Pétanque in Tacoma, WA

KATHLEEN MERRYMAN; THE NEWS TRIBUNE

It is a sad fact that a language learned in school rusts faster than the affection for it does.

Without the opportunity to speak it, all the hours of vocabulary drills and declensions seize up in a mass of poorly maintained education.

At least that’s what happened to my French.

I am of the generation that learned French because it was the language of diplomacy and grand literature, not to mention quite a bit of good food and opera. We were brought up to appreciate the grace of its vocabulary and its ties to Greek and Latin. No one really expected us to speak it, unless we got lucky enough to backpack across Europe, or to afford haute cuisine.

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