Parlez vous?
Longtime group meets informally for a little French conversation
Before the Internet, Meetup groups, texting and social media became de rigueur forms of communicating, there was “word of mouth.”
The concept seems oddly quaint now when the soft clicking of thumbs on a miniature screen keyboard has replaced conversation in so many settings, but that informal publicity technique has helped keep a local French conversation group going for nearly 30 years.
Le Groupe Français held its first get together in March 1988 with just eight people sitting on the floor of an Albuquerque apartment.
“We weren’t sure it would survive,” said group co-founder David Wilson.
Wilson and fellow founder René Lopez had participated in a Spanish conversation group where they met many people who also spoke French. At the time, Wilson said, there weren’t opportunities for people to get together to speak that language. They modeled their group on what had been working for the Spanish group.
“We wanted to make it informal. There’s no board, no dues. You just show up with a bottle of wine and a snack,” Wilson said. “One of the beautiful things is that we meet at a different person’s house each time. People really like that.”
In the early days, Wilson and Lopez printed out copies of the meeting schedule, hand-wrote addresses and mailed them to members. The advent of email meant Wilson could automate this time-consuming and costly method of communication. The group has also created a Facebook page, facebook. com/LeGroupeFrancaisAlbuquerque, where activities are posted and people can leave messages.
But mostly Le Groupe has relied on word of mouth, or “de bouche à oreille” (from
mouth to ear), as they would say in French.
The group still follows the original format with meetings every other Wednesday evening. About three times a year, they hold a potluck meal and on the Wednesday during the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta the group invites balloon pilots and chase crews from French-speaking countries such as France, Belgium, Switzerland and Quebec, Canada.
Over the years, they’ve had people show up from a host of other Francophone countries like Tunisia, Algeria, Cameroon, Togo, Democratic Republic of Congo and the islands of Madagascar and Mauritius off the African coast.
“Le Groupe gives people a point of contact where they have a chance to speak their language,” Wilson said.
Wilson took French in high school in Columbus, Miss., continued in college and eventually spent a year as a translator/interpreter for a nongovernmental organization in Côte d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast) in West Africa.
Many of those who regularly attend Le Groupe meetings are international couples. Dave Coulie met his French wife, Marie Claire, when he was stationed at a U.S. Air Force base in France in the early 1960s. Gary Miller’s wife Christiane is from Alsace, France. They met when she came to visit friends in the United States. Letty Buchholz is from Mauritius; she met her American husband when she was an exchange student in Spain and he was serving at a U.S. base outside Madrid.
Some are Americans who just love French.
“I am passionate about French. I love the culture, the food, the people,” said Thelma Bowles, who grew up in Santa Fe, studied French, lived in France and taught the language for many years.
Others are native speakers like Odile and Jean-Marie de la Beaujardière, French scientists who came to work in the United States in the 1960s.
Le Groupe Français is not the only foreign language group in Albuquerque. The Spanish conversation group on which it was modeled still thrives.
There are many new Meetup language groups. Among the long-term groups is the Albuquerque Italian Language and Culture Group, which was started in the early 1990s. The group meets twice monthly at Scalo Northern Italian Grill in Nob Hill and posts information on its Facebook page. The group also organizes the annual Italian Film & Culture Festival in Albuquerque.
“The groups offer a good opportunity to practice the language without spending the money to travel,” said Rav Nicholson, a member of several language groups, who speaks French, Spanish, Italian, German and a little Swedish.