It's all too easy to say stupid things when you're speaking a foreign language. Here are a few of the choicest mistakes that I've made since I arrived.
"My Father is at a reading in Australia." In French, the word conference means lecture, the word lecture means reading, and the word congres denotes a conference. I'm so used to second-guessing myself in this tangle, that, when I tried to explain the reason my Dad was in Australia, I used the word lecture. M. Avertin found this very amusing, that my Father had gone all the way to Australia, just to read.
"I came on top of an airplane." The French are much pickier about prepositions than we tend to be. For instance, when speaking of travel and transportation, on an airplane, for instance, a person travels "en avion," but a package or postcard is sent "par avion," whereas in English, both people and objects can come and go "in a plane," "on a plane," or "by plane." I have made both possible mistakes when describing my own itinerary, saying I came "sur un avion," which implies that I was hanging onto the exterior, and that I came "par avion," because I remembered that that's how French postcards are stamped. People, however, never, ever travel "par avion."
"The movie was a real ship." If a movie is a real failure, in English we say that it was a flop. In French, one calls such a movie, idiomatically, a navet, or turnip. I once tried to describe a French movie I thought was really, really stupid (so stupid I stopped watching after the first 10 minutes), using this idiomatic phrase, but accidentally called the movie a navire, instead, which means ship, and is cognate with the English word navy.
"No, I won't be braided." This is just a slip of the tongue; I was trying to tell someone that I would have plenty of time for a future activity, and wouldn't be in a hurry (presse). However, instead of saying "Je ne serai pas presse," I said "Je ne serai pas tresse," which means "I won't be braided!"
"Baldwin IV was a leprosy." I was describing a book I read about the crusades, Les Croisades Vues Par les Arabes (The Crusades as seen by the Arabs) by Amin Maalouf, and I remembered that the crusader-king Baldwin IV was a leper, and vaguely remembered the term "lepre;" so I wrote that he was "lepre." As it turns out, lepre means "leprosy;" I should have written that he was lepreux, meaning both "leprous" and "leper."
"I want to buy some postage stamp." This one was quite understandable, I think. Here, when one wishes to buy additional time for one's cellphone, one goes to the post office; I didn't know the procedure, so I went to the counter, and asked to buy temps, or time; unfortunately, I over-pronounced the word, and the clerk thought that I was trying to buy timbres, or postage-stamps!
"In need the book for a plan." False cognate! I wanted to say "project," and the false cognate projet came out instead, which just means "plan." This did not prevent me from purchasing a copy of Voyager au Moyen Age (Travel in the Middle Ages), however! Given the book, however, perhaps the bookseller would have thought I was planning a medieval-style voyage, had I not clarified myself.
Signs for tampons -- There are many stores here that advertise that they sell tampons. Nick was recently rather confused about this, and brought it up. Tampon, however, is the word for "rubber stamp," although the word can also have the same meaning as its English homograph.
It's surprising to find one's one language in italics. There are some words which the French have been borrowing for quite some time from the English language. One finds businessman in Le Petit Prince (1943), and pickpocket in Le Secret de la Licorne (1943). Other terms are self-made man, gentry, turnpike, stop, OK, leader, black [people only], coming-out, fliers, and even motherfucker. Almost every single one of the plays I've attended (not the 17th- or 19th-century ones, however) has a moment or two of imported anglicisms. More than once, characters have implied that the only English words they know are the threats made in Hollywood cop-films. French people also make almost no effort, I've found, to pronounce English proper nouns correctly (we aren't too different -- try talking about Victor Hugo, and you'll know what I mean). A beggar who sat down next to me tried to tell me that he like the American actor Will Smith, which he pronounced Wi'smiss; another time a store clerk, who was showing off how well she knew English by speaking to me in Franglais told me she was going to Monoton in a couple of weeks. It took me some time to realize that she was trying to say "Manhattan." My professor of the contemporary Arab world, when speaking of the the historian Jane Hathaway once tripped up, and said "Hasaway." I can forgive 100% the vowels, which are just due to an accent, and I can also well understand the occasional difficulty with th- sound, but the elision of the h is just due to laziness. Meanwhile, it's really my r, my u, my grave e, and my ou that give me away as a foreigner. Grenouille (frog), justicatif (legal proof), disponible (available), indispensable (necessary), agrume (citrus fruit), and carotte (carrot) have all given me trouble in pronunciation.
My Dad once explained to me that in linguistics, one speaks of different "registers" of words -- that is, words united by their theme, such as a "legal register" or "medical register." As someone taking a lot of history classes, I've been obligated to learn a fair amount of what I'll call the "agricultural register" -- I've been obligated to learn, for instance, the names of every single cereal crop, as well as words for such terms as "fallow," "flock," "yoke," "shear," "sharecropping," "bridle," "sow," "land [commercial sense]," etc. Virtually all of these words are different (except millet) from their English equivalents, probably because when the Normans took over England, they commandeered the justice system, changing all of the legal terminology (which is why you're charged for "larceny" in court, rather than "theft"), but allowed the peasants continue to sow wheat (semer froment) and to shear their herds (tondre les troupeaux).
There is one register (OK, it's not really a register) that is almost identical in French and English, and I can't figure out why. If anyone can offer some helpful hints, however humorous, I'd be interested. Many names for cats are the same in both languages. Here's a list:
chat - cat
tigre - tiger
lion - lion
panthere - panther
lynx - lynx
puma/cougar - puma/cougar
ocelot - ocelot
~JD
"Mais a la fin du XIe siecle et au cours de la permiere moitie du XIIe, les peages sur les rivieres, comme les peages terrestre, se multiplient, ce qui indique un essor de la circulation" [But at the end of the 11th century and in the course of the first half of the 12th, the river tolls, as well as the terrestrial tolls, multiplied, indicating a great increase in traffic (Jean Verdon, Voyager au Moyen Age, 42).
No comments:
Post a Comment