In 9th & 10th grade, Ms Cacciatore attempted to teach me & a bunch of rowdy teenagers the finer points of speaking the French language. Despite the fact that it had been nearly 14 years since those days, I felt confident in my skills & was excited to put them to put them to the test during our trip to the very France-like city of Montreal.
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The “Bonjour!” rolled off my tongue, almost convincingly, as we hopped into the cab at the airport. “Je voudrais… we’re headed to… um… Auberge du Vieux Port. Um, in Vieux Montreal.” The cab driver looked at me in the rear view mirror, unsure of what exactly had I said.
“Um, l’hotel Auberge du Vieux Port?”
The car started forward & not another word was spoken.
We pulled up in front of the hotel & as I handed the driver my money, a chipper “Merci!” escaped. It was not met with a warm smile.
Hmm… apparently my French wasn’t as good as anticipated.
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“We’d like to try poutine,” I told our Tourism Montreal tour guide.
“What?,” she exclaimed.
“Poo-taine,” I said again, more cautiously.
From the backseat B chimed in “Fries with gravy!”
The tour guide laughed. What I was asking for was not fries with gravy, but a female prostitute.
Poutine, fries with gravy & cheese curds, is pronounced like Russian President Putin.
Hmm… French definitely not going as well as I had planned.
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By day three, the “Bonjours!” were rolling off my tongue left & right, like a native Parisian. “Salute!” I’d quip as we walked in & out of stores. Waiters would get excited, thinking they could speak French, but after our initial exchange, once we got past the “Bon soir – ca va?,” once they started speaking rapidly in a language that sounded nothing like French, I’d scrunch up my nose &, ashamedly say “Anglais, s’il vous plait…”
I never did figure out how to correctly pronounce the name of our hotel the name of the street we had dinner on several times, but found if I said it quickly & mumbled, cab drivers seemed to understand what I was saying.
So, bottom line Americans & other English speakers: speak quickly+ mumble = authentic French!
I think Ms Cacciatore would be proud.
This post made me smile. Being Canadian I was required to take mandatory French classes for three years (from grade 4 to 6), but I actually took French class all the way through to grade 12. I haven’t really spoken any French in about ten years, so I’m sure I’d probably make some funny mistakes with my French as well. I worked at the airport in Edmonton for a few years, and one time I was trying to put my French to use. I meant to tell a passenger “une moment s’il vous plait” (one moment please) but instead I spoke in Spanish (which I only know a few phrases of) and said, “uno momento por favor.” Oops. At the time it didn’t register why the person just stared at me like I was crazy, but looking back it makes me laugh. There’s always bound to be some things lost in translation, and having a sense of humour about language mishaps always helps.
As an aside too I’m not a French expert or anything, but I do understand that Quebecois French is a bit different than the French spoken in Europe. I believe Quebecois French has more slang in it, and even the vocabulary and pronunciation of certain can sound different. So if you learned European French in school (and being from the US that’s probably likely) it might make a difference in why you had a hard time (that and the time factor) with the French in Quebec.
We were told, while we were there and before we came, that the French we learned in school was likely going to be very different from the Quebecois French :) It was still fun to try though!
I had the same issue in Paris when I said “Bonjour” in the airport and the person at the desk began replying in fast, fluent French. I couldn’t understand him at all, but spent the rest of the trip gloating over the fact that he thought I was French!