A Brit In Need…

Tags

books, English, France, funny, Humour, Language, reading

I’m working in a tourism office in France at the moment. A desperate-looking English woman came in today. They usually look a bit desperate when they come in here. Either for an English-speaker or for the toilet.

Or both.

‘Can you help me?’ she says to me ‘I’m out of books, are there any bookshops round here that sell books in English?’.

I lean out of the doorway and scan the sleepy French high street for a WH Smiths, not finding one I report back to her: ‘No’

However not wanting to leave a fellow Brit bereft of books – especially as she’s here for two more weeks and she’s  read both of her John Grisham’s and her one (large) Harlan Coben* – I tell her that I will see if we have any at home.

‘My partner likes Harlan Coben’ I tell her ‘She’ll probably have a few tucked away, come back tomorrow and I’ll give them to you’ .

‘But you have to promise to take Fifty Shades Of Grey and Bridget Jones’ Diary as well’ I silently add in my mind.

She comes back the next day, a hopeful smile beaming on her face.

‘She didn’t have any’ I tell her, instantly crushing her dreams of detectives or lovers or vampires or aliens or whatever Harlan Coben writes about.

She looks so crestfallen that I tell her I’ve got some English-language books lying around she can have, but they’re nothing like Harlan Coben (or maybe they are?) but she is welcome to them. And some of them may be Fifty Shades of Grey and Bridget Jones’ Diary.

‘Anything!’ she says joyfully ‘I’ll take anything!’

She may regret that when she sees what I have found for her.

Have you ever seen such an eclectic mix of books?

 

*She showed them to me as some sort of ‘proof of readership’ or something, I’m not really sure.

 

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Lost In Translation…?

Tags

books, English, France, French, funny, Humor, languages, Learning, Linguistics, Sayings

‘Why are those two people going at it in that casserole dish’ I say to my partner, showing her an illustration of said people going at it in a book. ‘It says ‘passer a la casserole’ and there’s all arms and legs being flung about in a big casserole dish’. ‘Ahhh’ says my partner, drawing on her 30-odd years* of being an actual French person ‘It means ‘the one who is guilty”. I look at her then at the image. ‘Oh’ I say ‘That’s not what the group said tonight’.

Dial it back half-an-hour and I’m sat in the middle of my French/English group, leafing through a book called Ciel Mon Mari’ which translated into English is Sky My Husband it’s a book that Isabelle the chemist has agreed to loan me and is full of literal – very, very literal – translations of English and French sayings.

The French use this book as  way of learning the English language. It’s been in Isabelle’s family since she was little, and she’s dug it out of her parent’s attic to bring it to show the group, as well as to confuse the English guy.

It works.

It’s not until I get to page 27 that one of them actually makes any sense.

‘They are very, very literal’ chimes in Christine, noticing my furrowed brow.

‘Yes’ I say.

‘And they don’t all work’ she adds.

I nod my head in agreement. No, they don’t all work.

I see one that is meant to be the representation of the English saying ‘Raining cats and dogs’. That saying means heavy rain – I know, because I’m English, but just to be doubly sure I’ve Googled it. It doesn’t mean that you go out with an umbrella, and if the weather is particularly bad, cats and dogs climb on your umbrella and urinate on you.

I notice one with some frankly odd activity on it, and show it to the whole group. ‘Why are those two people going at it in that casserole dish’ I say to them ”It says ‘passer a la casserole’ and there’s all arms and legs being flung about in a big casserole dish’.

The group draws on its 300-odd years of being actual French people to inform me that it means to lose one’s virginity. They say this while laughing.

Or maybe cackling is a more apt description.

I look at Christine, as I put two and two together.

‘So does that mean that the casserole is…..and you put the sausage in the casserole…?’

She doesn’t say anything, just sits there nodding her head and laughing along with the rest of the group at the look on my face.

The missus isn’t sure she believes this group and is going to ask her mum for clarification.

I’d love to be a fly on the wall during that conversation.

 

*Ages have been changed to protect the innocent**

**Me***

***The term ‘innocent’ is here used in its loosest possible sense

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I Love T’choupi And Now I Am A Big Boy…

Tags

books, children, France, French, funny, Humor, kids, Learning

 

Today I had a good time as I went to the library and I read a good book called ‘T’choupi jardine’ and it was good because I understood every word and I felt that was a massive achievement even though my kids and partner laughed at me and the librarian looked at me like I was ‘different’.

 

I love T’choupi because he spends time with his daddy and they have fun and it is a great book and he helped his daddy in the garden and then they planted seeds and T’choupi thought his flowers would grow but daddy said ‘No you must wait T’Choupi’ which chuffed T’choupi off a bit but that’s kids for you. And daddy asked T’choupi to go in the house but T’choupi wouldn’t because kids never do what you tell them and he wanted to stay outside and watch his flowers grow but they didn’t because it was not time for them to grow yet which he would know if he had listened to his daddy.

 

I like T’choupi,  and I am a big boy now because I read the whole thing and I understood it all. OK, page 7 was a bit tricky but apart from that It was great and then I had a lollipop.

 

(Review by Phil, aged 41 and 3 quarters).

The Eyes….My God, The Eyes!!!!!!!

Tags

books, children, education, funny, Humor, kids, Parenting, reading

I’m teaching the kids, or trying to anyway, the joy of reading using this great book:

It’s a good book with lots of colourful images and helps your kids learn to read by making them match letters to their corresponding picture. An example of this would be the letter ‘L’, which your child then has to match to a picture of a lion and a ladder. We progress through the book, and it’s all good. Till we come to this page:

Below each letter is a small box of text, indicating which items/animals you have to match the letters to. Like this:

This all seems fine and we look at the page facing, to start matching up the letters and images. Then I spot ‘M for Monkey’:

Now I don’t think that image does justice to how disturbing this monkey’s eyes are – and I’ve seen 28 Days Later – so allow me to zoom in a tad.

Have I led a sheltered life? Do monkeys like this exist? Are there jungles teeming with these shark-eyed horrors? Or had the illustrator for this book had a bad day at the zoo? Maybe there was an incident involving a monkey, the illustrator and some excrement, so he/she decided to get their own back by creating this monstrosity.

Just to ensure you fully appreciate what I’m talking about have another look…closer…

Look at the eyes, look at them…it’s like it’s saying ‘You know all those virus-spreading monkeys from all those films? Well I’m worse than them. I’ll bite you and smile while I’m doing it, and my black, black eyes will be the last thing you see as you spasm and twitch on the floor, foaming at the mouth, till you vomit your own lungs out’.

Probably best that you close your laptop/PC down after you’ve read this. Putting this on the Web may have inadvertently given it power, and it might crawl out of the screen and kill you in your sleep, a bit like The Ring.

It probably won’t  but, you know, better to be safe than sorry…