3 Jul 06: Portions of this proof have been removed because some of it got a bit too personal. I respect my friends' wishes on their privacy more than this game.

Foreign Language Day is one of the worst tasks I have ever done.

I chose French because I never have formally taken it and I've only spent one weekend in Montréal and have otherwise never been to a French-speaking country. Even there I used it very minimally. Maybe I used it to order an orange juice once. I can read and type some French but I cannot speak it at all. Listening to recordings of myself I realize I can't even say "je" or "trois" even remotely close. It's embarrassing. Anyway, per the task's consideration, Esperanto would have basically meant I never try speaking to anyone. French essentially did to me 75% of the time anyway.

I had planned on making it all day Sunday, but driving home from my friend Bill's house on Saturday, I realized it might be to my benefit to just start now, at 9pm, as I wasn't going out that evening anyway and would be at home... and then I'd have my English back at 9pm the next day... so as I'm driving... 9pm turns and I'm now in the task. The only person I've told about this in advance was my roommate Matt.

I get home and start diving in. I decide to live it up by switching the language on my computer and other things to French. I start listening to only French music. Wee!



...and the use of accents screwed up my post on hiptop Nation:



The same post on my site worked fine, though.

Not in chronological order, I'll cite a few instant messages and emails:





Many times when writing email I end up looking at it... then realizing, "it's not worth it" to send this off in French and I close the window and get taunted by this:



I was able to reply to some emails though, without looking too weird:



Word got around about my activities today and I started getting messages from people I normally don't text message with... in French:




Now this was starting to bother me. I don't want anyone to speak French. It's just me that needs to, right? Thankfully, a lot of people understood:


...but would sometimes slip into French:


There were sometimes situations where I flat out ignored people. A friend of mine in Iraq was having something to do with the Minnesota Twins game... some footage or something. I promised him I'd watch it. It didn't happen.



He doesn't speak French so the situation would have been too difficult... replying may have come off as insulting. I closed the window. :-(

BTW, OS X's spell check rocks:



...and my friend Tim got annoyed:



...then an hour later:



0h12: My Last.fm stream...


Roommate Matt and his girlfriend Amy are out and about getting trashed and they thought it'd be funny to send me instant messages in french. Amy knows basic French and Matt doesn't know any. I ignore most of the text messages... until I got this:



So now that I've essentially been told to "here now" with the car, I understand that for some reason they need a ride home and it sounds serious. I'm rather pissed off now at this point because I had almost completed pre-heating the oven and I was well settled in at home to go to sleep. They're drunk, and their texting turned from playful to very serious... so it seemed at the time.

I blow out the candles, turn off the oven and I get into Matt's car to pick them up. I bring with MC Solaar's "Paradisiaque" to listen to. Amy calls me when I'm halfway there and she starts fucking around with me speaking in drunken French. I tried to be clear with her saying "seulement anglais, s'il vous plaît." She didn't care. She was trying to converse with me in French and it was extremely difficult, especially because I needed to know wtf was going on. When she realized she should be speaking in English, she told me in English that I should come only if I want to. "we can get a taxi," she added. So here I am, en route anyway, I had friends at the bar they were going too, so I agree to meet them. I should have just turned around, honestly.

When I arrived, they weren't there. I didn't have any money on me. I wasn't sure if there was a cover, and I couldn't exactly ask. I IM them from my hiptop some more and they kept responding in drunken French. I was getting pissed off at this point and in all caps told them to speak to me only in English. When they show up 10 minutes later, Matt's on the phone learning French from someone and with a drunken demeanor says to me "je m'appelle Matt." A mild altercation occurs where they don't get that they're supposed to only speak to me in English. Then they asked what I want to do, but asked me in baby talk as if I was an idiot. I nodded when they asked if we should go in the Uptown Bar, which is what I thought the plan was from the beginning.

If they hadn't been drinking so much, they would have been much more understanding, honestly.

It's interesting how a language barrier causes people to treat you like a moron. This happened throughout the night and it made me upset. Sometimes I'd simply walk away and quantify it... "wow, that was interesting" and then I'd walk back.

Anyway, we go into the bar after they find out there's no cover and I tap Matt and then tap where it says "Guinness." An hour later, I realized "Wait, I can say 'Guinness.' That's a proper name." I was in a mode of being used to not being able to communicate that I started using hand gestures to get my point across even though in some cases I could do so verbally.

Met up with Bo. Per our previous text messages, he understood I couldn't speak English. He verified that with me verbally and he was cool with it. He thought it was funny and wasn't terribly surprised with it. During this, here's a few messages from my friend Bill I got: "You can stop now." "Is your task to fuckiong piss me off? Because it's working. 2100 pts for you." I hand my hiptop to Bo and he types to Bill: "Hey. This is bo. I can type in english" Bill signs off right as Bo was typing "Aaron must speak only french until 2100 tomorrow." As Bill didn't get that last line I took the hiptop back, copy/pasted the conversation into an email to him. He sends me an SMS with a single-word rude comment I won't repeat that essentially expressed how he thought how dumb it was. Maybe he was right.

After the band stopped playing, Matt, Bo and Amy went off to get drinks and such and I turned around and saw Mike, a guy that Bo is friends and does work with. My relationship with Mike is generally half and half "Freelance-business" and "friend of a friend." We shake hands, he asks how I'm doing. I nod. He asks what's new and I shrug. He asks what I think of the show. I pause. I then put my finger on my throat and gesture that I can't talk. He asks me one word questions: the names of various ailments that would cause me to not be able to speak. I nod "no" to all of them. Bo comes back and sees us standing next to each other. He laughs. Bo then tells Mike that "Aaron can only speak French today."

Now I'm embarrassed. Bo knows a bit of french so I try to direct him in terms of how to explain this situation. I try to get him to frame it more as a "expérience sociale" rather than "un jeu sur l'Internet." He understands and that actually helped a lot when he was explaining on my behalf. Matt was inebriated and was essentially worthless in terms of helping me, and Amy was actually destructive as she was using an obnoxious drunken fake french voice around me just to fuck around. I seriously wanted to deck her.

A few of us go to an outdoor patio and I meet up with some more of Bo's friends who I've met a few times before. We shake hands and I thought it would be very convenient if Bo just didn't say anything. Instead, he presents that "Aaron is only speaking French!" Despite that, it ended up being a relatively intelligent conversation they had about it now that Bo's framing the situation as a social experiment. He also starts to try to explain SFZero to the best of his knowledge and mentioned that I had flown out to San Francisco for it. This was the best thing he could have said, because it gave a lot of legitimacy to this project.

1h36 I get an instant message from Matt: "Where the hell are you?" and then I hand the hiptop to Amy. I try to instruct her to type on it, and she says, "read this?" I say, "non..." and gesture for her to type back. She says she doesn't want to tell him. I raised my voice and she finally typed "Ici est amy." I was getting so angry at this point because there was no reason why she needed to be typing in French. The whole reason I gave it to her in the first place was to type in English so Matt would know where we were. I raised my voice again "ANGLAIS!!!!!" She finally typed "In porch." then "Patio." Matt likely didn't know where that was so I took my hiptop back and left to go find him. Grr.

1h45 Amy, Matt and I sit down and try to have our first real conversation of the evening. They're very drunk. I tried to explain to the best of my ability why they need to continue to only speak in English. I'd say, "quand une personne parle français, c'est difficile. Quand deux personnes parlez français, c'est *très* difficile." (loosely "when one person speaks French, it's hard. When two people speak french, it's *very* hard") Amy understood. I'd then say "dites à Matt," so he could understand too. She'd say, "Tell Matt what?" I'd then repeat. She'd say, "Yeah, I know, but what do you want me to tell Matt?" So I'd repeat. She said "YEAH, I KNOW, TWO PEOPLE IT'S HARD." I'd yell "DITES À MATT!!!" She'd say "TELL MATT WHAT?"

2h00 We finally leave at bar close and have a lot of difficulty communicating. I was trying to ask which street I should take to avoid all the red stop lights. It came across to Amy as "where's the road?" and then "where's the road with the lights?" Matt was also trying to tell me a story unsuccessfully.

Example of how absolutely horrible my French skills are... trying to communicate with Amy and Matt when they're drunk:

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The conversation ended with him telling me this:

"No offense, but your french thing fucked things up."

(The next day, he didn't remember saying that, and we both knew that me speaking French didn't really make that much of a difference)

I went to my room and started piecing together some notes that I had taken. I feel like absolute shit, although I know I'm not really at fault for anything.

3h05 Matt comes back upstairs and he chats a bit about his situation and I listen for awhile. I'm about to add something... "...y..." and he waves his hand and says "you don't need to say anything." At the end, I say "c'est très dramatique."

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7h54 Seeing I'm not idle anymore on AIM, my friend Brian messages me trying to translate my away message:



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8h12 I finally am able to explain to Bill with a url why I'm not speaking in English:



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9h55 My other roommate Allen wakes up and comes downstairs. I talk for the first time since I started speaking French. Luckily, he speaks a lot more French than I do. Immediately, he starts speaking French back to me. I tell him that he speaks english, and only I speak french. He understood right away. Using my finger and the face of a wall clock, I explain... "maintenant.... á 9... français." "ici... après 9... anglais." He repeats, "You speak French until 9pm then you can speak English?" I say, "oui." I then say, "C'est le jeu." He says, "That game" while he pointed at the SF0.org Kill Zone sign on my fridge (thanks, r0ck c4ndy). :-) He understood without knowing the foreign language task. I wish everyone was as easy to work with as he was.

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14h00 I'm at Target. I'm not speaking to anyone. No reason to, I figure. This task turned into Foreign Language Day into "Don't Speak to Anyone Day." I was just hoping I wouldn't run into anyone I know or I'd be screwed. I was lucky. I had three situations where I had to communicate with people. A woman was giving out free samples of Jones Cola and I wanted to taste a few flavors. She said a few things about the flavors, asked me how I liked it and I just stared at her and nodded. She gave me a strange look. As I went to check out, an employee offered to have me move to another queue for "faster service." Being I already had all my things on the conveyor belt, I tried to politely turn him down. I shrugged, and he said, "I'll help you more those things" and I shook my head saying "no" and pointed at the employee I was about to be checked out by. He asked again and I gestured that I was staying. He seemed confused and left me alone. When I was checking out, I was offered to save 10% on a Target Visa. I shook my head "no" because I never have had any interest. Then, I realized how much I was spending. I was making an unusually large purchase today (a new vacuum cleaner was part of it) and I realized I could save a significant amount by getting a Target Visa. I said "Le Visa?" and he said, "You're interested in saving 10% by applying for the Target Visa?" and I nodded "yes." The application process was fairly simple, but whenever he asked me a question that didn't have a yes or no answer, I just paused and didn't say anything. I thought it was hilarious because he eventually was able to turn every question into a yes or no question, which I was able to answer using my head. He realized right away that I wasn't speaking at all and phrased all his questions this way. I got approved and saved a nice chunk on my purchase. As I left he thanked me and I smiled and nodded.

15h00: Vacuuming the house with my new vacuum. Allen comes home and he talks my ear off while I generally ignore him and don't respond. This is par for the course generally anyway.

15h23: I stop in my room realize that I got a few text messages and a phone call from my friend Taylor while I was vacuuming. I decide to not call him back because I don't want to have to explain anything to him in French. I reply to one of the text messages that said "No!" and ask, "non?" He calls again and I watch it ring. I let it go to voicemail and thankfully he left a message.





15h35: I send him a text message back: "Aucun probleme!"

15h36: Communicating with people that know some French and aren't obnoxious are easy to deal with:



19h35: Interesting how I got away with never having to explain why I was speaking French:



A few other text messages during the day... but at this point I was seriously avoiding talking with anyone. I need to go out and be social now.

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Not a very extensive experiment, but if it was, here would be the conclusions:

When I spoke in a foreign language to people, many people assume they're supposed to speak that same language back. Annoying. Additionally, some people actually spoke English slower to me, as if I'd have a hard time understanding.

When I didn't reply verbally to people asking me questions, if you wait long enough, they'll turn it into a yes or no question. Neat.

It's not very socially acceptable to simply stop speaking English. I felt like I was reduced to some grade 9 student doing a social studies project.

Glad to be speaking English again now.