Le Franco Phoney

My Australian heritage is often lost here in France because I apparently have the same accent when I speak French as an English person. Lots of French people talk about how this cloudy weather must be like being back home. Except, of course, “back home” for me is Melbourne, which has been suffering from drought for close to ten years.

So, when this pamphlet came through my letterbox the other day, it made me giggle. The word for “kangaroo” in French is pronounced the same, but spelt differently, and often when I explain to someone that I’m Australian and not English, the word “kangarou” is bandied around. It’s one of the first French words that I instantly understood and it got me through many moments with strangers before I could speak any French: I could at least explain to them where I was from with one word that we both understood. Saying word was often accompanied with arms raised to the chest, like a kangaroo — sometimes mine, sometimes the French person’s. Everyone loves kangaroos!

In case you’re interested, this brochure was for courses run by a learning institution. It says: “my future is in the pocket”, referring to the kangaroo’s pouch for offspring I guess. What really surprised me was “DZOÏÏÏNG”. I don’t know if those umlauts are used in any French words or whether it’s made up as much as the word. A French friend has told me that “BOING” would be the more common usage in French — the same as in English, but after seeing “DZOÏÏÏNG”, I think I prefer it. Let’s see if I can bring it into common usage in English.

Snow. White cold stuff, right? In French, it’s neige. Snowflakes are called flocons de neige (or just flocons). In the past week, I’ve seen snowflakes, rain and bright sunshine. The rain down lower was heavy, and the French saying for heavy rain is “Il pleut comme vache qui pisse” (It rains like a cow that pees).

The pistes have turned from poudre or peuf (powder) to soupe (erm, soup). There are also icy patches underneath like a patinoire (ice rink). Conditions have gone from hard-packed to soft and mushy, to avalanche-prone, then powdery, and now back to soggy snow, all in less than a week. And if you want to have a chat with any French person about the conditions, you really do have to know more than the word for snow. Otherwise it’s plain confusing: “What’s that? You were stuck in soup? You hit the ice rink? Then a cow peed?” These are just a few examples of snow-related talk that you probably need to know.

This photo of an avalanche (you can figure out its size by looking at the big pine trees) shows how a thin the layer of snow can transform quickly from a patinoire to soup, and then collapse under its own weight. Apart from the obvious faux-pas moment of misunderstanding someone who mentions getting stuck in soup, it’s pretty handy to know from a safety point of view, especially at this time of year. If someone is talking about a fondue, chances are they’re talking about melted snow and not cheese. Snow fondue is by far the less attractive type.

The Winter Olympic Games (les Jeux Olympiques in French) are in full swing, and I’ve been following the sports on French television. The French athletes have been a bit unlucky so far, and at first the commentators blamed it on badly-made courses. I think they’ve given up on that angle now but they certainly haven’t stopped saying: “Ooh la la”, nor the variation: “Ooh la la la la”, nor the variation of the variation: “Ooh la la la la la la”. Seriously, the commentators are la la laing so many times that I’m losing count. As the Men’s Cross-country Relay went on (and on and on)  last night, the commentators became more and more worried, using more “Ooh la la”s, when the Norwegian approached from fourth place, and eventually made it to second place, ousting the French team to fourth place. Vincent Vittoz from La Clusaz was in that team, and it was pretty much his last chance of winning an Olympic medal after many years of trying, so the commentators were hoping for him as much as I was that he would get at least a bronze. There’s still a chance he might get one because the French team have complained about Sweden (or is it Norway?) bringing two pairs of skis instead of one. If their complaint is successful, Vincent and the French team will move up to win bronze. And the commentators are sure to la la la themselves into oblivion if that happens.

Between the Ooh la las, it’s often difficult to hear much else because the commentators like talking over each other. During the replay of some figure skating last night, I wondered if they’d forgotten to turn off a few microphones as there were no less than four people talking at the same time. Really, I’m not joking: four people at once. The French do seem to have a knack of being able to talk and listen at the same time in everyday life, so such commentary probably shouldn’t surprise me as much as their moment of absolute silence when Ladies’ Downhill hopeful Marion Rolland hurt her knee and fell just seconds after she started her run. The French commentators had been excited about her run and they switched directly to her when she was getting ready to leave the gates. Bing! Off she goes! As she veered directly to her right and off the course, only one commentator let out a single, sad “Non”. Ten seconds must have passed before any of them could muster up the ability to speak. The catastrophe of another French athlete going down was just too much.

As I write this, the French are ranked equal sixth in the medal tally. Compare this with my native Australia — a country renowned for producing sporting champions, which has a whole three medals, putting them in sixteenth place. We’re better at summer sports really. Us Aussies are rapt with our best ever winter Olympics medal tally despite it being nowhere near the top-ranking countries. So, France, don’t fret: you’re doing alright. And may Vinny get that bronze.

So, here at Le Franco Phoney, I provide a written commentary on life in the French Alps, and from an ex-pat’s perspective. I’ve discovered an illustrated version of life in the Alps from a true French person, Caro (that’s Madamoiselle Caroline to us), who I had fun skiing with last week in La Clusaz, and who has since illustrated that particular day on her blog, including a stick figure of me on telemarks. Although her entries are in French, the illustrations mostly speak for themselves and she’s not scared to make fun of herself in order to give the rest of us a laugh. And now that she’s mentioned it, our mutual friend, Tim, does indeed look a lot like Sam Neil.

Although we don’t share the same language, nor her talent for drawing, we do share a love of snow, and the photo of her planted next to a tree, deep in snow is something I’d experienced just one day earlier on my snowboard (being waist deep in powder is more of an aerobic workout than you can ever imagine). And looking at her older blog entries, there are plenty of amusing illustrations of what life is all about here in the Alps, along with life in general (like having a husband who says he’s helped because he’s put the washing machine on after she’s spent the day cooking, shopping for her kids’ clothes and looking after her kids). She’s my new favourite illustrator and new favourite blogger. Enjoy!

A French friend of mine once told me she had no idea that the rest of the world did not say “Ooh la la” and that she was surprised to discover it was a stereotype of what French people say. I remember in Australia, there was a chain of fashion accessory shops called “Ooh la la”, and my friends and I pronounced it “ooooooh la la”. It turns out it’s a bit more of an “oh la la” in French, or at least, somewhere between the two. It’s a phrase that, to me, sounds cheesy when anyone but a French person says it. An American friend says it with a total American accent that sounds as wrong as the shop name in Australia, and hearing her say it was enough to prevent me from using it as anything more than a joke.

That all changed last weekend when the pistes got busy with people. I managed to use it twice when people got too close to me and it came out naturally both times. I was talking to a different French friend about how good it felt about being able to use it so naturally, and he said he doesn’t really consider it a word in French as much as a saying, like “Oh” in English. Except, of course, “Ooh la la” covers so much more. It can be used for surprise (”Ooh la la! or “Wow!”), disgust (”Ooh la la” or “What a terrible cheese”), injury (”Ooh la la” or “Ouch!”), admiration (”Ooh la la” or “The bride looks beautiful”), uncertainty (”Ooh la la” or “This big pile of paperwork might not be enough to change your address with us”) and regret (”Ooh la la” or “Damn, I’ve taken a gouge out of my skis”). There are probably plenty of other meanings to it because when I hassled my French friend about it he said: “I don’t know: it comes out so naturally that it’s hard to think of any examples”.

So, now you know: if ever you’re stuck in one of those situations where someone is speaking to you in French and you have no idea what they’re saying, just say “Ooh la la” and you’ll probably be okay.

French imagery in advertising, roundabouts and even pizza boxes is something I’ve discussed many times on this blog, but this image is the most provocative I’ve seen in a public place. Apologies for the lack of quality: I took the picture temporarily on my phone a few days ago and the poster has since disappeared.

So, here we have a poster for the Lalu nightclub in Le Grand Bornand, featuring smurfs (called ’schtroumpfs’ in French). I remember Papa Smurf there in the red, and Lady Smurf is of course the woman next to him. The post says ‘Smurf me’ in French (they’ve made ’smurf’ into a verb), so I guess it’s a party where people dress up as smurfs. And what is that smurf doing below that, with the scissors and the comb? Is that hay being taken away? No. Look more carefully, and if you’re pre-teen, just skip the rest of this entry: it will only add to the teenage angst that you’re destined for.

I’d say to look closely, but you don’t really need to. Can you see anything amiss in this poster? Anything slightly wrong, considering the poster was placed at the height of a kid’s eyes? That’s not hay that the smurf is carting off. It’s pubic hair. That’s not a hill with a house in the distance, it’s a breast. As you can now see, there isn’t much left up to the imagination in this poster.

Admittedly, I stared at this poster, pointed out to me by my friend, for a good minute or so without noticing anything odd. If this poster was in the nightclub itself, I wouldn’t even blink an eye; but it was placed outside the lift ticket office in Le Grand Bornand, right by the ski stand, where parents tell kids to wait with the skis, and as I mentioned, right at kid height, with all these cute, lovable smurfs on display to attracts kids’ attention. Perhaps most kids just overlook this for the love of smurfs the way I did. Still, could any other country be so open to Hairdresser Smurf giving a human an alternative Brazilian? And is that really how you make a human into a smurf? I reckon Painter Smurf with his can of blue paint would have a strong opinion about that.

A blog reader, Carmen, got in touch with me a while back with a great question which I’ve been meaning to blog about ever since. She asked about the integration between the French and the British, as she’s noticed that some friends in the valley of Chamonix only seem to mix with other Brits. She asked: “Is Chamonix Valley the worst Alps area for this kind of divide or are there others with a more integrated expat/local community?” Here comes a serious post, so if you’re here for light entertainment, you might prefer to check my post about rural fairs or dodgy translation or crazy people or chairlift queueing. For those of you left, here’s my reply for Carmen.

I’m happy to say that there are plenty of places in the Alps where the expats integrate with the locals, including right where I live. Although I’ve never lived in Chamonix, I did spend many winters in the Méribel valley — in the more residential Les Allues, and before that, Brides les Bains. Some of those in the community of expats never bothered to be friendly towards seasonnaires such as myself even though I returned year after year. I didn’t live there in summers, so I guess it wasn’t worth their time to invest in my friendship. Don’t get me wrong: I don’t hold it against any of them and I do have friends who live there permanently. It’s impossible to befriend all the seasonnaires. I guess many of them just weren’t my type and vice versa. C’est la vie.

It’s the same with the French. Some expats will gel with some French and some French will gel with some expats, but at the end of the day, expats have some things in common with each other that the French don’t — language and culture are the two big ones that spring to mind — and so it’s not surprising that the two communities tend to hang out separately (but not necessarily always).

I’m as guilty of it as anyone else. I have both French friends and expat friends, and I would say the divide lies directly with the language and comfort: my French friends who can speak English are my best French friends because we can communicate easily, while my non-English speaking French friends politely put up with my dodgy French, of which they have to second-guess the meaning, and I can never feel totally relaxed with them because I’m so busy concentrating on understanding what they’re saying. Also, it’s really hard to go to a party filled with French people and try to chat with music pumping in the background. I get embarrassed asking someone three times what they said, and still not actually hearing it properly to respond as expected. I hope to be able to in the future, but I imagine it will take years to fill my French vocabulary to the point that I can speak French with as much ease as English, and I think many expats—certainly my friends here—feel the same. In the mean time, I still do go to French-speaking parties, but I enjoy the ones filled with English speakers more because we can communicate.

Some might say it would be faster if expats communicated more in French and therefore integrated more with the French, but I think it’s human nature for a lot of us to feel the need to communicate more than the basics if someone is to be a true friend. And I guess in resorts such as Méribel, Chamonix and Morzine, the expat community is so big that it’s a bit harder to meet any non-English speaking French people at all. For example, most bars in Méribel (and plenty of other resorts) are run by English companies with English menus and English staff, and English tourists walk into the shops expecting shopkeepers to reply to them in English. This is partly what prompted me to settle in a smaller resort: a French friend, Gael, who runs Oxygene board shop with his sister in Méribel, said to me one night when I tried to speak French: “Oh just speak in English will you.” His English is perfect, so it made sense. It didn’t help me though. Living in a resort with so many English speakers made it difficult for me to find anyone who wanted to speak French with me. Here in the Aravis valley, many locals have to put up with my bad French because it’s still better than their English.

So Carmen, to answer your question, I don’t know if Chamonix has the worst divide for expats to natives, but it’s probably one of the harder places to get between the two communities. I do know that unless I gel instantly with an English-speaking seasonnaire, I’d prefer to befriend a French speaker who lives here permanently, but that choice would be harder to make in a bigger resort where more expats live.

Part of ski resort Le Grand Bornand opened last weekend and included a free ski test area, where you could choose any ski from scores of manufacturers and see how they go on, and off, the piste. I’m up with the lingo: it’s all about rocker systems, reverse camber and wide waists this year. But how on earth do I explain to the ski rep that I want to try a combo of any of those things? The result:

April (in slow French): “What’s that ski?”

Ski rep: “C’est blah de blah de blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. D’accord?”

April: “Okay.”

This resulted in me trying out K2 Misdemeanors even though I used to own their brother, the Public Enemy ski. What a waste of time: I know exactly what it’s like to ski on and it was a pointless test. But I took them out anyway as I was too embarrassed to explain in slow French that I hadn’t understood what he said and that I’d changed my mind.

Another instance was the Rossignol S7 ski. Now, two friends of mine have just got these skis and I was keen to try them out. Sadly, I learnt through my French friend who also wanted to try them out, Rossignol staff were very unhappy that three snowboards had come back within the first few hours totally wrecked from the rocky off-piste which has yet to form a decent snow base, and they had decided to take all off-piste skis away from the public too. So, no chance of trying the S7 I though. But then the Rossignol rep pointed to a pair of Roxy skis (picture) and said they were basically the same. Here we go again:

April (in slow French): “I’d like to try the …ummmm… Roxy ski.”

Ski rep (in fast French): “They’re all Roxy skis…”

April’s French friend:  “The Mumbo Jumbos.”

Saved by my French friend! Apparently, the Rossignol guy had actually named the ski, but my French is still so lacking that I didn’t catch the completely non-French-sounding “mumbo jumbo” in his sentence.

No worries. I have some great skis to try out and I’ll regain the confidence I just lost with my French language skills by ripping these babies up on the hill. Alternatively, they could feel like planks of concrete stuck to my feet that do float off-piste (don’t tell the Roxy rep I took them off piste - I promised I wouldn’t), but are more like two tethered elephants on piste. The Roxy ski rep asked me what I thought of them, and I bet she regretted that. She had to patiently listen to some idiot talking about “more muscle I need” and “not good on piste” without any further explanation as to why. Had she asked me in English, I could have told her about the elephants.

One of the benefits of learning French whilst living in France is that the more obscure words I’d be unlikely to learn in a French language class are more available to me. For example, a housewarming party in French is not chauffage de maison. The literal translation does not work. It’s pendaison de crémaillère, which translates to ‘pot hook hanging.’ I’d argue that it’s a stupid name, but is ‘housewarming party’ any better? In fact, after finding out more about the pot hook hanging, I think it’s a better name. Let me explain.

Historically, pots of food were cooked over heat, and they need a pot hook to hang the pot from. By having a party to celebrate the hanging of the pot hook, it means you’re going to cook a big pot of food for your friends who have come around to celebrate you hanging your new pot hook in your new pad. Warmth, sharing, full bellies: it’s everything you want for a nice evening in with friends.

Meanwhile, nobody can agree on the etymology of ‘housewarming’. Some say it comes from a Russian couple who provided bread with salt to a passing dignitary, and others say it’s a Scottish tradition of bringing hot embers to a friend’s new house to literally warm it up. One source even says it was a shoemaker in London who cooked a hot pot stew for friends to celebrate a new home, and in the process of cooking, warmed his house. None of these match what I always thought ‘housewarming’ meant: I presumed you invited your friends around to warm up the house with their love. Regardless, shouldn’t it be called a homewarming party? Because anyone can own a house, but you have to make it your home.

So, last night, I partied at my own hanging of the pot hook celebrations, which involved no pot hook, no bread with salt, no embers and no stew. The house, however, is now a warm home, so it’s time to find my next obscure French phrase to question.

My blog statatistics tell me what some visitors have searched for before they arrived at my site, and they’re mostly on track with the content of this blog. The number one search every day is ‘how to pronounce French words’. I’ve discussed this, but there’s certainly no lessons coming from me, considering I’m still struggling to make the rolling ‘r’ sound!  So, for those visitors, try going to the BBC learn French website or the Indo-European Languages free online tutorials.

Now that I’ve lost half my audience, let me carry on with some other search queries. Someone found my blog by searching for “haloumi cheese in france”. Haloumi cheese is stocked in Paris, apparently, although I don’t know how widely available it is. It is not available at any of the shops in the vicinity of Annecy, Thônes, Moutiers or Bonneville. Yes, I have searched.

Another one: “how is ‘goat’ spelt in French language”. It’s ‘chevre’ and that can also mean goats’ cheese. So, if you order a salade chevre chaud, which translates directly to ‘hot goat salad’, rest assured that it’s actually warmed goats’ cheese salad and not a hot goat.

Another one: “music in Annecy”. The live music scene in Annecy is often limited to Savoyard thigh-slapping bands with big horns and matching outfits, but Annecy does offer some more modern live music too. Head to La Brise Glace (French for ‘ice-breaker’) on almost any night of the week and you’ll get some sort of music act. It varies from death metal to open mic nights and despite its diminutive interior, has often drawn popular international and local acts.

Now, some odder ones. Someone arrived at Le Franco Phoney after searching the net for “guys pee pee”. Mate, off you go to find what you want somewhere else! Other searches include:

• gay snowman
• angry tractor
• monster real life

Is this one person searching on several rather bizarre subjects? I’m afraid I can’t help this person/people or anyone who searches for these topics in the future. You’ve arrived at the wrong site. Is there a right site?