"Then, one evening at home, in Stirlingshire, Scotland, with everyone else in bed, I sat on the sofa and put on a VHS of Eddie Izzard's standup show Dress to Kill. My parents were fans and I'd caught a glimpse on TV and thought it looked funny. I was young and some of the material was probably too rude but I enjoyed the surreal and absurd comedy, impressions and mad tangents."
"Suddenly, Izzard did a bit about learning French then put together an absurd situation using all these random school French phrases during a trip to France, most memorably trying to bring the words cat (le chat), mouse (la souris) and monkey (le singe) up in conversation. I loved it. It spoke to an experience of the language that I understood. Then, as part of the encore, Izzard redid a whole section of the show in French. I found I could actually understand it."
Until age 13, a young learner showed little interest in school French despite family visits to Brittany and Normandy; parents handled conversations and grammar felt pointless. One evening the learner watched Eddie Izzard's Dress to Kill and enjoyed surreal comedy, impressions, and tangents. A routine using school French phrases and an encore performed in French suddenly became understandable, with a line like le singe a disparu making verb tables click into place. Being able to follow made the jokes funnier, gave French new purpose, sparked enthusiastic study, led to learning German, and later to studying German and Turkish at university.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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