Pronunciation is key - II
Thirty years later, while travelling on a journey across Australia, it occurred to me to think back on it when I stayed with French emigré friends in South Australia for a few days. They had local friends, all well-to-do, many of them as wealthy and successful as they had been in their adoptive homeland themselves.
The Seekers sang why that was in ‘I am Australian’, a refrain I often heard played on ABC Radio Australia: ‘We are one, but we are many, and from all the lands on Earth we come, we’ll share a dream and sing with one voice: I am, you are, we are Australian’. And my friends’ Australian dream had come true, including two Australian children, which is what counted the most after all. But their communication was stunted nonetheless. There was an invisible barrier that kept them a certain distance away from the locals and all English speakers they crossed paths with. The night I was due to head on westward by train to discover the Australian wild West, a neighbour came in to bring us some fruit he had picked in his orchard a few miles out of the city. We had just gotten back home from the CBD, which is what Australians call the city centre, on a motorbike and were still reeling from a thunderstorm that had caught us unprepared on our way, one on a scale that you would be forgiven for believing is only seen in Australia. He was from Alice Springs and found us regrouping, while busying ourselves before dinner, in the living room. The conversation amongst them somewhat faltered on a regular basis, and it was formal. Nonetheless, their friendship was perceptibly strong and deep, as they had known each other for decades and were after each other’s heart. It all happened on a level of perception. But when I started speaking with him, it was as though we had known each other for ages, because we partook in the culture associated with the language we shared deeply. We never mentioned it but felt it. It was a veritable embrace that paid me back for the hours on end I had tortured myself with pronunciation. Pronunciation had been key indeed !