Really Dumb Things I Have Said in French

My French teacher explained to us the other day that there is a difference between one’s competence and one’s performance. In other words, you can know the correct grammar and vocabulary, but when you open your mouth, it’s unlikely that you will actually be able to pull it all together and be comprehensible. Of course any of us who have ever studied a foreign language knows this to be the case, but it’s nice to be validated.

One unfortunate consequence of having my “competence” increase is that I have started to realize how bad my performance can be. I have learned enough to catch some of my most stunning errors. Unfortunately, it takes about five minutes for my brain to figure out what my mouth said wrong, so the opportunity to correct myself is usually long gone. Marty usually doesn’t say enough to say anything really stupid, so he is spared this particular form of humiliation.

You have all heard the expression that someone speaks “broken English.” Well I have broken French beyond repair. In fact I have crushed, corrupted, mangled, mutilated, muddled, marred, destroyed, distorted, trampled, jumbled and garbled the French language. What I have done to the French language should be illegal.

I am not completely alone when trying to figure out when I’ve said something really dumb. French people generally give me clear cues that indicate that I should perhaps reconsider a particular sentence. These cues most often come in the form of facial expressions that range from quizzical confusion to utter dismay. The most depressing cue, of course, is a response in English. It is at this point that one cannot help but feel that one’s French is beyond hope.

The other day I requested a particular type of bread at the bakery. (I, of course, had no idea what this bread was, but fortunately Marty and I, like sharks trolling the seas, are happy to eat whatever we can successfully purchase.) The woman behind the counter responded with more sentences than one would expect for such a simple request and gave me no bread. I tried again; the second time I made an effort to enunciate more clearly. She again let loose a stream of French, pointed to the very bread that I wanted but didn’t give me any. I again repeated the name of the bread I wanted, but to no avail. Right when I finally realized that she was telling me she was out of the particular bread that I was asking for, the nice man who was waiting patiently behind me politely asked in perfect English, “Do you speak English?” I was devastated. Having people resort to English is the lowest form of defeat. Buying food is one of the few things I can do in French, and even this small victory was taken from me. How was I to know that the bread I was looking at had a different name? There was a label. I read the name of the label. I should have been right. It’s not fair. Take the label off the shelf if the bread isn’t there. This was entrapment. I call a foul.

A similar problem happened at a different bakery yesterday (clearly bakeries are dangerous places). I read the label and requested the bread by the name on the label. Hey, I’ve been taking French classes for five weeks, I should be able to ask for bread by name without resorting to the point and grunt method of shopping. Well it wasn’t one name on the label, it was two. I basically said the French equivalent of something like, “I would like whole wheat or rye please.” Now why couldn’t they have just written a second label for the second type of bread? Don’t they know there are some of us who have no idea what we are asking for? We are label dependent. One label, one bread and make sure the bread is there if the label is there. Is this too much to ask? I am starting a fairness-in-labeling campaign to make bakeries safe for foreigners. Our motto: Save a foreigner: one product, one label

Learning a foreign language is obviously among the more humbling experiences one can have. I thought I would offer some of my most humiliating moments for your amusement. Here are some of the really dumb things I have said in French:

Will it cry tomorrow? (weather inquiry)

You bought me last Saturday. (To the woman I had bought our vacuum from the week before)

Stranger (in French): Where are you from?
My response: Yes.
Stranger (in English this time): Where are you from?
My response: Some United States

We can only hope that somehow the French language will someday be repaired.

We Know We Are in France When...

We know we are in France when we can get potatoes as a topping on our pizza.

Food? Vermin? – It’s All About Marketing

As we all know, French cuisine is renowned throughout the world. They say that the French live to eat; that food, its ingredients, preparation and consumption, is a national obsession. I take this on faith as I can’t claim any insight into their passion for food. I will say, however, that I am impressed by how indiscriminant the French are in their concept of what actually constitutes food. These are not a squeamish people.

Okay, we all know they eat snails. That fact alone is quite fascinating if one thinks about it. (I know a few of you would prefer to not think about it.) Who was the first person to decide to pluck a snail out of the garden, bake it with a little oil and garlic, perhaps sprinkle on some cheese and pop it in their mouth? Did the garlic come later or did they immediately see that garlic is inevitable if one is going to eat a snail?

What about slugs? Seems that slugs would be even easier than snails given that there is no shell to deal with. Why don’t the French eat slugs? One can imagine that slugs would be quite tender. You know someone must have tried one at some point in time, and perhaps they just couldn’t make it work. I am willing to bet the slug slime simply made the whole venture impractical. I have held a lot of slugs in my time, and, believe me, those slime trails are really hard to wash off. Of course there is always the remote possibility that slugs simply don’t taste good, even with garlic and oil. If any of you are inspired to forge ahead with some experimentation, please report in.

Then there’s the frog leg thing the French have got going on. Maybe they wanted another tourist attraction to enhance the experience of the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre? Christian, our landlady’s son, reports that there are giant frogs on the property next to us. Regretfully, this isn’t the right time of year for frogs and the neighbors reportedly aren’t that friendly, so the idea of popping over for a leg or two is out of the question.

Perhaps frog legs are just the French way of showing off? Are amphibians consumed in any other culture’s cuisine? I can’t think of any. I lived and traveled in Africa for two years and never saw anyone eat an amphibian. I did, however, meet a Peace Corps Volunteer from Cameroon who said he learned to pluck termites out of the air and eat them raw. They allegedly taste like ham. (You were dying to know that weren’t you?) But I digress, termites are obviously not amphibians. Do Asians eat amphibians? Asians also like to challenge Western notions of what constitutes chow. I’ve never been to Asia, so perhaps someone else could offer insight into the urgent question of whether there are any Asian cuisines that include amphibians. In any case, bravo to the French for breaking the amphibian taboo.

I’m not sure I can even touch the foie gras issue. You just know a bunch of adolescent boys were sitting around bored in the French countryside and one day decided to stuff a goose with feed. Surprise, surprise - that little bit of sadism made for some pretty yummy liver paste. Who says that evil doesn’t pay?

Now the frog, snail and goose liver stuff you already knew about. You may not know, however, that the French seem OK with eyeballs. They are not alone in the world to be OK with eyeballs. Gambians are definitely OK with eyeballs too. If I was to generalize, which I obviously am doing, I would have to say that Americans are not OK with eyeballs when it comes to their food. It is not immediately apparent why this is the case, but I have always assumed that this is because Americans don’t like to have their food look back at them. Perhaps it activates some Puritan-inspired guilt issues. I don’t know. But you should know that the French meat market includes chickens with their heads (and eyes) still on and rabbit carcasses complete with fresh, shiny eyeballs. The French are clearly a people who are not afraid to look their food in the eye.

It may surprise you that a discussion of the meat market brings us back to the topic of pigeons. You thought you had already heard all you needed to know about pigeons from previous postings didn’t you? No, you need to know that the French eat them. Yes, the meat market includes petite bird carcasses labeled “pigeons.”

In my limited investigations into pigeon consumption, I have received contradictory information, perhaps as a consequence of my inadequate communication skills. The woman at the market abruptly answered “Non” when I asked her if the pigeons she was selling were the same as house pigeons. She didn’t elaborate, and I didn’t probe further because I was preoccupied by my profound disappointment that there wasn’t an easy market for our patio pests.

Christian and I had a discussion about pigeons the other day when I found him on our patio shooting at our resident pigeons. (I have to confess that, although I have had several vivid fantasies about shooting the little buggers myself, I was a little uncomfortable when Christian actually took down three with one shot.) According to Christian, the house and market pigeons are basically the same bird, but the ones in the market are young. As you can probably guess, the meat of young pigeons is more tender than that of the tough, old birds that hang out on the streets (and above our patio).

Marty and I haven’t tried the pigeons yet, but we did eat some three-year old cheese. Now that doesn’t seem so bad in itself, but the rind of the cheese was riddled with a maze of tunnels that could rival the Big Dig. This particular civil engineering project was obviously undertaken by insects that had been chewing away at the cheese during its three years of existence. Unlike the unfortunate Bostonians, these little insects need not be concerned that their tunnels would collapse because three year old cheese is really, really, really hard stuff. In fact, when I inquired about this particular cheese at the fromagerie (translation: cheese-erie), the woman serving me dropped the cheese from a significant height to demonstrate its hardness. She had to ask her stronger male colleague to cut off a piece for us because cutting this stuff is like sawing through rock. Romney may want to consider importing some to reinforce those tunnels.

In case some of you are concerned that the weak American dollar has made us so desperate that we had to buy the old, insect-riddled cheese, I want to assure you that you don’t need to start sending us care packages yet. We actually paid a handsome price for the privilege of eating hard-as-rock, insect-riddled cheese. Yes, these somewhat questionable qualities come at a premium in France. I must confess that I had some significant doubts about the wisdom of my decision to purchase this alleged cheese when I was cutting off the dusty remnants of what was obviously a great insect civilization that could have rivaled any of the great ancient civilizations - the Romans, Mayans, Egyptians, Incas, Greeks, etc. (you get the idea). In fact, I was starting to wonder if this particular piece of cheese may have actually been left behind by a few Romans when they were last in France. Despite these and other doubts, we nibbled forward and happily discovered that this was really, really good cheese.

As a result of our experience, I am re-thinking whether it was wise to throw away those old, dried out pieces of cheese that I have found in the back of my refrigerator over the years. If I had kept them around longer, I may have been able to make a fortune, or at the very least, enjoyed a tasty snack. This may be worth some experimentation.

Finally, I have to tell you about the worms. Some of you may look at Marty and me differently after this particular story. My family, however, will no doubt find that this story simply confirms their worst fears. But this is a tell-all, no-holds-barred blog, so here it is – the full Monty:

Marty and I, without any coercion, have voluntarily eaten worms since embarking on our French escapade. They were little, white, clean looking worms, but they were, in fact, worms. Well, biologically-speaking they may have belonged to some other invertebrate family, but, unless you are a biologist, most of you would have identified these legless, headless, wriggling creatures as worms.

Our intention wasn’t to eat worms. We actually just wanted to eat our cêpes. Cêpes are wild mushrooms harvested in the forests of France. When thinking about cêpes, you must dispel from your mind the image of those little white, cellophane-wrapped, sterile button mushrooms that you find in American grocery stores. Instead, try to picture the wild looking landscapes in the Lord of the Rings movies. Cêpes are products of the earth (Middle Earth?), not some mushroom factory. We are talking big, wild, savage-looking mushrooms, complete with evergreen needles and moss sticking to them. These are mushrooms that proudly feast on the remains of the dead.

When the cêpes first appeared in the market, I knew immediately I had to try them. I went to a friendly looking cêpes vendor who told me how to prepare them. She emphasized that one should not clean them with water. Even though they are the dirtiest looking mushrooms I have ever seen sold as food, one is limited to wiping them with a towel and cutting off the dirtiest parts with a knife. I actually confirmed this with her later because I found it hard to believe that I wasn’t cooking a fair amount of dirt, moss and needles along with the mushrooms. She assured me that water was unnecessary, and they were fine as is. I think the reality is that I was, in fact, cooking a fair amount of dirt, moss and needles along with the mushrooms, but one must take on faith that this simply enhances the cêpes flavor.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. When I took the cêpes out of the refrigerator, in addition to the aforementioned dirt, moss and needles, there were also little, white worms crawling out of little holes in the mushroom cap. Hmmn, this posed a dilemma. Did I mistakenly pick an infested cêpe or were these worms supposed to be part of the cêpe’s package? I wiped off the little worms and returned the cêpes to the fridge overnight thinking that, with some luck, these were just a few isolated worms, and I wouldn’t have any more trouble with them. The next day, however, I found more worms crawling out of the tiny holes in the cap. Clearly they weren’t going to go away. We needed to eat though, and, like the three year old insect-infested cheese, cêpes are not cheap. I was against the wall and had to make a decision. I had been in France for a few weeks and felt that I had learned enough to guess that no self-respecting Frenchman would be intimidated by a few invertebrates. I went for it. I cooked up those babies and didn’t look back. They were yummy. Why, once cooked, you wouldn’t even know they had worms.

There was an uneasy part of me, however, that wondered if I had gone too far in my acculturation. As we used to say in Peace Corps, perhaps I had “gone native.” Looking for reassurance, I went back to my friendly, normal-looking cêpes counselor and asked her about the worms. I was careful to do this when no one was around because I didn’t want to scandalize her should it turn out that worms in cêpes aren’t OK in France. She assured me that the worms were “pas grave” and quite normal. In retrospect, going to the person who sold me the worm-infested cêpes was a questionable strategy, but I stand by her assertion that the worms are OK. Perhaps we have gone native, but it’s not a bad way to go.

Now before anyone looks down their noses at the snails, frogs, pigeons, insect ridden cheese, and worm infested mushrooms, one should really take a look at some of the ingredients in the average American supermarket food (or French supermarket for that matter). The list of ingredients is far less natural than a little moss and some worms. At least the frogs and snails don’t come from a chemistry lab (yet). I can only conclude that our ideas about what constitutes food, are really just a result of marketing. If snails, frogs, pigeons, old cheese and worms only had better PR people, they’d find a larger market in the U.S.

Hey - maybe I won’t be unemployed when I return home! This could be my niche...marketing vermin. If the job includes free samples, sign me up.

We Know We Are in France When...

We know we are in France when we can get sandwiches stuffed with French fries.

The Elephant in the Room

As our most faithful blog readers know, we have plenty of pigeons and spiders around here, but this is the first time I have been able to muster the courage to discuss with you the elephant. The elephant in the room is a behemoth. Its complexity astounds us. It creates terrific highs and humiliating lows. Like a new born baby - or a terminal disease - we are constantly thinking about it and discussing it. The elephant, of course, is the French language.

How does one even begin to talk about what it is like to live with a language that has made an adverb from the word “cow” (vachement)? (An adjective I could understand, but an adverb?) Marty and I discussed starting with a posting entitled, “Just How Bad Are We at French?” but decided that could begin a devastating emotional spiral from which we’d never recover. (Anyway, the answer is: really bad.) I was tempted to talk about French school, but that also is too demoralizing to begin this discussion.

I know that many of you are interested in hearing about French school, but to demonstrate the inadvisability of opening with this topic, I will offer just a small taste of the humiliation that we so casually refer to as French school: I have spent years of my life in French classes. I had French in elementary school, junior high and high school. I recently took two refresher courses at UNH. I joined a French discussion group last fall. I took an intensive French course in France a couple of years ago. I always did my homework. I studied for exams. I was a good student. I have French genes. Despite these efforts and genetic qualities, I am in a class called “Elementaire.” Yes, years of effort have put me only one level above Marty’s “Debutante” class. While being labeled a “debutante” may seem a little unworthy of Dr. I-have-a-PhD-from-the-University-of-Chicago Lee, keep in mind that Marty never had a speck of French instruction before coming here. As Marty gleefully pointed out to me the other night, “Hey I’m a two-week kid, but you’re a seven-year kid.”

He obviously forgot who writes the blog and that revenge is ultimately very satisfying. I therefore must reveal that I was pulled aside by the school’s Director and told that Marty, regretfully, had to take private lessons. (They would have told Marty directly, but he couldn’t understand what they were saying, hence the problem.) In addition, he was the only student held back in his class. Okay, so what if he came into the class weeks after the other students, it’s still hilarious. (He thinks it's funny too.)After struggling desperately the first week or so of classes, he was actually so thrilled to be held back that he walked around the school excitedly telling all the other students about his new status as the One Who Stayed Behind. (If this character appears in the next Harry Potter book, I’m suing.)

You can see for yourself that French school is simply too perilous to offer a suitable beginning to our conversation about French. No, I realized that I needed a positive, can-do topic to start our discussion, so I decided to begin by sharing with you some terrific French survival tips. Marty and I are paying a lot of money for French school, why not share the benefits with you? Then it hit me - I have only accumulated one tip in my three weeks of intensive French instruction. But I have to start somewhere, so here it is, my big survival tip for you (drumroll please): “truc”

Okay, so “truc” maybe isn’t as exciting as “voila!” It’s quite a bit more humble than “merveilleux,” and it is certainly not as pretty as “enchanté.” This one little word, however, offers you the world.

The word “truc,” which is simply French for “thingamajig,” is indispensable for those of us who are noun-deprived. There must be millions of nouns in the French language, but you can cover almost all of them all with this itsy-bitsy, easy to pronounce, miracle-word. (The remaining nouns would no doubt be covered by the French translation for whosie-whatsie, but that remains a secret our French instructors appear reluctant to reveal.) Now isn’t “truc” worth three weeks of four-hours-a-day French instruction?

I must tell you, with more than a little bit of pride, that “truc” gave me my greatest triumph with the French language thus far. With only one sentence I managed to successfully ask for those plastic, colored thingamajigs that one puts on keys to distinguish them. I didn’t know if France had those things. I didn’t even know how to ask for them in English. In fact, if I needed one back home I would probably just have asked my mother who, in a never-ending quest for even greater levels of organization, stocks these sorts of things. But Mom was not here to save me this time. “Truc” came to the rescue.

There I was at the cobbler’s getting some keys copied (hey this is France, the cobbler copies the keys – don’t question it, just accept it). In a moment of unusual courage, perhaps brought on by a chocolate high, I decided to go for it. I asked for the “trucs.” The man behind the counter was undoubtedly perplexed by my look of utter astonishment when he responded to my truc-inspired sentence by immediately turning around and producing a box full of those thingamajigs. How could he have known that I had just accomplished the impossible?

If The Graduate had been filmed in France, forget “plastic,” the word would have been “truc.” And now you know it too. A toenail of the elephant has been revealed.

Commuting and the Canal du Midi

For us, the adjustment to living in a large metropolitan area seems greater than the adjustment to France itself. Some of the lessons we have learned the hard way, like having Marty’s bike light be stolen the first day he brought his new bike into Toulouse or having the tip we left for the waiter be stolen by the guy who sat at the table after us. (We haven’t been totally naive, however, and, bought inexpensive bikes to use in Toulouse.) A big part of life in any big city, of course, is the commute.

We live on the Canal du Midi, a waterway that connects France’s Atlantic seaboard with the Mediterranean coast. The canal is lined by large sycamore trees and many little communities of peniches, the barges that were once used to ship goods when the canal was an active shipping route. The peniches are now primarily houseboats; many can be rented, a few operate as hotels and restaurants and one is even a discotheque.

Within a short walk of our apartment is Port-Sud, a marina that sparkles at night with these charming boats, reminding us of a Disney World resort. (This comparison would undoubtedly appal the French.) Even closer is the Pont Mange-Pommes, a gorgeous brick bridge that frames the reflection of the sycamores on the water. Our friend Georg describes the canal as a “piece of artwork” that winds its way through southern France.

The canal is an appealing haven from the hustle and bustle of city life in Toulouse. The bike and pedestrian paths along its bank attract people of all ages for recreation, relaxation and commuting. These paths are entirely flat except where they dip below the bridges that cross the canal or over the locks that move the boats to different elevations. The most fascinating stretch of the canal is where it passes OVER the highway. The canal is suspended at this point like any other overpass, and you can look down from the canal to the cars speeding along the highway. Highway users occasionally enjoy the bizarre experience of seeing boats pass over them.

We head off to French school each morning and join the commuters who cycle along the canal into and out of Toulouse. To us Americans, the idea of commuting on a flat, tree lined bike route completely isolated from traffic in temperate weather is a dream come true. Think how relaxing it must be, such a safe, easy and carefree bike ride. Wrong!

Our commute is teeming with hazards. It gives us a daily adrenaline rush as our bodies, genetically selected to respond chemically to life threatening woolly mammoths and saber-toothed tigers, face the dangers of the canal. It is during our commute that we know we’re not in Durham anymore.

To help you understand the dangers we face, let’s begin with the Daydreamers. These are the people who enjoy the canal, remarkably unaware of the rush of bicycles, runners and roller bladers around them. They may stop abruptly, unexpectedly move to other lanes, wander randomly while enjoying a conversation on their cell phone, or walk three or even four abreast, oblivious to the fact that they are severely impeding the flow of traffic along the canal route. I am in awe of their ability to relax while in constant peril.

Perhaps the penultimate Daydreamers were the two joggers who simply stopped one morning right in front of Marty’s moving bike. They rather inconveniently decided to try this trick precisely where the path narrows as it goes under a bridge, managing to block the entire route while one of them bent over to tie her shoes. Marty and I, still not completely hardened to the grim reality of the canal cyclist, came to a complete stop behind them. The native canal cyclists never allow themselves to come to a stop; in fact, slowing down in the face of such hazards is a sign of weakness and obviously discouraged. While we stood there, powerless victims of the Daydreamers, the Wicked Witch of the West came up behind us and through some sort of dark magic that defied the laws of physics, managed to squeeze past us, the Daydreamers and the on-coming bike traffic.

We see the Wicked Witch of the West (WW of the W) almost daily along our route. She looks remarkably like the evil woman who steals Toto and bikes across the sky during the tornado. (Marty, being the only child ever to have grown up in the United States without seeing the Wizard of Oz, simply accepts my word that this is, in fact, the case.) You no doubt remember her, for decades she has been the source of nightmares for young children. Our WW of the W, when she’s not squeezing past bottlenecks with Houdini-like abilities, likes to pass us on the canal and then slow down. She leaves the canal path at the same point we do, and we frequently stand beside her waiting to cross the street. Although she has to look in our direction for on-coming traffic, she skillfully manages to never look at us, not even briefly making eye contact. To make eye contact would suggest a weakness that she clearly will not indulge. Even worse, it may acknowledge our humanity and thereby compromise our current status as mere obstacles between her and her destination.

The WW of the W is a insignificant distraction compared with the Tour de France Wanna-Be’s, however. It is the Wanna-Be’s that introduce the greatest danger on the canal as they speed along at a reckless pace, determined to pass any unfortunate being that may be in their way. The most daring among them will ride without their hands on the handlebars while squeezing their way between innocent canal commuters.

While the Wanna-Be’s can be scary anywhere along the canal, we fear them most at the narrow, wooden footbridge. This footbridge is about four feet wide, quite comfortable for a bike to traverse, barely manageable for both a bike and a pedestrian passing in opposite directions, and, because of the width of handlebars, quite difficult for two bikes traveling in opposite directions. One morning, Marty was on the footbridge adjacent to a pedestrian moving in the opposite direction when a Wanna-Be, in a move that could be replicated only with the use of Hollywood special effects, managed to wedge himself between Marty and the pedestrian. It was a stunning act requiring a type of bravado that is actually quite rare in the gene pool (because the men who enjoy such genes rarely live long enough to pass them on to offspring).

In addition to the people hazards, the bike path offers a few physical hazards. There are the tree roots that jut across the path and the steep bank that, if you’re not careful, will land you in the green waters of the canal. Then there was the windy day when, surprisingly, a sycamore branch fell hard, startling me and painfully hitting my hand and handlebars. My first ride along the canal, I almost accidentally rode down some stairs (I don’t go that way anymore).

To get to French school, we have leave the “safety” of the bike path along the canal and find our way through the labyrinth of streets in Toulouse. Conveniently, the French seem to be rather loose about rules, at least when it comes to bicycles. Certainly staying to the right is optional for all non-motorized movement in France. Like all bike riders in Toulouse, we take advantage of the loose rules and ride the wrong way down one-way streets, go through red lights, intimidate pedestrians and ride where it says bikes are not allowed.

We weren’t like this when we left New Hampshire. We used to be nice, law-abiding people. We used to stop at red lights, slow down for pedestrians, travel in the direction of traffic and only go where bikes were allowed. Survival instincts have kicked in, and we have learned that, as cyclists, we have to fend for ourselves. The rules were obviously made by people who never tried to ride a bike through Toulouse.

Strangely, we have found that it is actually easiest to ride on the busier boulevards, which also give us plenty of opportunities for that adrenaline rush that we have grown so accustomed to. These roads have designated bus lanes that can be also used by bicycles. The trick, of course, is that you can’t get too intimidated by the massive buses that are barreling behind you, the cars abruptly turning in front of you, the trucks blocking the lane so they can unload, or the pedestrians that spring out when you least expect it. One particularly egregious offender was a medical services van that decided to speed around me, pull over directly in front of me and abruptly stop. I suppose if I had smashed into him, there would have at least been quick medical response.

We must confess that we enjoy this commute to French school. It requires skill, daring, concentration and more than a little bit of chutzpah. Marty’s commute will soon be reduced to a wimpy seven minute jaunt on the easy part of the canal as he foregoes French school in favor of working. I will then be alone to take on the Daydreamers, WW of the W, Tour de France Wanna-Be’s and any other comers. Bring 'em on.

We Know We Are in France When...

We know we are in France when Oreos are in the international food aisle (next to the peanut butter).