If you throw a foreign word or phrase Craig Merker’s way, he’ll probably catch it. The Grossmont College humanities student has taken courses in Spanish and German, and he learned Latin on his own; currently, he serves as president of Le Cercle Français, the college’s French club. That’s quite a distinction for a guy who’s only in his first semester of French at a two-year school, but Merker’s aptitude for language warrants it, and his enthusiasm does the rest.
If you throw a foreign word or phrase Craig Merker’s way, he’ll probably catch it. The Grossmont College humanities student has taken courses in Spanish and German, and he learned Latin on his own; currently, he serves as president of Le Cercle Français, the college’s French club. That’s quite a distinction for a guy who’s only in his first semester of French at a two-year school, but Merker’s aptitude for language warrants it, and his enthusiasm does the rest.
“French was just another language on the list,” he said. “But after I started taking it, I was thinking that this is really, really fun. It’s not easier than other languages, but it just stuck more, I guess.”
And then there’s its absolutely incomparable beauty, which for centuries has captured hearts and minds the world over.
Merker, 22, toys with the prospect of a linguistics major somewhere and has every thought of a trip to France one day–for now, he contents himself with the club, which is enjoying its latest resurgence on campus. The 15-member group touts a monthly French movie series (admission is free, and the public is invited), its field trips include excursions to area French restaurants, it seeks to launch a French theater group next spring and to partner in some way with the 100-member International Club, and most important, it recognizes no barrier between tongues. Knowledge of the language, Merker said, is nonessential for membership–a well-founded curiosity about things French is the sole requirement.
The 19,000-student El Cajon campus has seen varying degrees of success with such groups. David Milroy, Le Cercle Français faculty adviser and a Grossmont instructor since 1990, notes that a signature foreign study program was wildly popular for the 15 years it existed. Grossmont in Paris was suspended after 2007 in a move to redirect funding. And graduation affects the club’s stability, as interested students move on every two years.
Meanwhile, Milroy said, a new round of curiosity–and tentative talk about Grossmont in Paris’ resurrection–has taken hold.
“We have a great club this year,” he said. “Because we just happen to have great officers and great students in classes. You don’t have that every semester or every year. This club is really interested in a foreign study program, so the club is trying to bring study abroad back in onto the table, which I think is a wonderful idea. Nothing happens if you don’t push it.”
Other officers include vice president Alyssa Roth, secretary Jade Barber, treasurer Jack House and activities coordinator Christine Hunt. Janelle Wooster and Coree Molina represent the group on Grossmont’s Inter Club Council.
The San Diego County Health and Human Services Agency lists French as the seventh most widely spoken language in area bilingual households. The total of 8,165 speakers represents only 1.36 percent of the county’s bilingual population, but its influence has an impact on the area’s French-oriented marketplace. The nonprofit San Diego French-American Chamber of Commerce, established in 1996, serves as a networking tool between local businesses. Alliance Française de San Diego is part of a body of schools that promotes French language and culture worldwide; San Diego French-American School has offered immersion classes for students between ages 2 and 13 since 1988; and informal French-American social and professional groups exist by the dozens.
“Those things are out there,” Milroy said. “But we’ve never brought them in, because you want to be pretty substantial before you start bringing outside connections in, and to become that substantial, you have to have built over several semesters and several years. Well, we’re always just sort of getting to almost good, and then the people graduate, and then you start from scratch, or almost scratch.”
Nonetheless, the school’s efforts mark its programs as an equally legitimate community service. Its Associate’s degree in French requires completion of six semester courses, two attendant requirements and a complement of nonelectives, with the larger community the beneficiary.
“By being here,” Milroy said. “We’re affecting several hundred students on campus, and those people go out in the community, and so we have at least some influence.”
About those free movies. Le Cercle Français will present “The Intouchables,” the true story of a quadriplegic aristocrat, his caregiver and the life lessons each man learns, on Friday, Oct. 25, in Grossmont’s building 26, room 220, at 4 and 6:30 p.m. This is a seriously uplifting film, with all the refinement and good humor that mark French cinema. And while subtitles are fine, the language – one of Merker’s gateways to his consuming interest in the humanities – rivals the story in its intrigue, cadence and fun.
“If English were more beautiful,” Milroy said. “It would be French.”
For further information on Le Cercle Français, please e-mail thefrenchclub@yahoo.com or david.milroy@gcccd.edu.
