Le Franco Phoney

Flicking through a catalogue the other day, I spotted these door puddings! Okay, they’re draft stoppers, but the description says “boudin de porte” which translates to “door pudding”.

In France, draft stoppers are indeed called door puddings. If only the captions on the door puddings were as great as the name. Instead, the captions are merely functional. There’s “Reduce air currents” and “Permit to fill big spaces” in French, and an English one too, which says “Most Important Room”. What? Who looks at a draft stopper for that information? There’s also some dog paw prints, which might work better if these were called sausage dogs, but they’re not.

No, these are door sausages. I’ve come up with some catchier alternatives. What about:

• Boudin de boudoir (room pudding)
• C’est meilleur chaude (it’s better hot)
• Chipolata faite maison (home-made sausage)
• Winter warmer (the token English phrase replacement)

In just ten minutes, I think I’ve come up with better captions than the ones printed, and I’m sure there are far funnier ones out there,  just waiting to be printed on a boudin de porte. Do you have one?

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Pictured are some walkie talkies, or, as they’re known in France, talkie walkies. The French are proud of their language, and rightly so, and they go out of their way to create new words so the English language doesn’t take their language over. In fact, they even have the Acadamie français, with 35 current ‘immortals’ who get to wear funky outfits while they toy with the idea of replacing recent English words (like ‘software’) with made-up French words (like ‘logiciel‘).

Yes, these people are called ‘immortals’ by the French due to their contribution to the French language. I imagine they had heavy hearts when the French government decided to change all ‘Arret‘ road signs to ‘Stop’ signs. They’ve also given into the French usage of ‘weekend’ and ‘wifi’ (pronounced ‘whiffy’), which is a major bonus when playing Scrabble in French.

But these are exceptions. When a new English word barges nonchalantly into the French language, the immortals are on the case toute suit. They come up with an entirely new word that sounds French. So what happened with ‘talkie walkie‘? Of course the French pronounce it with an accent which sounds cool and hilarious in equal measures, but it doesn’t sound at all French. I can only presume that they’ll be called something completely different within a few years.

But for now, we can all rejoice in the talkie walkie. Rejoice with me by listening to the recording! What do you think?

It’s been a while since I wrote about the absurdity of the Kinder Bueno advert, which stars tennis champion Jo Wilfried Tsonga. French television advertisements are the usual mix of brilliant, funny, cheesy and terrible that are seen throughout the world, and Kinder seem to be the experts at terrible.

It’s not the acting this time, nor the ridiculous situation. Can you guess what’s wrong with the advertisement below?

It’s the lyrics to the song. Here’s a little boy accepting chocolate from a grown lady, with the lyrics: “If we sleep together would it make it any better?”

Okay, France is not an English-speaking country, and that’s clear whenever I hear the F word on the radio or see French kids singing along to Lilly Allen’s song “F**k you very much” in the supermarket, but it’s not as if no French person understands the meaning of these lyrics — reading through the French comments for this clip on YouTube makes that clear (although one person is adamant that it’s all about innocently sleeping beside someone). Did nobody involved in launching this ad consider looking up the lyrics just to check that they would be appropriate? Or am I looking at this the wrong way? Is this actually an extra dimension of humour added for the adult viewers who can chuckle along while their kids sing words they don’t understand? Or is it really just a dumb mistake? What do you think?

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The other day in Annecy, I was sitting by the lake and watching some ducks. I was also watching three boys wading through the shallow water throwing something at the ducks. At first, I thought it was food. They were throwing stones. Aware that a large stone could severely injure or kill a duck, I looked around for the kids’ parents and hoped they would notice what the kids were doing.

If I had been in an English-speaking country, I wouldn’t have waited, but that’s the thing about learning a foreign language: the nuances make all the difference. Even if my French is word perfect, how do I convey the right amount of sternness in my tone? How do I pick the words that convey the sentiments. In our brains, our mother language thesaurus started growing when we were babies, but my French language thesaurus only began around five years ago. The appropriate words might not be the ones I’m really looking for. And on top of all that, what do I do if the kids yell something back at me that I don’t understand?

As I sat there wondering why it was taking me so long to react, I realised I was scared. Confrontation doesn’t really bother me, but in another language — and with kids who are already being naughty — it made me hesitate. But what’s more important? Me looking like a fool by saying the wrong thing in my second language (and that wouldn’t be the first time), or trying to stop ducks getting maimed or killed? I walked over and told the kids off, wondering why I’d chosen ‘tu‘ (used for kids or those you know well) instead of ‘vous‘ (used for plural, even when kids) to tell them off. I explained in dodgy French what might happen if they hit a duck and told them to stop. They replied in perfect French and I walked away.

Did they stop? No. As I turned back to check, one held a stone ready to throw. He saw me and put his arm back down. Then I heard one of them say: ‘It was him’ in English and I realised they were English kids. Damn! I could have told them off in perfectly good English, with all those well-picked words and correct intonations and so much less effort! A quick look around led me directly to the boys’ mother, who I know, and the kids finally stopped throwing stones.

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Superdry. When I hear the word ‘superdry’, I think of nappies. Don’t you?

Of course, there’s the clothing company with the same name, and they like sticking their logo on their clothes, as clothing companies do. Thanks to this clothing company, I was sprung. Properly sprung. Here’s how.

Walking in Annecy yesterday, a girl five metres in front was wearing some loose shorts with a massive ‘SUPERDRY’ logo plastered across both cheeks. Their bagginess just added to my nappy thoughts. The shorts themselves were yellow.

I commented in English to my friend: “See, those shorts say to me ‘Look, I haven’t peed my pants’.”

The girl wearing the faux nappies looked around at me then looked away. Her look wasn’t angry. Maybe she hadn’t understood. Maybe it was coincidence that she looked so soon after my comment. But maybe it wasn’t. I just don’t know.

What did occur to me is that it’s all very easy to chat in an alternative language and forget that others around might also understand. Here are a few anecdotes:

• A French friend in Australia was on a train while two other French girls discussed her clothes and style. When she stood for her stop, she said in French that they weren’t the only two people in the world who spoke French. The two girls were speechless.
• Swimming in the La Clusaz pool a few years ago, two English women talked loudly about their racy sex lives (far too racy to detail here), giving their partners’ names and listing their favourite sexual acts in the process. I was tempted to ask them for the time when they paused but did another lap instead.

Have you ever been sprung or sprung someone else?

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The late-night kebab is a much-loved snack in many parts of the world, and France is no exception. Here we have a kebab van, with a name that’s probably okay in French. Yes, it’s in France so it shouldn’t matter that it’s funny in English, but I bet a few French people have giggled at seeing a restaurant named ‘Zizzi’ in England (which in French means ‘willy’). And so I feel I can do the same when I see French signs that wouldn’t last long in English-speaking countries. Take ‘Musti Kebab’ here. Apart from that rust or grease or whatever it is on that middle section of the van that opens up for sales, I’m not sure I could ever buy a kebab when the word ‘musty’ is playing on my mind. I’d be picturing meat covered with mothballs and some sort of green, dusty coating.

In fact, I’m not sure I would have ordered orange juice last summer, had I known I’d get this particular brand, pictured. Who wants to drink loser juice? That’s a tad childish, perhaps, but this is one reason behind so many product names having feel-good words like ‘premium’ and ‘care’ in them. Just when I thought I wasn’t falling for it, I found myself taken aback by a bottle of orange juice and sniggering at a kebab van like a teenager with a dirty magazine. Am I alone on this?

Okay, I know this is just an unfortunate translation, but it made me giggle, wondering exactly what lads’ services the occupants of this car were offering. For non-Brits, ‘lads’ is a bit of a stereotype of those guys you see on bucks nights/stag nights/bachelor parties doing things that only they find amusing. Thankfully, La Clusaz isn’t a lad hotspot, and I’ve no idea where the name for this business came from. The services offered actually include rental property management, cleaning and taxi service.

In the same vein, French speakers can snicker when they go to England and see the restaurant chain Zizzi because in French a ‘zizi‘ is a little boy’s term for their private parts. That’s right: Brits are eating in a restaurant that roughly translates to ‘willy‘.

Of course, there are plenty in English alone, with my fellow Australians calling those things you wear on your feet ‘thongs’ (which in Britain is a skimpy type of underwear, while the footwear is called a ‘flip-flop’), and the things you wear in winter to keep your legs warm ‘pants’ (which the Brits call ‘trousers’ because ‘pants’ are, again, underwear).

Getting back to French language surprises, an American friend went into a French lingerie shop and said she needed ‘a slip’. In English, that would mean a skirt-like type of underwear. She soon discovered that it’s French for ‘underpants’, and she can only hope that the shopkeeper didn’t think she needed a pair that urgently. Have you stumbled across similar mix-ups?

I know you were all panicking about the cows going up the hill in September, so I wanted to let you know that this week, the same cows descended. The warm weather allowed them to graze in the field just up the road one last time before heading down the valley to lower fields and eventually into a shed for winter. Welcome to October in the Aravis. How do I know they were the same cows that I mentioned in September? By the bells.

Hearing the clanging of the bells coming down the road gave me plenty of time to grab a camera and get a close-up of a bell. This one has the Savoyarde flag with studs representing the white cross (le croix de Savoie). Below the flag is Bambi! Okay, maybe the craftsman had a particular type of deer in mind — no doubt the ones that I sometimes see at night around these parts — but when I see them, I say “Oh there’s Bambi”. This also works with any large-winged bird for me (“Look, an eagle.”), even if it’s an owl.

The Bambi thing all started in a bubble/télécabine/gondola in Méribel one day, when some Italians said something to me in Italian and pointed down. Realising I didn’t speak Italian, they said “Bambi” and pointed to a brown, horned thing below. For a moment, we all spoke the same language. A few days later, a Bambi was below the same lift, so I used the same word to point it out to the French people sharing the bubble with me. For a moment, we too spoke the same language even though I knew no French back then. Bambi allowed us to share an experience that we otherwise would have missed.

The cows, however, need no such international word. The clanging bells announce their arrival without any tourists pointing and calling them Bambi. Pity.

Some of you may remember the French menu translated into English that included salad of goat, greedy coffee and a stove of Saint Jacques. That menu was easy to giggle about — although perhaps the ‘rib steak of the butcher’ was not so funny for the butcher.

Now, along comes a French drinks menu that’s a bit more alarming — and it hasn’t even been translated into English. Fellow ex-pat Aussie in France, Chris, sent me this.

He says:

This is from a little restaurant in Provence at Fontaine-de-Vaucluse. I know the price is only €2 but I think I’ll have a whisky.

And I’m right there with him.

As far as I’m aware, the words for ‘baby’ and ‘foetus’ in French are roughly the same (‘bebe‘ and ‘foetus‘). Is there some French joke I’m really not getting or is this just really strange?

I was in Sweden last week to visit a friend. She showed me around her hometown of Stockholm and I couldn’t help but compare Sweden with France. Although the hut pictured is similar to the one I took in Switzerland last month, the feet are really unusual and like nothing I’ve seen in any other country. In the background is the city of Stockholm, merely a narrow stretch of water away. Stockholm is made up of a number of islands, and this hut was on the island that houses the Djurgården (a mini animal sanctuary, with antique farm houses and other traditional things), which overlooks the islands with the city centre and the old town, amongst others. I’m impressed that a city can have so much greenery so close to the centre of town.

One big difference is the options available for vegetarians. Of course, I’m comparing a capital city with the French Alps, but I’m not sure even Paris has vegie sausages available for takeaway (as pictured, mixed with mashed potato, salad and sauce). Gone are the tuts from meat eaters, replaced with a smile from the Swedish man who cooked the vegie sausages on a separate grill free of meat. Luxury!

But a lot of things are the same. Raclette, for example. Okay, there was an international food fair on in town, but still, my Swedish friend had just finished telling me that Raclette is not available in Stockholm, and there it was less than 24 hours later, luring people in with its description in English. If you’re interested, it cost about €6 for a plate of the cheesy goodness.

I was amused to see that France isn’t the only country with symbols that need some explanation. Pictured here are some train symbols. The first one could be misconstrued entirely (a gap between the train and the platform), and the second one just screams “No drunken disco dancing”, but it is, of course, remember not to get your hand stuck in the door when the automatic doors close.

Best of all was this chocolate bar called Plopp. Sometimes, in France, I see French words that are amusing when they mean something else in English (almost like “sucre daddy“, but not quite). With Swedish people apparently more fluent in English, I was surprised to see this chocolate bar. Not only does it sound like a excrement, but it kind of resembles the shape and colour too. Thankfully, with a caramel centre, it tasted much better than that.