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Me Talk Pretty One Day Analysis

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Me Talk Pretty One Day Analysis
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Me Talk Pretty One Day – Analysis
Learning foreign languages is a challenge most people grab by the horn within their life. Struggling and battling the bull is discomforting at first due to ones own insecurity and self-confidence. For a start you will feel unhitched, but if you hook on you will often find success at some point. The reasons for a learning a new language are plentiful: one maybe wants to change his picture of the world, while another might want to seem more cultivated and erudite.
Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris is a nonfiction and self-biographical short story based on his own experiences on learning a new language.

David Sedaris wants to learn French fluently, which is why he travels all the way to France and not just participating in a long-term evening course in New York.
On first day of his French course he feels intimidated by the, as he experiences it, exhibited confidentiality of the other students. He describes them as superior to him, speaking “… excellent French.”. Using a French loan word as an adjective makes the sentence quite ironic and makes it rather an expression of his own insecurity when it comes to speaking French, which is substantiated by his lead up words: “… in what sounded to me …” that clearly supports the interpretation.
The protagonist’s/narrator’s sex is not revealed until the third page of the short story, and if you don’t know the title of the book, Short Stories. Brieft Encounters with Comtemporary Nonfiction, it is easy to get the impression of the protagonist being woman. This is caused by the discomfort the protagonist feels when encountering the fellow students, which is based on their looks. Furthermore the fact that the protagonist is travelling all the way from NY to Paris, le ville de l’amour – the town of love, to learn French, the language of love, makes a stereotypical first impression of a woman.
Davids attitude on learning is sceptic, but motivated. He feels vulnerable and

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