GUILLAUME TENAUD: VOULEZ-VOUS PARLER FRANÇAIS?

French Guillaume Tenaud is a Frenchman I have known for a few years now. We met in 2017, when I decided to start learning French. To understand, rather than guess by melody, the meaning of songs familiar from my youth, to watch French films in the original, to maintain a dialogue with an interlocutor in Paris... I can confidently say that many Russians simply "enjoy" the sound of the French language. And what prevents you, especially in quarantine, to start learning a new language, for example French! Guillaume was born and grew up in the small French city of Nantes (fr. Nantes), which is located in the west of France, about 50 kilometres from the Atlantic Ocean. I worked as a French teacher at one of the local universities. And one day decided to change his country of residence ...

How did you decide to move from a beautiful country like France to the Czech Republic and settle in Prague?

I have been living in Prague since June 2013. Before finally deciding to move to the Czech Republic, I visited Prague many times and I fell in love with the city. In Prague I started dating my girlfriend and it was difficult to maintain a long distance relationship. In the summer of 2013 I went to Prague to fully appreciate the possibility of staying here. And within a week I found a job in Prague and rented a flat.

Do you work as a French teacher in Prague?

I started as a consultant in a company. Now I am a private French teacher. I co-operate with two language schools in Prague and I give individual French lessons. My students are mostly adults who need to know French for work. Among my students there are also those who studied French at school or university and now want to maintain their knowledge of the language and have language practice. In addition, several of my students study French just because they like it, it is a kind of hobby for them. Many people who take private lessons from me are in love with French culture, they are fascinated by music, films... I should also mention that there are those among my students who dream of moving to France, that's why they study French with me.

I know that you are also a writer?

I have been writing all kinds of stories since I was a child. It's my hobby. And over time I realised that I wanted to publish my stories, I wanted as many people as possible to read them. In the spring of this year, in co-authorship with my friend Federic Claverie, I published my first book. It's a comic book called Sid's Key. I wrote the story itself, and my friend translated it into drawings (comics). The book is about a rather serious and important problem that exists in France through comics: when elderly people are alone, distant from their children and grandchildren, when no one in the house can help them and they feel very lonely.

Guillaume, did you study literature at university?

I graduated in modern literature at the University of Nantes, but I used to write down stories all the time. As I said, it's been with me since childhood. And I think I became a French teacher because I love writing, and of course I love the French language.

I remember when I was staying with a friend in Paris, in the lift I saw a notice posted in which someone had corrected a mass of grammatical errors with a red pen. Is French a difficult language for the French themselves?

This is another of France's big problems - the problem of schools. Currently, the teaching in schools in France is, correctly I will say, not good enough. Schoolchildren make a lot of mistakes both in speaking and writing. Undoubtedly, the French language is very complex, but there are rules, as in any language, which you just need to know. In French there are a lot of such rules.

Contacts: Guillaume Tenaud, www.francouzstina.fr

Text: Boris Kogut, photo: Paulina Skytova