, including English, which she shows to Sedaris by saying in English â€Å"I hate you, I really hate you. (Found on page 3, last paragraph) Now why in her right mind does the teacher feel the need to put everyone down, and to say something of this nature stating that she hates him. Why is that, is it because she herself has troubles in her life and she feels in her time of power of being the professor of a French course and the only one that can speak it fluently, that she can emasculate everyone in the class. But through all of that all of the students including Sedaris, go home every night and study their French for hours on end, an example of it is stated on page 14, 1st paragraph. â€Å"I took to spending 4 hours a night on my homework, putting in even more time when we were assigned an essay. † Because of that the tone suddenly switches from a depressed tone to an upbeat tone right towards the end of the essay when Sedaris states, â€Å"Understanding doesn’t mean that you can suddenly speak the language. Far from it. It’s a small step, nothing more, yet it’s rewards are intoxicating and deceptive. The teacher continued her diatribe and I settled back, bathing in the subtle beauty of each new curse and insult. † From that moment, the professor goes on to belittle Sedaris but this time he isn’t hurt or insulted by it. He takes from it and with confidence replies to her insults with, â€Å"I know the thing that you speak exact now. Talk me more, you, plus, please, plus. Leaving you with a feeling of happiness and joy knowing that Sedaris gained his confidence back. From the tone of the essay, it makes everything feel a lot better in the end. The use of the â€Å"French† in the essay, gives meaning to the times where you dont understand what the counterpart is saying applying the use of words that doesn’t exist creates a confusion but also an understantment of how Sedaris feels when the teacher is talking to him. Here you can see the words meimslsxp; lgpdmurct; apzkiubjxow; palicmkrexis; fiuscrzsa; ticiwelmun; kfdtinvfm; vkkdyo; kdeynfulh. Understanding and speaking do not automatically go hand in hand, but it is better to understand rather than to speak. Which is the point the author is trying to make through the entire selection.. David Sedaris takes a stroll down memory lane in his anecdote about his experience learning to speak French in Paris, under the rule of a cruel dictator-like teacher. He describes certain moments of intense cruelty of the teacher, such as when one girl in his class doesn’t know the correct irregular past tense of the verb to defeat. The girl was poked in the eye with a freshly sharpened pencil, and the teacher, although remorseful, did not spend much time apologizing. The students in the class are not fluent in French, and their halting sentences, when translated, sound like â€Å"sometime me cry alone at night†¦that be common for I, also, but be more strong, you. † This is the exact way that a student of a foreign language would speak, and it illuminates the difference between speaking a language so that others could possibly understand you, and understanding the language.