The French Rs of education

You know the ones…Reading, wRiting, aRithmetic and Recognizing a “Tu” vs. a “Vous”.

I was on the bus when a little girl (she couldn’t have been more than 6 years old) starting talking to me. What surprised me was that she used Tu instead of Vous. I’ve been told I don’t look my age, but in relation to the girl I clearly fall into the adult category. In my mind this means I use Tu with her and she uses Vous with me.

I’ve been tutoied by a stranger in Paris before – he was a retail clerk around my age and he tutoied all of his customers. But the little girl was a different situation, it would be like me walking up to an elderly stranger and using Tu as if we were friends or family. Perhaps I’m being a bit too old-fashioned. Is the singular Vous becoming passé?

Language influences how we see the world

The Wall Street Journal posted an interesting article on how the language we speak influences our point of view. Read it here .

Yoghurting

As someone who’s made a few gaffes in French, I can sympathize with some of the examples in this article. One personal example that comes to mind occurred when I lived with a host family during my study abroad. I was spending the evening with my host brother and some of his friends and got a couple of reflexive verbs confused. I meant to say tu te moques de moi (you’re making fun of me), but instead I said tu me manques (I miss you). They all had a good laugh at that...

Office of Babel

I intentionally avoid posting about work for several reasons the main one being that I’d rather not get dooced. However, this post has more to do with languages than my job so I’ll make an exception. At the moment, about 40% of the people in my office are French with the rest of us being from various countries. All of us, except one guy (an English speaker), are fully fluent in a second language. One coworker speaks 4 languages, another one speaks 3 with knowledge of a 4th and a few others have basic to conversational knowledge of a 3rd language.

Recently, someone from one of the local offices in another country visited and it turns out that he speaks 6 languages - but then again he’s Dutch and they tend to polyglots to the extreme. In addition to realizing that we should be careful about what we say in any language, because someone might understand, I felt a bit inept, since I speak “only” 2 languages with very basic knowledge of a 3rd. Anyone started working on a universal translator implant yet?

Fluent

I’m well chuffed. I made it through 3 hours of meetings, all in French! I didn’t speak much, but I understood everything and wasn’t completely exhausted afterwards. Now that’s progress…

Eavesdropping

I took a day off from work this past week and decided to go to the neighborhood sushi place to get take-out. While I was waiting for my order I heard a couple of Americans at a nearby table. Even though I tried to tune them out, I couldn’t for very long. I’d focus on something else, but a minute or two later I’d realize that I was listening to them again. Then it hit me that this happens quite often. When I’m out and about, I can usually tune out French conversations if I choose to. I just go into “not listening” mode. But English, particularly when spoken with American accents, tends to cut through any other noise. When I’m in France, there’s something about hearing an accent from across the Atlantic that makes my ears automatically perk up. Funnily enough, the same thing happens when I’m in the US and hear French.

study time?

On the bus this morning a mother was helping her daughter with her English lesson. The person next to me was going through her Portuguese language workbook. All of the language study should have motivated me to review my sheets of Spanish verb conjugations that I so optimistically carry in my bag. Instead I decided to procrastinate and enjoy the city scenes.