May 21, 2004
Funny Accents
This anecdote may only be funny to Francophones, but I think anyone who knows a second language will be able to relate. I remember one time when I was in southern France, where the accent is extremely different from the Parisian French I was taught, I was trying to talk to the bus driver to figure out where my stop was for the hostel. When I told him I was from Texas, he naturally started talking about the rodeo and asked me if I rode horses. Of course, combining that cultural disconnect with the fact that I kept asking him to repeat himself made for a wearying conversation. I did learn a new phrase though.
Funny. One time while I was managing a certain Austrailian-themed restaurant in North Texas (thank god those days are over), I was standing behind the bar chatting with four Quebecois in perfectly fluent French. On the whole, I'm certainly not fluent, but given certain avenues of conversation, I can fake it pretty well. Anyway, we had been chatting for some time without incident when, at the very end, on their way out the door, one of them asked me "Quel est tonneau?" I was lost and asked him to repeat it several times. Usually, when it is clear to the native speaker that you don't speak french that well, and you miss something, they will switch to English quickly to avoid embarrassment. In this case, though, I had built up enough confidence that, instead of asking in English, he kept repeating the same phrase in French (with varying emphasis): "Quel est TONNeau?"
Well, short story short, I am an idiot. He was aksing "Quel est ton nom" and eventually had to ask in English what my name was. Every once in a while that happens; a competent conversation spanning a number of topics, and then I get stuck on some first-year French. Very embarrassing (the other bar patrons didn't know what to think). Like the blogger that mall linked to, I was racking my brain to think of what strange, colloquial expression might be meant by "tonneau." Live and learn.
Damn those Quebecois with their backwoods French. They should all learn to speak like proper Parisians. As a related story, I work with a French-Canadian. One day, one of our mutual coworkers was asking him to translate some song titles (Celine Dion sadly enough) and there was one that he (the native French speaker) was having trouble with—"Je suis mon coeur". It made me happy to translate it properly for them immediately. Score one for the Amurricans!
I don't understand--how was he having trouble with that? Is there some obscure meaning to "Je suis mon cœur" or maybe some well-known Dion song titled "I am my heart"?
"I am my heart" makes no sense. It's "I follow my heart".
Wait, were you saying that it's suivre instead of etre should have been obvious to him? If so, I agree, but it wasn't for some reason.
No, I didn't understand either. You didn't indicate that "je suis mon cœur" wasn't the real title of the song, or that it was not read, but spoken in a manner that one would question its veracity. Either way, I can understand the mistake--dropping that almost inaudible "v" sound is pretty common.
No, the title actually is "je suis mon coeur". The first-person singular of "suivre" is "suis".
Well I'll be damned. I wonder if I've ever said "ouais, jsuiv le rue chez moi" or something. Geez. Je suis; tu suis, il suit, nous suivons, vous suivez, ils suivent. Que jsuis imbécile.