If I Were A Boy

Lately, I've developed quite a liking for Beyonce. There's something about her music that is just perfect for summer time weather, and so a lot of her songs have made it into frequent rotation on my iPod...Single Ladies (Put a Ring On It)....Crazy in Love....Baby Boy....all catchy and highly likable songs, and so I feel no shame in admitting that I quite like them. Beyonce is so fabulous that even the French love her, and they're a hard crowd to impress! Her songs are wildly popular here (the other day I heard "Independent Woman" for the first time in probably eight years), her face was all over the Paris metros this spring when she was hawking some Nintendo toy, and, for the most part, French people seem to respect her (it probably helps that she's married to a rap mogul...French people love their rap).

Proof that Beyonce is simply amazing? Her songs have become a touchstone reference for learning English grammar! Yesterday I was at work, making lattes and mindless chitchat, when A., one of my very funny french coworkers , started to 'sing' "If I Were A Boy". Imagine a short and compact, wannabe ghetto superstar, crooning the line "if i were a boy" with a heavy French accent....PRICELESS. Halfway through his solo, A. stopped, turned to me, and asked in a low voice, "uh, Steph, why is it 'if I were a boy'? Shouldn't it be 'if I was a boy'?" Seeing as all of my previous conversations with A. have almost exclusively been on the topics of how he's really a NYC gangsta (I'm not sure where his obsession with NYC comes from, but it's impressive how much he seems to know about the city, seeing as he's never been), how much better his English is than mine (given the nature of his question, I'm beginning to think that he might be right), and which one of us will be making more money in ten years, his question was way out of left field, and needless to say, I was completely caught off guard. Being a native English speaker, you would think that I would know the answer to the question, but I'm ashamed to say that I didn't have an immediate response for him! After a couple of minutes of pondering his question, I decided that as the only native Anglophone among the people working, I couldn't lose face and admit that I didn't know, so I did what every student would do when they don't quite know the answer: I made something up...I mumbled something about the conditional vs the past, blah blah blah. The truth is, in all of my schooling, I've never ever had a serious English grammar lesson beyond the most rudimentary issues (i.e. what's the difference between a noun and a verb?). Leave it to Beyonce to expose serious gaps in my knowledge of the English language! Just for the record, I have never been a fan of "If I Were A Boy", and yesterday's conversation has confirmed what I already knew: it's a ridiculous song.