Optimiste

Even though my French is pretty decent, I have become so used to constantly second guessing what I say, whether it's in terms of gender, agreement, vocabulary, pronunciation, etc., that I often forget that I'm not the only one making mistakes or constructing awkward sentences.  I recently was recently encouraged by the preschool aides when they discussed how they don't always feel they're good at French, even though it's their native language.  By that they meant that they sometimes have trouble with agreements (ie gender and number) or just with making awkwardly constructed sentences; both are trademarks of my French, so now I feel less alone.  Of course, I should have realized before this point that just because you're a native speaker doesn't necessarily mean that you speak your language properly (case in point: all the girls at Franklin County who talked about getting their hair or their nails "did" for school dances.  Fingernails on a chalkboard).  It's just that my mistakes are more glaring because of my (hopefully very light) accent.


Realizing that I'm not alone in my French mistakes is pleasant enough, but I really feel accomplished the times that I catch other people's errors.  Okay, so they're typically my students using the wrong irregular past participle ("li" instead of "lu", for example), but I guess you have to start somewhere. 


And now I get the point of this whole discourse: Tuesday when I was babysitting Felix he and I were doing our traditional races when he told me he would race me to the "optimiste".  There's an optometrist on his street, so while his proposal seemed a little bizarre I knew what he meant.  Then as we sprinted down the road it dawned on me: unless the optometrist is known for his incredible optimism, Felix had switched "optimiste" and "opticien".  The giggle this gave me may caused me to lose the footrace (or it could be the fact that F likes to give himself huge head starts--I'm talking at least 15 feet) but I don't care. I'm an optimiste.

Cheesecake

I'm sure that most of you all are aware that I spend my Tuesday nights and Wednesday mornings hanging out with an 8 year old named Felix.  The goal is for him to participate in his normal after school activities (chess, homework, building Star Wars ships out of legos to be destroyed in our battles) except in English.  What actually happens, however, is that I speak English to him 95% of the time and he either ignores my foreign babbling or (this is becoming increasingly common) responds, but in French.  Still, I can tell that he's understanding more and more of what I say to him in English, and he enjoys the I-Spy book I brought back for him from Christmas, so progress is being made.

Last night his mom (who speaks English really well and has even translated several books) joined us for a before-dinner card game of the bell-ringing genre.  A deck of cards each showing a different number of one of four types of fruit is dealt  and the players take turns laying down cards.  When 5 of the same fruit are shown the first person to ring the bell gets to take all the cards on the table, and the winner is the one with the most cards at the end.  Anyway, at one point Hortense was on a roll and kept winning our cards, so I commented, "She's quick!"  Felix apparently took note of this new phrase, because the next time she beat us to the bell he yelled, "Cheesecake!", thinking that was what I had said.  I guess I can see the similarity.  

Frenglish

Some of you may be aware of my appreciation of bizarre or poorly translated signs.  When the New York Times published their story on Shanghai's attempts to correct some of their worst "Chinglish" offenses, as well as the reader submitted funny signs from abroad, I definitely spent a long time chuckling over the strangeness.  (Here are the articles/photos, in case you're interested: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/03/world/asia/03chinglish.html?_r=1  http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/05/11/travel/funny-signs.htm )  Luckily for me, Deauville has a large number of strange signs for a city its size.  Below you will find what I've found so far:

I was very confused the first time I saw this one.  It took me a while to realize it was forbidding beachgoers (and people in general) to walk around downtown shirtless.  I thought it was part of the city's efforts against jaunty dancing in public.

Okay, so technically this isn't a sign, but I thought it was hilarious nonetheless.  Printemps, this classy store, put off-brand peanut butter, pancake mix, and maple syrup in its window display, presumably to make the Americans here for the film festival feel welcome.  Later I walked by and they had changed the display to include off-brand Caesar croutons and dressing.  Yum?

By the entrance to a hotel's parking garage.  The French means "Ring the bell and state your name and room number."  Pas pareil.

At the fish market in Trouville, which is so close it might as well be the same city as Deauville.  "Dwarf badger with hard fur."  ??????  My aunt suggested it might be a hedgehog.  I'm unsure.

 Also in Trouville.  I'll tell you what's unacceptable:  This sign!  That didn't stop me from taking a photo, though.

BON WEEKEND!