Gals & Gauls

The American block against learning languages is about to be assaulted by a couple of almost irresistible invitations to speak French. Due soon on U.S. TV screens are two sets of language teaching films, both particularly strong on the femine gender. In one series the teacher is trim Actress-Playwright Maria Mauban; the other displays British Cinemactress Dawn Addams, looking marvelously unacademic in a pair of black tights. And all either series asks of the televiewer is to learn French. Eh bien, pourquois pas?

Actress Mauban's show was produced by the French government's RTF (Radio-diffusion Television Franc,ais). In 39 quarter-hour episodes, titled Les Franc,ais Chez Vous (The French People in Your Home), the series uses mimes, comedians and chausonniers to act out idioms and grammatical structure. Actress Addams' show is the work of Hachette, the big Paris publisher that supplies every French schoolchild with books. Titled En France Comme Si Vous y Etiez (As If You Were in France), it guides the audience through 26 half-hour slices of French life. Both snows make most educational TV look like home movies.

Scholarly as well as sprightly, the shows constantly match language to life. Dawn Addams brandishes a sandwich to explain the French negative. The top piece of bread represents the ne, the filling the the bottom piece of bread the pas. Remember the sandwich." chirps Dawn reminding the viewer to use ne and pas and keep them apart. To teach the French possessive RTF uses a song-and-mime team called the Freres Jacques, who pretend to be burglars tirelessly dividing loot `a moi; `a toi, `a toi, `a lui, until even a Kansas City house dick would get the idea. Hachette teaches the future tense in a setting where any other tense would be out of place: a fortuneteller's booth. To help learners catch elusive French intonation, Hachette uses another gimmick in the lesson on the interrogative: a violin trilling up to accent Dawn Addams' voice.

In its engaing assault on eye and ear, RTFs show takes the televiewer to a picnic on the Marne, a village Bastille Day fete, a couturier's salon. Hachette's producers rented a whole railroad to film the champagne country east of Paris, spent four days tying up traffic in the Avenue de 1'Opera to film the perils of taking a Parisian taxi, and magnificently illustrated the verb "smell" by going to a pungent source--the Paris Metro.

Unlike foreign movies. RTF's show has no problem dubbing in foreign speakers to translate for Actress Mauban. An off camera voice asks questions in the language of each country; she answers in French, keeps the teaching as "direct"' as possible. Dawn Addams' English has to suffer dubbing in in non-English-speaking countries but the rest of the cast goes right on in French.

RTF's series is already showing on Belgian TV, will start soon in West Germany as well as the U.S.. is being eyed by networks in many other countries, including Russia. Hachette's series will start in the U.S. next spring, is also scheduled for showing in Spain. Next on Hachette's agenda is an "encyclopedia of languages" --TV shows teaching every language in Europe. Pourquois pas indeed?

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