French Tease

By Mollie Coyne

Pardon My French!

Before we moved here, I spoke no French.  In an effort to teach me, Andy would give me dictations.  I had never heard of a dictation before.  Apparently the dictée is a common feature of French education.   I didn't see the point.  You don't learn English this way.  You don't learn Spanish this way.  Why learn French this way?  Andy told me that French is a very particular language and each word has just one way that it can be pronounced.  There are no variations.  If you slightly mispronounce one word, you're actually saying another word altogether and you won't make any sense.  Not so much in English: you say tomayto.  I say tomahto.  But we're both picturing a big, red vegetable.  Or fruit. 

I once slightly mispronounced the French word for "when" in a conversation with my landlord and his face turned beet red.  I'm not going to explain this to those of you who don't know what I'm talking about. 

So Andy and I would do our dictées and now I have a very good handle on pronunciation.  Or so I thought. 

A few years ago, I took the RER C train into Paris to see Lance kick-off his number 4 at a time trial under the Tower.  On the train, I helped some Indian tourists figure out which stop was closest to their hotel.  At one point, the man calmly told me that a teenage boy had his hand in my bag.  My bag contained my passport, a huge wad of dollars (worth something back then) that I owed a friend for exchanging euros, my Nikon N90s, my Nikon FM2n and several lenses. 

Maybe it was the pregnancy hormones or maybe I was channeling some Lanceness, but he was not getting away with this.  We had just moved here and I spoke very little French.  I pulled his hand out of my bag and started yelling at him in English.  Within seconds, two of his "colleagues" emerged from different ends of the train car to offer him backup.  I found myself facing three teenage hoodlums.  Angry teenage hoodlums, no less.

The Indian tourist said, "Oh, I read about this in our guidebook-they always mug in groups of three on the trains.  How interesting."  How interesting, indeed.  He could have told me this before I started yelling! 

Three versus me. 

I decided to keep up my soliloquy, worried that if I stopped I might give them time to think and act.  I needed to keep up the tempo until we pulled into the next stop, so I went into a completely nonsensical rant.  I looked like a full-throttle psycho patient, on speed.

The three robbers were dazed and confused and started backing towards the door as I walked towards them yapping.  At the next stop, when the doors opened, they ran out.

It was high time to learn how to properly tell someone off in French. 

I asked friends for assistance, but the strongest I got was laissez-moi tranquille.  Ooh, what does that mean?  It means "leave me alone".

Big deal. 

I tell Andy to leave me alone all the time. 

Why exactly do we call it "French" (as in "pardon my French") if they don't even have any of it in this language? 

And then last Saturday morning in the doctor's office I finally learned some.  We were in the waiting room where there's a small Ikea children's table in the middle with little cups for markers and a small stack of pirated Disney and DreamWorks coloring sheets that the receptionist printed off the Internet. 

When it was time to go the kids couldn't be pulled away from their coloring.  Since it was a Saturday morning, the waiting room was full of families with parents watching and, I assume, judging my parenting skills.  I could tell a battle was going to ensue. 

Three versus me.  Again. 

I stood up to tell the kids we have to go.  Being surrounded by local families, I didn't want to embarrass the kids by being Foreign Mom, so I spoke French.  I think we all know this was probably a bad idea.  I wanted to tell them they could bring their coloring sheets with them and finish by using the markers we have at home.

"Venez", I said, clapping my hands to get their attention.  "Nous avons plein de feutres chez nous." 

Only I didn't pronounce it properly.  I didn't say feutres.  I said foutres. 

Oops.  Turns out the f-word in English is also an f-word in French.  And I had just yelled it at my kids in public.  And completely out of context, like the Foreign Mom I am.

While they look similar and even sound similar to Anglo ears, they sound worlds apart to French ears and when I said it, most of them, along with eyebrows, perked up.  I was oblivious. 

Andy immediately clued me in.  I was embarrassed, but then realized two things.  First of all, my kids did not react, so they were just as clueless as I was and so no harm done to anyone in my family and second, I just learned my first French French word!