Your neighbor to the left is crunching on an egg roll and eying a thick wedge of cherry pie. Stephanie is talking about who got drunk last weekend, and how drunk, and Alexandre is correcting everyone's grammar. A typical dinner among University housemates, right? Not quite.
Looking closer, you notice the scattered tables and chairs are a charming, mismatched set, a shabby-chic contrast to usual dorm décor. A pineapple chandelier hangs from the ceiling and, oh yeah -- everyone's speaking in French.
Dinners at La Maison Française, a residential college where students commit to communicating exclusively in French, are a tradition hailing back to the days of our University's founder.
According to La Maison's Web site, in 1817, Thomas Jefferson wrote that he wished for a residence on Grounds "wherein it is proposed that the boarders shall be permitted to speak French only, with a view to their becoming familiarized to conversation in that language." La Maison Francaise was built in 1896, and in 1985 it welcomed the first class of French-speaking residents.
Dinners are held at the residence Monday through Thursday nights. Residents of La Maison are expected to attend and may invite guests once a week, as long as they agree to speak in French.
One might guess that dinners at La Maison would be très sophistiqué, non? This is France, land of fine wine and Louis Vuitton! An international flavor permeates the chatter, to be sure, but in the end, these are college students. In other words, Jagermeister is a more likely subject than Sartre.
Resident Alexandre Marcellesi, an exchange student from Paris teaching in the French department, offers assistance to residents seeking to improve their speaking ability.
"The residents take advantage of my being from France," Marcellesi said. He is an indispensable resource, an informant of obscure words that students wouldn't hear in class. Take second-year College student Alex Rocca's frustration with construction, for example: To help him accurately express his agitation, Marcellesi had to first teach Rocca the word for "scaffolding."
Conversation around the dinner table is a lively mix of French and a little bit of "franglais," anglicized French that students resort to when they cannot think of a word. Sometimes thoughts get lost in translation.
Rocca tries to say that he has an important decision to make. Non, Marecellesi says -- one takes a decision in France.
"Your language makes no sense."
"What? Why should you make a decision instead of taking a decision?"
"You make it in your brain!"
"You take it from your brain!"
Despite the teasing he endures from his housemates, Marcellesi said he is pleased with life in La Maison and at the University.
"Overall, American people are friendlier than French people," he said. "Then again, I'm Paris" -- the equivalent of an American saying he is from New York.
French tongue-twisters -- who can properly pronounce, "A hunter, knowing how to hunt, must know to hunt without his dog" -- and the exchange student who loses his accent when he's been drinking -- "He's totally faking!" -- are two of many conversational topics tonight.
The residents are precariously close to slipping into English when someone asks who can do the best impression of English-with-a-French-accent, but they manage to honor their pledge.
Residents enjoy their time at La Maison, but all are deeply dedicated to improving or maintaining their mastery of the language. The 27 undergraduates are required to take part in a social event, such as the Ciné-Club, or cultural excursions, and many hope to continue using French after they graduate. These students are active members of the University community inside and outside La Maison, and if called upon, could recite a thorough analysis of Baudelaire. Just not at the dinner table.
This is third-year College student Teemar Fisseha's first year living in La Maison. She moved to the United States from Ethiopia about five years ago, where she attended a French school.
"I found that I was forgetting the language and I wanted to be exposed to it every day," she said. "The great thing about [La Maison] is that there are all kinds of people living here; everybody does their own thing."
But the residents are united in their love for the language. Fisseha is double-majoring in French and foreign affairs and hopes to work in French-speaking countries after she graduates. She said many residents share the same dream.
"I think we have a real advantage over other French majors," she said.
About an hour has passed, and residents begin to clear their plates, lapsing into franglais a little more frequently than before. A girl looks over guiltily and says, "Normalement, nous parlons d'autres choses" -- usually, they speak of other things.
So they don't spend all of their dinners talking about "the Bible" of French grammar, "Le Bon Usage." C'est normal. One gets the impression this is how Thomas Jefferson would have wanted it.
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