Fun With Numbers…

Tags

ex-pat, France, French, funny, Humor, Immigrant, languages, Numbers

 

I thought I had the French numbering system worked out.

Even the nineties.

I’m currently working in a travel and tourism office in France.

I am now thinking of having a t-shirt printed with the legend ‘YOU CAN’T SCARE ME, PART OF MY JOB INVOLVES ME ASKING FRENCH PEOPLE FOR THEIR POSTCODES’

In case you are unfamiliar with the French postcode system, and are wondering what this sounds like I will use 94440 as an example. They will start with the ninety-four, this will then be followed by the four-hundred, they will then finish with the forty.

It looks easy when I type it like that, doesn’t it?

Now imagine that being delivered at a speed slightly faster than that of a bullet exiting a gun. Then throw in thick regional accents, beards, mumbling, sandwiches, pipes and dogs excitedly yapping while you try to decipher what has just been said to you.

I love it when people from Belgium come in. Because then when I ask them for their postcode, they simply say ‘Belgium’ and then I can just go on the computer and click on the box that says ‘Belgium”. Except it’s in French so it says ‘Belgique’.

I think it’s the best way to hammer home the numbers. You just need to make sure you’ve got some painkillers handy when you finish your shift – for your headache.

And the French are lovely. If I’m ever slightly dubious of what they’ve just said, I’ll hold up my little pad and ask them if it’s right. If it’s wrong they’ll correct me. And if it’s right they’ll look at me with a slightly fond look, as if they want to pat my head.

Or give me a sweet.

Yes, pretty much exactly like you would with a dog that’s just learned a new trick.

Another part of my job involves me taking their email addresses down via the telephone. I’ve mastered that fine art with relative ease – I pass the phone to my French colleagues.

The Honesty Of Kids…

Tags

children, English, French, fun, funny, Humor, kids, languages, school, Teaching

 

Teaching English today.

Little girl looks at me quizzically.

‘You talk English?’ she says, sat in my English class, blinking her eyes in confusion.

‘Yes, because I am English’ I reply.

‘But you talk French too’ she continues (blink, blink).

‘Yes, but I speak better English than I do French’ I counter.

(Blink, blink) ‘But you speak French well’ she says, making my day.

‘Thanks, I try my best’ I reply, feeling quite pleased with myself.

‘But not too well’ she adds (blink, blink).

I don’t think there’s anything quite as honest as a 7 year-old child.

A Very Poor Reception – But On The Bright Side My French Is Getting Better…

Tags

France, French, funny, holidays, Hotels, Humor, languages, Learning, Tourism, Travel

 

There’s nothing worse than rolling up at your holiday location for the week only to find that A) there’s nobody home and B) the number you have for them doesn’t work. These were the unfortunate circumstances we found ourselves in at the start of our recent holiday, and so headed over the road to a lovely hotel/restaurant with commanding views of the local lake, to seek help.

Upon entering I looked around and saw a couple sat down enjoying their late dinner (it was around 2pm). I assumed they were guests and bid them a cheery ‘bonjour!’. They responded, in a slightly nonplussed way, and got up to see what I wanted, frowns creasing their faces.

They weren’t guests. They were the owners.

After digging and probing them for a few minutes they begrudgingly offered up the fact that the owners of the gite we wanted access to lived at the rear of the property, and we should head there.

‘I told you we should have closed that door’ said the manageress to her husband as they stalked back to their dinner. I exited the building – walking past the sign that read ‘Bienvenue, ouvert midi et soir’ – and returned to relay the information to my partner.

Following our successful entry, and much warmer welcome by the couple who ran the gite, we decided to put the earlier experience down as a ‘one off’ and headed back over the road to the hotel. We tried their take-out menu, however we hedged our bets and just bought three portions of chips – nothing fancy, just something to keep us going.

It turned out the chef was also the manager. I discovered this fact because as I waited for the chips to cook I took a stroll around the building and – through the windows –  saw him walking around in the kitchen, gesticulating wildly and swearing to himself loudly in French.

I was glad I’d only ordered three bags of chips, and not the roast chicken too as I was tempted to do. Who knows what his reaction would have been.

After paying for the chips (‘Haven’t you got any change?’ the manageress said to me, after querying my paying of the 4 Euro 50 bill with a ten Euro note) we headed back over and scoffed them down (My partner dismissing my suggestion that ‘We should use a blacklight to check for bodily fluids’ as an overreaction).

Following a suitable rest we headed out to try the pool, something the kids had been harping on about since we arrived. We were shortly joined by the gite owners, who explained that they went for a refreshing swim every day with their guests, as it allowed them to have a chat and get to know them.

I swam down to the far end of the pool, which gave you a view of the hotel across the road and was probably about 15 feet away from it. As I paddled there the topic of conversation amongst us swung around to the owners across the road. I said that it was a shame that such a lovely building was run by a couple who were incredibly unwelcoming, and made you feel like you were an inconvenience to them when you went in. I did wonder if it was just us though, or maybe – more to the point – just me?

The gite owners both shook their heads and told us that it wasn’t just us and went on to inform us of many occasions when guests had been refused service, had been shouted at by the owners and how they had a low occupancy rate (despite the mayor of the village investing 800k Euros in upgrading the hotel in a bid to make it a ‘tourist trap’) solely due to the owners’ attitudes.

‘If they don’t want to run it’ I said ‘Why don’t they just sell it to people that would be happy with it and make it successful? You can tell they hate being there’. The gite owners agreed with me, then towelled themselves dry and headed back inside.

As I paddled back to the rear of the pool and my partner frolicked with the kids I heard a loud chirping noise, and looked over the rear edge of the pool to see the manageress of the hotel glaring up at me from the road.

‘I heard your commentary’ she screeched, before heading off back inside the hotel and slamming the door.

‘Hey’ I said to my partner, a smile spreading across my face ‘She heard my comments, that means she understood me, I guess my French IS getting better’.

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Being Interrogated By The French: Part Deux

Tags

English, France, French, Humor, languages, Learning

 

I enjoyed another great evening last night at the English speaking group (where I teach them English and they teach me French) which has swelled from the 6 attendees last week to 8 (or 9 if you count me).

 

Our chat ranged over a variety of subjects, at one point moving from Badminton, to Winston Churchill’s best quotes. One of the ladies that attends writes down phrases that she wishes to go over, and so asked me to spell out a particular word from one of the war-time PM’s famous sayings. She seemed to struggle with the English translation, so I switched to French.

 

This, however, meant I had to pronounce the letters ‘e’ and ‘o’, one of my weak points in French, which the group immediately noticed. I then spent five minutes practising how to pronounce them with Isabelle, the chemist, who was sitting opposite me. If anybody had passed the window at that point, and heard the sounds emanating from within, they would have thought that we were either A. Filming the world’s worst pornographic film or B. Re-enacting Planet Of The Apes.

 

Following on from this they also wanted to know if I could say the alphabet in French, which I said I could and, knowing they would ask me to anyway, I recited it. I was then treated to a round of applause from the assembled French upon completion of it and, when I told my partner about this when I got home, she started laughing. ‘They applaud you like you would a performing monkey!’ which, given the sounds I was making earlier in the evening, was quite apt.

 

Oh, and in case anyone is wondering, I’ve stopped ‘cutting them slack’ and was correcting their English at every opportunity.

A Selection Of Conversations I’ve Almost Had In French…

Tags

France, French, funny, Humor, Language, languages, Learning, stay-at-home Dad

 

I pass a gentleman on my daily run, I’ve passed him before and exchanged pleasantries with him. I’m actually walking today though, due to the heat, and he questions this and then, realising I am English, asks me how I came to be here.

WHAT I THINK I SAID:

‘I’m walking today as it’s too hot, so I’m doing a mix of walking, then running and so on. Yes I live in the village, my partner is French, and we’ve got two kids. We used to travel here a few times each year but it was a long journey for the kids, 13 hours!’

 

WHAT I PROBABLY SAID:

‘IT’S TOO HOT FOR ME, I’M ENGLISH, I WALK IT RUN LIKE THIS I AM LIVING HERE AT THE VILLAGE CENTRAL MY WOMAN IS HERE, MY KIDS ARE HERE THEY COME WITH US BUT IT IS LONG FOR THEM 16 DAYS OF JOURNEYS SOMETIMES A YEAR’

 

One of the other dads at the maternelle (the French equivalent of nursery) that my daughter goes to has noticed there is a problem with one of my car tyres, he shows me that there’s a rather scary looking split in the tyre.

WHAT I THINK I SAID:

‘My wife bought the car, the seller assured her that the tyres were new, clearly they aren’t. I’ll show this to her when we get home and get her to call the garage’

 

WHAT I PROBABLY SAID:

‘MY WOMAN BOUGHT THIS, SELLER TYRES NEW, HE SAY TYRES NEW, THEY NOT NEW? SHOW WOMAN TYRES WHEN I GO TO HOUSE. CALL THE MAN LATER’

 

I’ve decided to buy some flowers for my mother-in-law as a personal thank you from me to her, for looking after the kids and just generally being brilliant. I head to the local flower shop and browse, the lady who owns the place comes out to offer me help.

WHAT I THINK I SAID:

‘I’m wanting some flowers for my mother-in-law, not too expensive but pretty. I don’t have long to look though as I have to pick up my daughter from nursery. Sorry about the French, I’m English, do you take debit cards?’

 

WHAT I PROBABLY SAID:

‘I WANT CHEAP FLOWERS, FOR THE MOTHER OF THE MOTHER OF MY KIDS, CHEAP FLOWERS? CARDS OK NOT CASH? CARDS CASH? CHEAP FLOWERS? I AM ENGLISH MY DAUGHTER HAS TO BE PICKED UP, SORRY ENGLISH, CHEAP FLOWERS?’

 

I’m at the post office, I’ve bought a faulty item from England and want to return it to the seller, but I need to know that it will be tracked and signed for at the other end, I also don’t want to pay yet as I need the seller to pay me the postage first.

WHAT I THINK I SAID:

‘Hi there, I’d like to send this to the UK, it’s a faulty item and I need to get it back to the seller. I need it to be tracked and signed for at the other end. I don’t want to pay today though as the seller has to give me the money first’

 

WHAT I PROBABLY SAID:

‘HELLO HOW ARE YOU? I HAVE PACKAGE FOR SEND TO ENGLAND, BROKEN IT IS. SIGNATURE AND TRACKING? I NEED SIGNATURE AND TRACKING? WILL IT HAVE SIGNATURE AND TRACKING? IT WILL HAVE SIGNATURE AND TRACKING? GOOD. I AM NOT PAY NOW. I PAY WHEN MAN WHO SENDS IT TO ME BECAUSE IT IS BROKEN PAYS ME MONEY TO SEND IT TO MAN WHO SOLD IT TO ME BROKEN. I AM ENGLISH. I NOT PAY TODAY. WILL IT BE SIGNED FOR?’

The Top Five Tips On Learning French From A Stay-At-Home Dad…

Tags

Culture, France, French, funny, Humor, Immigrant, Language, languages, Learning, Parenting, stay-at-home Dad, training

 

There are many ways to learn the French language: go to college, listen to audio tapes, watch all Luc Besson’s back catalogue sans subtitles or get arrested for smuggling drugs into France – you’ll have plenty of time to learn the lingo then.

But for other, less obvious ways to pick up the language then read on as I – a fully fledged resident of the country for a whopping four months! – impart my meagre advice.

POWER RANGERS

Yes, you read that right, Power Rangers, the kid’s TV show featuring teenagers in lycra body suits that leave little to the imagination, fighting badly dressed aliens in poorly plotted episodes.

My French partner gave me this advice when it came to learning the lingo: ‘Just watch the news in the morning for half an hour, it’s what we did when we were learning English, and we soon picked it up’. I immediately dismissed this as I find the news A) Depressing and B) Boring. So I picked Power Rangers as an obvious alternative to this.

Yes for an hour-or-so a day (pah! more than the 30 minutes I would have spent on the news) I watch these 7 – 12 (I’ve lost track of how many there are) young kids fight the bad guys while talking in a context that I can understand. Each day I pick up more and more snippets and the phrases filter in. Not only that it gives me some daddy and daughter time, as she loves watching it with me too.

OK, OK, so I am now more prepared to respond to an international invasion by poorly designed monsters (and then fight them in a quarry/car-park/industrial estate), than I would be to say, discuss the Geo-political situation in the Middle East. Have you read any of my other blogs? That was clearly never going to happen anyway.

PLAY ONLINE GAMES WITH THE FRENCH

I play Belote. I play it a lot (copyright Phil, 2017). It’s available to play for ‘free’ on Facebook. I say free like that, in inverted commas, because they give you an initial amount of 2000 chips for nothing and, while you can get free chips everyday, there’s a definite sales tactic pushing you to actually invest in large amounts of chips.

Don’t do that, just get good at it.

Anyway, playing with the French is great because, as well as an array of emojis to indicate your mood at any given time, there’s also a text input option. This small window enables you to converse with your fellow players. And by converse I mean insult.

Yes, the only time this small text window is used is for insults to be hurled at other players. You will quickly learn what the following words are in French: Stupid, idiot, useless, dickhead, fuckwit etc etc.

Your education doesn’t stop at words though as the French are more than capable of string whole phrases full of insults together too, such as:

 

Vous etes debutante? – Are you a new player?

 

Vous ete  un batard inutile! – You useless bastard!

 

Pourquoi avez-vous choisi cette carte stupide? – Why did you choose that card stupid?

 

J’ai eu des rapports sexuel avec votre mere! – I have had sex with your mother!

 

Et votre pere regardait aussi! – And your father was watching too!

 

Yes the French take their Belote games very seriously.

BUY AND SELL ON FRENCH EBAY

I went through a phase, back in 2009, of buying vintage Transformers. I had a man-cave, in the loft. Then I had kids. Bye-bye man-cave, bye-bye Transformers. Something good that came from this though – apart from having kids of course, ahem – is that in the brief period between buying and selling these items, they had increased in value and thus I turned a tidy profit.

I’m applying the same rationale to vintage video games, I’m buying them with a view to selling them at a later date for a profit. They are also much easier to store as they are just games in tidy little cases, not robots with 18 legs that will break if you look at them funny.

One of the great things about using eBay France is that – surprise, surprise – all the item descriptions are in French. Thus you will increase your knowledge of words you didn’t know you would ever have a use for, but that can come in handy in many circumstances.

A word of warning though, when selling your own items you may be tempted to use Google Translate for the item description, this will get the point across, but a true French person will spot it a mile away. One item I sold led to me conversing with the buyer (or ‘acheteur’ as they are called, ooh! Look at me!) in order to garnish them with more information, and he actually told me that I ‘Could respond in English if I preferred’.

DON’T BE A COWARD AND GET YOUR FRENCH PARTNER TO DO IT – TAKE THE ITEMS YOU SELL ON EBAY TO THE POST OFFICE YOURSELF

Yes, pretty self explanatory this one because, if like me you live with a native French person the temptation is to just coast along and get them to do all the ‘hard work’ i.e: interact with actual French people. You must resist this and force yourself to ‘get out there’.

It may sound like a scary proposition, but once you start doing this it gets easier, a bit like taking the training wheels off your bike. It also helps that more than likely the people you deal with at the post office will be the same people that deliver goods to your door, so you will recognise them, and they you.

The rewards you get from this kind of interaction are priceless. My favourite, this week anyway,  was dealing with two different people at the post office on two different days. I had to return an item – to the UK – as it was faulty. But I first had to get the costing for it, then notify the seller, who would then reimburse me, and then I would be able to post it.

Two different interactions over two days with two different, and very helpful, French people, with little to no confusion on either side. All under the watchful eye of the work-experience boy who has picked a VERY bad week to be stuck in a not-particularly-well air-conditioned room.

Item successfully posted, language-skills and confidence boosted.

GO OUT TO THE SHOPS AS OFTEN AS YOU CAN AND TALK TO PEOPLE

This is not difficult for me, I have two kids, and they seem intent on eating their own body weight in bread, biscuits and fruit each day and drinking enough smoothies each week to drown a herd of cattle in.

When I say ‘talk to people’ here, I don’t mean strike up a deep, meaningful conversation – let’s not get ahead of ourselves just yet! But you can certainly pick up on the little things, the social niceties.

Also just looking around and listening to other people while you are queuing is a great way to improve your lingo-skills. You will have a lot of time to do this in French supermarkets as, for some reason, they seem to abhor the thought of putting more than two people on the tills at any one time – even though our local Intermarche has an army of staff members.

Even just reading the different signs, leaflets, posters etc will aid you in your training. Does that sound patronising? Sorry if it does but this is the thing you must remember – everything you read, hear or see can help you learn, everything. Just keep at it, it will get better.

Does Your Child’s Teacher Speak A Different Language To You…..?

Tags

children, education, France, funny, Humor, languages, political correctness, school, stay-at-home Dad

 

It’s 5.30pm on a wet and miserable Wednesday evening and I’m picking up my son from his after-school club. The club is a fantastic thing as it allows me to work within normal hours safe in the knowledge that he’s being well looked after and fed.

 

He loves it because he gets to play video games.

 

I ring the buzzer on the door and wait patiently for the door to be answered. And wait. And wait. In the end I have to go and bang on the window of the room that the kids play in, startling the children but gaining the teaching-assistants’ attentions.

 

This happens frequently; they say it is because their walkie-talkies are out of range of the door-buzzer; I say, they don’t like getting up and answering the door, hoping that the caretaker will do it instead (he often does).

 

So after being let in to the building by one of the teaching assistants I notice that she has a concerened look on her face. ‘Is your son’s mum in France* at the moment?’ I tell her that that is indeed the case. ‘Oh right’ she says ‘That might explain it then’. ‘Explain what?’ I ask her.

 

‘Well’ she starts ‘He was playing outside earlier on and he went in the wrong direction and made the wrong choice, his teacher asked him to make the right choice but he again went in the wrong direction’. I look at her, trying to decipher this statement.

 

‘So what did he do?’ I ask her. She looks at me like I have just been dropped on my head and repeats the same mysterious sentence.

 

Now, at the school my son goes to I have encountered this type of language before, when my son has been guilty of using ‘unkind hands’ and ‘unkind words’. That’s fairly self-explanatory, but I’m at a total loss as to what he has, or hasn’t done, on this occasion.

 

I think the rationale behind it is that teachers don’t want to outright describe the situation, they prefer to label it in a roundabout fashion. I’d personally prefer it if they just said ‘Your son misbehaved today – he was hitting Maisie over the head with a watering can so he had to go for a timeout’ – much easier to understand than the current method of cotton-wooling the facts.

 

I wait for the assistant to fetch my son and replay the conversation in my head. And I’m still none the wiser two minutes later when my son arrives.

 

The teaching assistant looks at me ‘We’ll put it down to his mum being away I think, hopefully he’ll go in the right direction tomorrow’. I nod my head in agreement at whatever it is this woman is saying to me and leave the building as quickly as possible.

 

We will be moving to France soon where the teachers most certainly will not speak the same language as me. But, in many ways, they may actually speak a language that I understand a lot more…

 

I did actually ask my son, when we got home, what he’d done. He is a typical six-year-old boy, so all I got was ‘I don’t know’. Later that evening when I Skyped my partner and relayed what had gone on she was similarly curious as to what had happened, and neither me nor my son could proffer an answer…

 

 

*We are shortly moving to France – more on that at a later date – and so she has started her new job already – one week she’s in France, one week she’s back in the UK, one week back in France, one week in the UK then we move over there permanently.

The Top 10 French Words and Phrases Most Frequently Used In Our House

Tags

children, France, Humor, kids, languages, melt down, Parenting, stay-at-home Dad

 

 

 

For the uninitiated – and if you don’t know by now, why don’t you know? – my partner is French. She tries her best to incorporate her language into our day-to-day life, as a way to keep it fresh in her mind, as well as teaching our children, in the hopes of making them – at least partially – bilingual.

 

Bearing in mind that my children are 2-and-a-half and 5-and-a-half years old, have a look at our current top ten French words and phrases.

 

1 Un

‘Non’ – meaning: No. Generally accompanied by one or many exclamation marks. This word is uttered several hundred times a day, is top of the charts, and will remain there for sometime.

 

2 Deux

‘J’ai dit non’ – meaning: I said no. This phrase will usually follow on the heels of ‘non’, pitch may be higher and louder. If child does not respond well to this then situation may escalate and use of ‘naughty step’ may be required.

 

3 Trois

‘Ca suffit!’ – meaning: That’s enough! Generally employed after the kids have been fighting beyond their allotted daily fighting time of 2 and-a-half hours.

 

4 Quatre

‘Ce’st pas vrai!’ – meaning: No way! I don’t believe it! You’re kidding! Mainly heard after one (or both) of the children have spilt their drink for the 30th time/dropped their food on the floor for the 16th time/completely uninstalled all programs of the computer and flipped the screen upside down for the 12th time (this has actually happened).

 

5 Cinque

‘Enfant penible’ – meaning: Annoying child. Applicable in a wide variety of circumstances e.g. eldest child wants to go on computer, and has now been whining the words ‘want to go on computer’ – with no pauses for breath – for 37 minutes.

 

6 Six

‘Arret!’ – meaning: Stop. Again, applicable in a wide variety of circumstances e.g. youngest child is stood in the kitchen, urinating on the floor immediately adjacent to her potty.

 

7 Sept

‘Mon dieu’ – meaning: my God. Picture the scene; you have just tidied the house top to bottom, both kids are sat happily having their tea, all is calm. You happen to leave their vicinity, stepping perhaps into the hall to adjust your hair, taking no more than two minutes. In that time both kids have emptied their food on the floor, knocked the table over, turned off the TV, taken all their clothes off and your daughter has urinated on the kitchen floor. Again. That’s when this phrase is uttered.

 

8 Huite

‘Vous Fatigeuz’ – meaning: you are tiring. Children are full of energy and can keep going all day long. This is because they are slowly draining the life force out of their parents.

 

9 Neuf

‘qu’est-ce que c’est’ – meaning: what’s going on? You are upstairs. You only came up here for a minute. Everything was peaceful when you came up here. The kids weren’t even in the same room. And one of them was asleep. But now both kids are crying. And they’re pointing the finger at each other. And the kid from next-door is now in the house as well. Who let him in? How did they unlock the door? Where are his parents? This is when you say….

 

10 Dix

‘Aller!’  meaning: go/hurry up. My children have two speeds: faster than the human eye can follow or – when you are in a rush and have to drop them both off at nursery/school before going to work – glacially slow. This entry will no doubt climb the charts, particularly when they hit puberty.