The Universal Mmm.

I saw Natalie for the first time in several months when I was out walking this morning. Natalie is the French woman who lives in the village. She came up behind me and walked past because she was walking faster than I was (probably because she’s younger.) ‘Hello’, she said. ‘Hello’, I replied. So far so good.

Eventually I approached her house just as she was checking her mailbox. She turned and saw me and said something else, none of which I understood because she was too far away. ‘Mmm’, I replied, which seemed to satisfy her because she collected her mail and disappeared into the house. They do say ‘Mmm’ in France, don’t they? I hope so, but I really couldn’t say. At times I feel stricken to the core by my shortcomings.

I do so admire polyglots, you see. Here’s me trying to write half decent English, while there are other people out there who can speak ten languages fluently. How do they do it? I would like to have Noam Chomsky’s opinion on that one. I gather he has a lot of controversial theories on the process of learning language.