Le Franco Phoney

Today, I was going to write about something completely different, but this French TV advertisement just came on and it annoys me so much that I had to write about it. Perhaps it’s just me applying far too much logic to a simple ad. It features top French tennis player Jo Wilfried Tsonga, and is one of three I can think of with him in similar situations, where he wants the last Kinder Bueno. Can you guess why this advert annoys me? There’s a translation below if you don’t understand the French phrases:

Translation:
Woman (thinking): I’m just a little bit hungry.
Woman: Good evening. The last Kinder Bueno please.
Shopkeeper: Someone has reserved it. How ’bout a fresh muffin?
Woman: That’s too much for me. What about offering the reserver these cookies?
Shopkeeper (looking majorly stressed, as if our mate Jo has a gun pointed at his head): I think he’d really prefer the Kinder Bueno.
(Woman turns, and Jo shrugs as if to say the Bueno is too hard to resist.)
Shopkeeper: What if you share it?
(Woman and Jo laugh like old friends.)

So what’s wrong with this ad? What’s right about it? Nothing is right about this ad.

PROBLEM 1: Who ever reserves a chocolate bar? Why does she even suggest the cookies instead of telling the shopkeeper where to go if he doesn’t sell her his goods?

PROBLEM 2: Why on earth does the shopkeeper looks so scared of Jo? Is he worried Jo’s going to volley a ball at him at close range? I mean it’s serious overacting going on there.

PROBLEM 3: Why doesn’t the shopkeeper have more than one Kinder Bueno? Do they not have more boxes out the back? Or another chocolate bar alternative that either of them would surely scoff down as an alternative if they like chocolate that much?

PROBLEM 4: Why why why why why is the woman so happy to share this chocolate bar that is rightly hers? She’s at the front of the queue, and I’ve never seen someone give up front-row seats for something just because the person behind them wants them. Had I been her, I would have grabbed the bar and done a runner before sharing, stopping only to stamp on both the idiot shopkeeper’s foot and the star tennis player’s.

Fancy some trumpets of death? Look no further than the supermarket shelves. Here, next to the Morille mushrooms, you’ll find the ‘Trompettes de la mort‘, or Trumpets of Death. Also known as ‘black trumpets’ in English, these mushrooms are apparently quite difficult to find, and if bought dried, taste a little like truffles.

Regardless, I just can’t bring myself to buy something that sounds like it’s going to kill me. Just looking at the bottle, I can almost hear those little fungi playing a muffled death march! On top of that, I just can’t get past that weird slimy texture of mushrooms that my instincts warn me against every time I chew on one. I’m anti-mushroom and proud. But perhaps I’m alone. Would you buy trumpets of death?

Let me introduce you to Dave. Dave was born Wouter Otto Levenbach in the Netherlands, but has remained relatively unknown in his home country despite having a few chart hits in France. One of his first big hits in the 70s was Vavina, which you may recognise this clip to the left.

For those of you who don’t recall the song, including my French friend who until last week thought it was a Dave original, it’s actually a Frenchified (yes, I made that word up) version of “Runaway” by Del Shannon, recorded in the 60s (also to the left).

Okay, the 70s seemed to be the peak decade for musicians to switch song languages, with The Four Seasons’ “December 1963 (Oh What a Night)” being covered by Claude François as “Cette Année-Là” (“That Year Then”), while his song “Comme d’Habitude” is more famously known as the the translated-into-English “My Way”, sung, but not written, by Frank Sinatra, and good old Johnny Hallyday covered all sorts of songs including “Long Tall Sally” as “Oh! Sally” with French lyrics. The list goes on. Again, I promise to write about Claude François one day: his story is a good one.

So back to Dave. Good on him for taking a hit song from the US and turning his translation into a hit in France. But you may ask why on earth I’m bringing this up now. This is why:

Dave has done a cover of his cover. He’s really taking recycling to new levels. Apparently, it’s a surefire hit, with French TV and radio stations picking it up, and Dave starring as a panelist on France’s talent show “La France a un Incroyable Talent” (“France has an Incredible Talent”). So as we say in Australia, “good onya, Dave”: you’ve done well. And you haven’t aged badly either.

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?

Watching French television the other night, a woman wore a t-shirt that said:

40 balais, la frite

This directly translates to “forty brooms, the chip”. Any idea what that means? It sounds as though it’s related to a long session of sweeping a single thin slice of fried potato.

It means something entirely different.

In French “balais” officially means “broom”, but it can also be used as a slang word for “years” for reasons that I’m sure I’ll never discover. Meanwhile, “la frite” can be used like some other food substances to convey feelings. For example, “J’ai la pêche” means “I have the peach” or, as we’d say it in English, “I’m peachy”, which actually means “I have lots of energy” when the French use it. Other food substitutions include “J’ai la banane” (“I have the banana” or “I’m smiling”) and “J’ai la patate” (“I have the potato” or “I’m happy”). Okay, the banana makes sense, but a potato? Really? Anyway, it’s also possible to say “J’ai la frite” to say “I’m happy”.

So, if you put it all together, “40 balais, la frite” actually means “Forty years old and happy”.

And the French wonder why it takes us foreigners so long to learn the language…

“What on earth is this?” was the question someone asked me as we drove under this thing. What do you think it is?

The answer is actually very simple, and the name gives it away. In French it’s called a paravalanche. During winter and early spring, this construction protects the road and those using it from avalanches. These huge tumbles of snow might look pretty, but snow is heavy, so this tunnel prevents both the road from being blocked by snow as well as death by avalanche.

These tunnels are all over the roads in the French Alps, particularly on steep areas such as this where the land cannot support much snow.

The name, however, is interesting. The jury (of me) is still out on whether it’s a joining together of ‘para’ and ‘avalanche’, or one of many uses of ‘par‘ in French, which most commonly means ‘by’. Meanwhile, ‘para‘ can mean ‘semi’. For example, a parapharmacie is a pharmacy that stocks products that do not require a prescription. It seems that neither ‘para’ nor ‘par’ means the right thing. However, both have less-common usages. I’m sticking with, ‘para‘ which can also mean ‘protection against’ in English (which the Oxford Dictionary tells me comes from French, with roots an the Italian verb which has roots in Latin). What do you think?

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.

This week, I braved yoga in French. No worries: a fellow Aussie with better French language skills was joining me so there was safety in numbers. With a camping mat under my arm, we headed to the class in the centre of St Jean de Sixt. I should have chickened out when the teacher spied my mat and said it was too thick for yoga. Instant yoga fail! Thankfully, she supplied mats, but as the last two to set up, we were at the front of the class. This scuppered my plan be at the back, where nobody would spy me misunderstanding the instructions or toppling over attempting to do the tree stance (pictured). I tried yoga one other time and after five minutes of failing to do the tree, I left, embarrassed, and much to the relief of all the zen people in the room.

The first few stances were okay. The third one was, of course, tree. Everyone in the room but me stood calmly on one leg. I wobbled and failed to hold the position until I realised I’m left-footed. I swapped legs and held the position for up to ten seconds at a time — a major improvement. After what seemed like an hour, she told us to change legs. Oops. I carried on with the same leg. Meanwhile, I didn’t even notice that my friend had been told off for using the wrong leg at the start. Perhaps our determination to use the wrong leg prompted her to ask in a loud, clear voice if she needed to speak in English. All eyes turned in our direction and we shook our heads and smiled as if we were both totally at ease with the yoga-based French words we’d never heard before.

A girl a few along from us took deep breathing to the extreme. She sounded like she was attached to a ventilator. No problem normally, but my Aussie friend had been diving that morning and I imagined the oxygen tank must have sounded similar. It took all my concentration to hold in the laughter and not look at my friend in case we both got the giggles. As if to test me further, a truck idled in the car park outside with orange lights flashing, lighting up our relaxingly dim room like a disco. I concentrated on my aching arm muscles to again suppress the laughter, although ventilator girl would have no doubt smothered it anyway.

Will I go again? Yes, but next time I’m getting there early so I can go up the back and as far away from ventilator girl as possible.

Some of you may remember the 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 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?

Before you study this photo, look at the logo for my blog. A beret-wearing cow with a curly moustache, holding wine and a baguette. It’s missing a bike and a stripy top, but it’s pretty stereotypical of the French. I did once see a man in a stripy top riding a bike with a baguette in his backpack, but only once. I’ve done a mean thing and embraced an unfair stereotype about the French.

Now, let me rewind a little. When I first arrived in France and spoke only English, the most I could explain to people was “Australian”, complete with full Aussie accent and a finger pointing back at myself. Those who finally figured it out would usually say “Ahh, kangourou” (because the French do spell it differently), and just in case I didn’t understand the exact same pronunciation, they would often mimic a kangaroo with their hands pulled up near their chest. I love this aspect of human nature, and I’ve used a variety of hand gestures to mimic various words I don’t know in French when trying to communicate.

However, none of those French people ever said “Ahh cactus” for a reason.

I can only guess that some French man with no moustache who doesn’t like bread, refuses to own a bike and prefers soft drink to wine whilst wearing only solid colours without lines has got his revenge on at least one nation who keeps the French stereotypes alive. I can hear him now: “Bof! Zeez or-strah-lianz sink zhey are so smart. I will make up a stupit stereotype about zhem.”

And so, here is an American native plant stuck next to a sign about kangaroos. Good work, Jean-Michele (or Jean-Paul, or Jean-Philippe or Jean-Pierre or whatever his double-barrelled name is). I, for one, deserve it.