It is a simple idea and started with the proposal of speaking French all month, just as everyone is trying to get out this October, 'no ifs no buts'.
A performance-café has been a little dream of mine for a while - a coffee shop hosted by eccentrics. For the moment this will be a pop-up, and I have bought my first industrial filter machine (a BUNN, below).
When I started French lessons in 1979 it was not long after Britain had joined the EEC. M. Bertillon, the father of the family in my textbook, Le Français D'Aujourd'hui , was a customs officer. Now I realise that in nearly every town in England young people were recording themselves speaking languages. I love listening to the earnest, quiet voices trying to get it right, and sort of making it up too. They seem to be performing themselves 'as' French. In the Frogtober coffee shop I will be putting out a set of headphones so that 'customers' can listen to clips from this amazing archive of reel to reel language lab tapes.
The café is going to be a celebration that listens to the pleasure, strangeness and comedy of engaging with another language. You're welcome to join us:
New Adephi Atrium, M5 4BR. Thursday 31st October, 8.30am-11.30am. (installation only from 10.30am)
Eclectik Tronik. 2009. 'écoutez et répetez: longmans french language lab found tape part3'. Youtube site. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYcyIE57aIQ> [Accessed 16 Oct 2019]
Reed, S. European Studies Blog. 'Bertillons and others: some language textbooks of the past' 18 September 2017. <https://blogs.bl.uk/european/2017/09/bertillons-and-others-some-language-textbooks-of-the-past.html>[Accessed 16 Oct 2019]
