Wednesday 26 August 2009

A FAUX PAS IN FRANCE.

To completely misquote the well known Biblical phrase: 'It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for an old man to learn to speak French.'
I had been visiting France for many, years and, to my shame, had learnt only a smattering of useful phrases such as: 'A beer if you please,' and, 'Where are the toilets?'; the second question being a necessary adjunct to the first if you had used the former too freely.
As a young man and a student, 
'A beer if you please,' might have served as a pithy summation of my 'Weltanschauung', and had stood me in good stead, but the purchase of a dilapidated French holiday home in Normandy, in more recent times, meant my general ignorance of the French language would no longer suffice.
I therefore set about trying to learn to speak French, but I have made some notable blunders along the way.
Well before that though, I had already established a precedent at making a fool of myself in French.
My first sampling of the delights of France was a day trip to Paris, at the age of eighteen. Having run out of matches to light my roll ups, I consulted my English French dictionary, and then practiced for a while saying, "Une boîte d'allumettes s'il vous plâit." Having found a tobacco kiosk, I delivered my prepared line to the attractive young woman serving there, and felt rather pleased with myself when she instantly turned and retrieved a box from the display behind her. If I had left it at that, all would have been well, but, as she handed me the box, I said rather hesitantly, "Merci beaucoup," and she burst into hoots of laughter. She was laughing so much that she had difficulty in telling me how much I owed. Having paid her, I slunk away, thoroughly deflated, wondering what had been so funny.
Perhaps the reason that this incident has stuck in my memory for so long was because it remained an unsolved puzzle for over thirty years, until now that is....
Recently I came across, on a French related forum, a post by someone who had had a similar experience, and had had the answer explained to them. It seems that, in my hesitation, I had made beaucoup into two words, i.e. beau coup. That, and probably my pronunciation, had rendered my answer as:
'Thank you.' ...'Nice bottom!'
(That's the polite version, by the way.)

That my very first foray into the French language had resulted in me telling a perfect stranger that she had a nice bottom hardly boded well for my future endeavours as a French conversationalist....


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