petite anglaise

The first time it happens, I’m sitting with Tadpole and The Boy in my favourite Chinese snack bar, tucking into pork and herb ravioli while rain hammers down on the pavement outside.

‘Ouch,’ I say, rubbing a raised bump on my arm which I’ve just knocked against the table. ‘Goodness knows what I’ve done to myself this time, but it really hurts! Look, j’ai un bosse, là…’

Tadpole’s face cycles through several possible reactions - confusion, perplexity, amazement - before finally settling on amusement. ‘Un bosse, mummy?’ she says teasingly, shooting a sidelong glance at The Boy, who is smirking into his Shanghai noodles. ‘But don’t you know? Un bosse doesn’t exist! A lump is called une bosse, in French.’

‘Okay, I’ve got une bosse then,’ I say, defensively, my cheeks smarting. It’s not as though I’ve never made a gender blunder in front of Tadpole before. But it’s the first time she’s noticed, or at least the first time she’s decided to call me out on it, pressing home her native speaker’s advantage. ‘You know, I didn’t even start learning French until I was eleven-years-old,’ I explain. ‘So it’s normal for me to make mistakes sometimes. I wasn’t lucky enough to learn two languages when I was small, like you. And the thing I find most difficult is choosing un ou une or le or la because they don’t even exist in English.’

Tadpole falls silent, her face deadly serious as she processes this new information. She may be fortunate enough to know, instinctively, which combination of words sounds right or wrong, but I doubt she’s ever stopped to wonder why English nouns don’t behave in the same way. In fact, one of her most common blunders, just now, is to refer to a chair as a she or a pencil as a he.

‘I see what you mean, mummy,’ she says, finally, turning to face me and putting a hand on my arm - right on my bosse - causing me to gasp. ‘Don’t worry,’ she adds in a reassuring voice, ‘I’m going to teach you how to say right ALL the words.’ She lets go of my arm and opens both of hers wide to illustrate just how many words we have to get through. ‘How about we start with table,’ she says, clearly enjoying herself, now. ‘Do you think it’s un table or une table..?’

On a Saturday morning a couple of weeks later, Tadpole and I are sitting on the sofa in our respective nightwear: ‘ello Kitty pyjamas - she refuses to pronounce the ‘Hello’ in ‘Hello Kitty’ with an aspirant ‘h’ - and a black silk negligé. She’s just finished reading me a story in English, which she now sets aside in favour of a French story anthology. The deal we struck when she came to interrupt me - mid Gum Thief - was that she would read me one story in English, then one in French. She chooses the shortest one, which is about a naïvely drawn blue teddy bear called Pénélope, who is trying to remember the words to a well-known children’s song. I’m not familiar with it, as this particular story book is reserved for French babysitters and occasionally The Boy, if he gets home from work before storytime.

‘Pénélope chante à tue-tête…’ reads Tadpole.

Before she can launch into the song, I interrupt. ‘What does tue-tête mean?’ I ask her, with a puzzled frown. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone say that before…’

‘Really?’ says Tadpole, as though she can barely believe her ears. I nod, bashfully, half-wishing I’d held my peace. ‘Tue-tête means Pénélope is singing as LOUD as she can,’ she explains in a decidedly schoolmistressy voice, cranking up her internal volume dial to better illustrate her point and eliciting a groan from The Boy, who is sleeping in the bedroom, a few metres away.

‘Right, I see,’ I say, nodding. ‘In English we’d say she was singing at the top of her voice.’

The next time Tadpole uses a word I’m unfamiliar with, I keep stumm, slinking off to my desk at the first opportunity to leaf quietly through my Collins Robert dictionary.

It’s one thing admitting I’m not absolutely infallible. But the word ‘boss’, in this household, is a feminine noun. An adult feminine noun, to be precise. And while I’m quite happy to let Tadpole savour the sweet feeling of superiority from time to time, I don’t think I want the balance of power shifting too far in her direction.

If you have been following this blog for a while, you will be aware of the fact that I am rather irrationally fond of very scientific-sounding French words used to denote common things.

My love of the word podotactile, which can be translated into English with the slightly less elegant “strip along the side of a métro platform that has bumps on that you can feel if you are wearing thin-soled shoes” has already been widely documented.

Peeling the transparent film off a microwave dinner the other day (and yes, I know it’s bad, but believe me, that was one of my better moments, nutritionally, in recent weeks) I was overjoyed to notice that said transparent cover is called an l’opercule, a term which comes from Latin and is also used in neuroscience and botany. Imagine, if you will, that the instructions on your microwave meal asked you to “pull back the operculus”. Would you have any appetite left?

But my favourite new phrase by far is the one used to designate the place where water must be poured into my new steam iron (after old iron was accidentally melted in a freak hob-top incident at the weekend when I tried to cook pasta with a hangover). I give you: l’orifice de remplissage.

I’m looking at it warily right now and I just don’t know if I can.

It recently came to my attention that a fantasy swear word coined, I believe, by my very good friend in blogging Anna Boat may soon be the subject of a heated debate chez les Prud’hommes.

A comment I took the precaution of removing from my site some time ago has seemingly found its way into the possession of a certified translator, for use in my industrial tribunal case (which theoretically takes place this month, if no-one defers it).

It went something like this:

petite: “I’m thinking of setting up a parallel secret blog named “my boss is a twunt”.

Hmm. Clearly a tongue in cheek play on words which any self-respecting blogger/blogreader would understand as a reference to the famous zed and her award winning blog, no doubt a quip made in response to another comment, although I no longer have the faintest idea of the exact context.

The problem being that the French translator, clearly coming a little unstuck at the sight of the inventive slight, an amalgamation of two words of differing intensity which share etymological origins with the word “ladyparts”, decided to opt for the rather stronger French expletive “enculé” in the version to which he/she put the holy certified translator’s stamp. Unfortunate in the extreme, as “enculé” is a word which has nothing whatsoever to do with “ladyparts”, is the strongest French swearword I know of, and is emphatically not a word I would ever dream of sullying my fair lips with. I think it is fair to say that many layers of intended humour and irony have been well and truly lost in translation.

The upside of all this (aside from the fact that my audience is likely to be interesting for those involved, and indeed for spectators) is that surely it can only be a matter of time before the Académie Française falls in love with the neologism and deems it necessary to add “twunt” to the official French dictionary.

Now there’s an achievement of which I would be truly proud.

The progress Tadpole is making with the English language never ceases to astonish me.

Lately I have witnessed the sudden addition of the past tense to her delightful little sentences, which opens up a whole new world of possibilities. Sadly, while her grammar may be correct, the information she volunteers is at times a little sketchy, or, in some cases, just plain untrue.

For example, Tadpole arrives home from her weekend away with Mamie and Papy on Monday evening, and the first thing to cross the threshold of my apartment is a proudly brandished hand bearing a rather ragged, grubby-looking pink plaster. Just in case I have failed to notice, she exclaims “Look mummy! Look at my hand! I’ve got a plaster on!”

“Have you got a bobo? How did you get that?” I enquire. Not in an ohmygodyou’vehurt yourselfhowcoulddaddyletthathappenonhiswatch sort of way, you understand. I am simply curious to see whether she is able to explain how it happened.

“Yes. It was red and wet,” she elaborates, helpfully.

“Oh, I see, it was bleeding, was it?”

“Yes, my finger was bleeding.”

“How did you hurt it?”

“I did it on the floor,” she replies, vaguely.

Clearly I’m not going to get the specifics without putting words into her mouth, so I resign myself to just not knowing. As it happens, Mr Frog is none the wiser, as no-one actually saw how this mysterious (and so tiny it is barely visible to the human eye) bobo was inflicted.

For an illustration of how good my daughter is at lying in the past tense, I only have to ask her what she had for lunch at the childminder’s house on any given day of the week.

“I ate some Chocolate!”

“Chocolate? For lunch.”

“Yes!”

“Nothing else?”

“No, I had just chocolate.”

I doubt it, somehow.

So comfortable with the past tense is my Tadpole, that she is now using it masterfully as ammunition to get her own way. Again, with somewhat sparing use of truth.

“Right, I’m making pasta for dinner,” I say firmly, making sure that it sounds like a statement, and not at all like a question that could possibly be answered with the dreaded “no” word.

“I can’t have pasta. I had that yesterday,” comes the (total factually incorrect) reply.

This tactic can be used in a variety of situations, and I have now seen most of the possible permutations: “I wore/ate/did that/read that book/went there/saw daddy/went to see tata yesterday.

Grr.

But the thing that strikes fear into my heart this morning, as I leave the childminder’s house, is hearing Tadpole’s voice piping up behind her closed front door.

“Maman, elle a dit que…” At which point her voice fades away altogether as they move from the hallway into another room, and try as I might, ear shamelessly pressed to door, I can hear no more.

Given her apparent ability to fabricate monstrous lies with alarming ease, I dare not imagine what followed.

Tadpole is having her bath. I am seated next to her, on the toilet, as there is really no where else to sit in our two and a half square metre bathroom.

“Mummy mummy mummy!” shouts Tadpole, excitedly. “Look mummy!”

I lower my copy of Heat and give her my full attention.

“What do you want to show me?” I enquire, feigning interest.

“Mummy. Regarde! Le bateau, il a chaviré!”

Oh. My. God.

Just twenty eight months old and she is now using French words which I can only understand with the help of a dictionary.

Finding a suitable name to describe the man in my life is proving almost as difficult as finding a name I approve of to refer to certain parts of my anatomy.

The word “boyfriend” makes me feel as though I have time travelled back to being sixteen again, with all the enthusiastic ineptitude/dry humping that teen relationships evoke. This couldn’t be further from our reality: he is divorced with two children, I have a daughter, and we are both on the wrong side of thirty. The French equivalent “mon petit ami” is even worse. My little friend? I don’t think so. It sounds like something that lives in one’s trousers. “Mon copain”, on the other hand, is a bit too matey and casual for my liking. It can be used to mean any male friend, not just Mr Right.

I encountered a similar problem with Mr Frog, exacerbated by the fact that we had chosen to have a baby out of wedlock. I often found myself referring to him in conversation as “Tadpole’s dad” (“son papa”), which eerily foreshadowed the events which were to follow, as it carries with it, to my mind, an implication of separation. Her father. Not my anything.

Often, if an acquaintance or a stranger made the assumption that Mr Frog was actually “mon mari”, I chose to go with the flow and let them go on thinking we were married. It just seemed easier that way. Although I do recall a heated exchange with my mother once on that subject. She was lamenting the fact that she didn’t know how to refer to Mr Frog when talking to her friends. Exasperated, I retorted that I was hardly about to get hitched just to make her life easier by putting her out of her semantic misery.

“Partner”, which I find somehow cold and clinical in English, aside from any same sex relationship undertones, doesn’t really have a French equivalent. Living together, or co-habiting, is known as “concubinage” in French, a choice of vocabulary which I personally feel uncomfortable with, conjuring up as it does images of courtesans, kept women and secondary wives.

Feeling thoroughly let down by both French and English, I tended to refer to Mr Frog quite simply by his Christian name, relying on context to fill in any blanks people might have.

I intend to do the same with my new man, at least until we get around to tying the knot. But this doesn’t seem fitting on the internet, so you’ll just have to make do with “my Lover” for now. With a capital “L”.

Now that particular thorny subject has been put to bed, all that remains is to resolve the anatomical question.

Answers in my box, please.

Tadpole opens her mouth, showing her near complete set of milk teeth, and beautiful, effortless, grammatically perfect sentences fall out.

Admittedly these are mostly in French, but so awestruck am I by her new found ability to string together up a dozen words at a time that I forget that I am supposed to be disappointed that French appears to be dominating at the moment.

“Tu vois, il est là bas, dans la chambre, sur le lit, le biberon de dolly,” she says earnestly, her tiny hand seeking out mine, because she wants to us to fetch it together.

“Non, je n’ai pas fait caca dans la couche, je ne l’ai pas fait!” she cries over her shoulder, having wriggled out of my grasp and rapidly distancing herself from the changing mat. I wonder what on earth she has eaten which could be responsible for such an unpleasant, lingering odour, if what she is saying is true.

Barely a week ago, Mr Frog and I both remarked upon the fact that Tadpole’s language skills seemed to have reached a plateau: we hadn’t heard any new words or seen much evidence of her attempting to string those she did already know into phrases for some time. Now, with hindsight, I realise that she was simply biding her time, quietly soaking up every last word, assimilating, processing and digesting until she was ready to take the plunge and dazzle us with her new abilities.

As a non-native speaker of French, who had to endure many a tedious grammar lesson over the years to learn how to manipulate preceding direct objects and indefinite articles, I marvel at Tadpole’s flawless grammar. I’m insanely jealous of the way in which, as a native speaker, she remains blissfully unaware of how these complex phrases break down into their component parts, or why the words behave as they do in different contexts. The individual pieces of the jigsaw - which she has memorised as sensible, meaningful chunks of completed puzzle - slot gracefully into small and perfectly formed sentences. She makes it look so easy.

I’m willing to bet that the day she corrects one of my infamous gender blunders is only just around the corner.

I can’t wait.

A colleague approaches my desk and I execute a rapid and discreet ALT+TAB.

“Where’s [the boss] hiding this time?”, she enquires.

“Uh, not sure, kitchen maybe, but he can’t be far away,” I reply vaguely, trying to remember if he had told me (as I was only half-listening, while sketching out a blog post in my head). Thankfully I catch sight of the top of his head in the stairwell. I point and say “THERE he is!”

I fight the urge to crawl under my desk and hide. The shame. I just went and used the wrong voice for those last three words.

Somehow they came out in that patronising voice, with exaggerated intonation and emphasis, which I find myself using when I speak to Tadpole.

It’s another of those things that I swore I would never do when I had a child, which fell by the wayside as soon as motherhood was upon me. I challenge anyone to try speaking normally to a toddler. The fact is that they do seem to learn faster if you use emphasis and repetition. And personally when I’m repeating and emphasizing I find it difficult not to adopt an annoying failed actor’s children’s TV presenter’s voice. I often think I sound like a female version of Geoffrey on Rainbow, but it’s frankly enough effort to keep on repeating things in English every time she says them in French, without having to force myself to speak in a normal, grown-up voice as well.

Obviously speaking to an adult in that condescending tone could get me into trouble. I have drawn the parallel before between being a PA and babysitting, but when I greeted my boss on the phone the other day with an over emphatic “how are YOU?”, in what he immediately identified as my Tadpole voice, I definitely took that analogy one step too far. Luckily, being that he is a father of young children himself, he was quite understanding, and not a little amused.

My worst fear now is that the baby vocabulary that Mr Frog and the childminder use with Tadpole will insinuate its way into my French conversations. French toddlers use words like doudou (favourite teddy or comforter), bobo (a place where you hurt yourself), caca (poo), dodo (sleep) and lolo (milk). A bit like saying ‘doggy’ in English instead of dog.

I sincerely hope the day will never come when I say, bleary eyed and yawning one morning at the cockroach/coffee machine after yet another long evening spent in front of a computer screen, “Oh là là qu’est ce que j’ai envie de faire dodo là …”

The only thing more embarrassing than that, would be if I said it in my ‘Tadpole voice’.

Tadpole suddenly started speaking in phrases this week. French ones mind, which are not nearly half as gratifying to me as English ones. I am not yet ready to admit even to myself that French will be her dominant language, while my mother tongue is likely to be relegated to second language status.

Overnight, everything she pointed at was suddenly accompanied by a “c’est … ça.”

“C’est mummy ça”, “C’est daddy ça”, “C’est teddy ça”, “C’est quoi ça?”.

Or with a triumphant “there it is”: “Il est là daddy” “Elle est là mummy.”

Accompanied without exception by exaggerated finger-pointing and arm-waving. As far as gesticulation levels go, Tadpole most definitely qualifies as a French person.

Pushing Tadpole plus wobbly trolley around the supermarket (no security harness, this is France) on Saturday evening, stocking up on edible provisions for the week, (which now include various additive-laden but child-friendly snacks that I hitherto swore I would never feed my child, including fish fingers, which I am currently rediscovering), Tadpole gets it into her pretty little head that a complete stranger, who looks absolutely nothing like her father, and is at least a decade older than he is, is her daddy. The only plausible explanation I can find for this is that she was confusing the word “daddy” with the word “man”.

“C’est daddy ça!”, shouts Tadpole, loudly, with extended arm and pointy index finger.

“Er… no sweetie, that’s not your daddy. It might be someone else’s daddy though.”

We turn into the next aisle, and I begin my search for a breakfast cereal not containing ten times the recommended daily intake of sugar. A toss up between porridge oats and cornflakes, again: Rice Krispies are like gold dust in this city.

“C’est daddy ça” cries Tadpole earnestly, volume turned up a little higher. I start and look up hopefully from the packet of ‘Honey Smacks’ I am examining, wondering if daddy has actually deserted his powerpoint presentation and elected to join us in the supermarket. No such luck. Just the same man, who is not, never was, and never will be Tadpole’s father.

“Don’t be silly, it’s not your daddy,” I repeat firmly, wishing that it was, because I’m unsure how I am going to get both shopping and Tadpole home on my own, even if it is only 200m from the local Franprix to our own door.

I swing a hasty left, and pounce upon a packet of Jacobs crackers. Not because I actually like them, you understand, but because they are a brand from home, and Franprix don’t usually stock them, so I feel I have to seize the opportunity. I have an unopened bottle of HP sauce in my cupboard, also purchased at Franprix. They can keep each other company.

We take up our position in the queue.

“C’est DADDY ça, il est LÀ daddy.”

I lose my patience.

“Good grief [Tadpole], give me credit for some taste! That man is not your father!” I snap.

Tadpole is stunned into silence by my tone.

And I spend five minutes in the queue praying that the man in question isn’t an English teacher by profession.

“Labouche”, says Tadpole, pointing at her mouth.

“Yes sweetie, it’s your mouth”, I say, in my best educational voice, showing that she is correct but that mummy has a different word for this.

“Mouth”, she repeats.

“Well done darling!” I say, thinking how similar child-rearing techniques are to those used by Barbara Woodhouse on dogs. All that is missing is a little dog treat to hand out as a reward when I say “well done!”, and possibly a firm, congratulatory pat to her rump.

It occurs to me that if I were able to train Tadpole to obey dog-training commands like “sit” and “stay” then I might be able to prolong my life expectancy by several years. At the moment, I get to see her life flash before my eyes several times a day. Every time she manages to work loose her hand and dart towards a car/bicycle/the gap between the metro and the platform my heart does a little somersault. Which can’t be healthy.

I don’t discourage her from bringing me my slippers when I get home either.

Dog tangent aside, what I have noticed about the way Tadpole acquires French language is that for her “labouche” is one entity. As are “lesoreilles” and “lenez” or “lafourchette”. Aha! So that’s how French people instinctively know what gender something is. They learn the gender and the noun as one indivisible unit of language from the beginning. And separate it all out later on. None of that puzzling over whether a table leg ought to be feminine or masculine, or trying to get their head around the illogical concept of a breast being masculine (le sein). I imagine it won’t be long before Tadpole starts correcting my gender bending tendencies. In fact, soon I will have my very own walking, talking dictionary.

Similarly, in English at the moment there are a few words that she never uses in isolation. “Hat” is either part of the phrase “haton” or “hatoff”. “Light” is “lighton”. Her lasting fascination for lights is actually getting quite tedious: almost every single shop in France has a neon sign outside the front of it, and Tadpole feels the need to point at each and every one of them to show me that the light is indeed on.

It occurs to me that I should probably curb my language a little going forward to ensure that she doesn’t pick up any of the following phrases and decide that they are indivisible language blocks:

“sillydaddy”
“soddingcomputer”
“bloodywashingup”
“evilinlaws”

In the interests of preparing female readers for the inevitable harrassment they will encounter if strolling around the capital unchaperoned (or chaperoned only by a furry leopard), here is petite’s rough guide to common French chat-up lines.

“Vous avez de beaux yeux…”

The French equivalent of “Do you come here often?”. Although it might sound like a charming compliment the first time you hear it, it doesn’t age well. After about the twentieth re-run I found myself hard pushed to even muster up enough enthusiasm to bother responding with a sarcastic “Ah bon?”. However my real problem with this well-worn line is that the sleazy dragueur types using it very rarely look you in the eye while saying it. I don’t think I’m suggesting that the line should be changed to “what a lovely cleavage you have there mademoiselle. ” But a little eye-contact would be nice.

“Vous êtes américaine?” [or “suédoise” or “anglaise”]

Wrongly or rightly the French male seems to have the impression that all American girls are easy. So this line is likely to be delivered with a ‘hopeful’ intonation. Being more or less blonde (depending largely on the frequency of my visits to the hairdresser) and apparently non-French looking, I have been asked all of the above time and time again. The best line of defence seems to be to pretend not to understand a word of French. Either they give up, or the motivated ones start practising their dreadful Ingleesh on you. Which is likely to be good for a laugh if nothing else. And puts the dragueur at a distinct disadvantage.

“Vous avez une cigarette?”

Careful! There is nothing more bitterly disappointing than a drop dead gorgeous gentlemen requesting a cigarette, only to turn tail in disgust when no “clope” is forthcoming. Often French people who ask you for a cigarette are looking for just that: it’s a perfectly acceptable thing to do in this country. Similarly “vous avez du feu?” can be a genuine request for a light, or the oldest chat up line in the book. A vous de juger.

“Vous êtes charmante”

Thank you kindly. What a pity that you, Monsieur, are old enough to be my grandad and fug ugly.

The CSA (French broadcasting watchdog), which counts among its missions the responsibility for protecting and regulating the use of French on television and radio, has requested that television channels make more of an effort to give their shows French titles. If an English title is used, the CSA recommends an accompanying translation into French.

This is the latest manifestation of a futile ongoing battle against la surabondance de termes anglais ou anglicisés à la télévision et à la radio. In the firing line are a whole host of mostly Endemol-produced reality TV shows with names like ‘Star Academy’, ‘Loft Story’, ‘Popstars’ and ‘Fear factor’.

Oddly these do not have the same English names as their UK/US equivalents. ‘Star Academy’ is known as ‘Fame Academy’ in the UK. ‘Loft Story’ was the French version of ‘Big Brother’ (after three seasons of ever-declining ratings the format was scrapped and consigned to the audiovisual graveyard, although Loana - the pneumatic bimbo who got laid in the swimming pool during the first week of season one - seems to be a permanent feature of the Paysage Audivisuel Français).

Are we about to see a new tendancy emerging in French programme naming - the Attack of the Colon? Star Academy: l’Ecole des vedettes? Fear factor: le facteur de la peur? An amusing article in Libération points out that the literal translation of “Loft Story’ would give us the following catchy title: ‘Loft Story: Une histoire de local a usage commercial ou industriel amenage en local d’habitation’.

Probably not. The CSA is not actually planning to use its power to sanction TV production companies who do not toe the line. TF1 have already made a statement to the effect that Star Academy, the show responsible for inflicting Jennifer and Nolwenn on the French pop music scene, will not undergo a name change.

The English titling phenomenon is not limited to made-in-France reality/junk TV shows. Quality programmes imported from the USA tend to be broadcast nowadays using their original titles. ‘Nip/Tuck’, ‘Six Feet Under’ and ‘Desperate Housewives’ (coming soon on Canal+) are examples which immediately spring to mind. Personally, I’m thankful for this, as if they had been renamed I probably wouldn’t have noticed they were on at all. It took me long enough to work out that ‘Chapeau Melon et Bottes de Cuir’ = ‘The Avengers’ and ‘Deux Flics à Miami” = ‘Miami vice’.

If these programs had been re-baptised, I suspect the result would have looked something like this:

Nip/Tuck - Les Docteurs Troy et McNamara: chirurgiens esthétiques
Six Feet Under - La famille Fisher: entrepreneurs de pompes funèbres

Unimaginative indeed, but you only have to look at the number of French programmes in circulation featuring the name/job title of the protagonist in their title (’Les Cordier, juge et flic’, ‘L’instit’, ‘Navarro’) to see a pattern emerging.

The CSA is worried that the use of English words in TV programme titles devalues French language and culture, making programmes with French titles seem inferior or old-fashioned in comparison.

Personally, I can’t help thinking that the CSA is missing the point. Perhaps more attention needs to be paid to the quality of French TV production itself, and not simply the language of titles. Why are so many shows and reality TV formats being imported, I wonder? Could it possibly be *whispers* that home-grown productions are actually Not Very Good?

If there’s one thing that really makes me cringe, it is feeling obliged to pronounce English words with a French accent in order to make myself understood. I’ve been doing it with my surname for about nine years now. It never ceases to feel silly. It’s yet another reason why I’d quite like Mr Frog to pop the question someday in the not too distant future. (But not on Valentine’s day, obviously, because that would be nauseating.)

Last night, bad non-wife that I am, I sent out for pizza. When I got to the obligatory, non-negotiable dessert part of the order, I spied a range of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream. And I was faced with a dilemma. How does one pronounce ‘Chunky Monkey’ in French? Or ‘Caramel Chew Chew’ for that matter? I’m guessing the latter would involve a ’shoe shoe’ because the ‘tch’ sound doesn’t exist in the French language. I opted for 500 ml of ’shunkay monkay’ in the end, cringing all the while, and sounding like Michelle from the British comedy Allô Allô.

I don’t patronise McDonalds very often, for precisely the same reason. I have been known to get Mr Frog to do my dirty work when a junk food fix is The Only Thing That Will Do. I challenge you to try and look someone in the eye and ask for ‘un ambourgeur’ or ‘un sheezbourgeur’ without blushing or smirking. But trust me, if you pronounce your order the English/American way, you are likely to end up having to repeat yourself, and you will inevitably end up Frenchifying it in the end, out of sheer desperation.

When I did my time as an English Lectrice at the Sorbonne Nouvelle, I remember finding it nigh on impossible to understand my students’ English when they tried to tell me about their favourite non-French pop star, or actor. The names of famous people, known the world over, get the French treatment to the point where they are completely unrecognisable. Meet Broooz Weeleez (possible anatomical abnormality?) and Tom Aunks (my least favourite actor and the person guaranteed, in my opinion, to make the screen adaptation of the Da Vinci Code truly unwatchable).

The French seem to be blissfully unaware of the fact that that their pronunciation of a person’s name or film title can actually change the meaning altogether. My favourite example of this is the computer game/film ‘Tomb Raider’. Oddly, this title has not been translated, as is often the case. Instead, the official French pronunciation is ‘Tomb Rider. I can never hear that without picturing Angelina Jolie surfing on a headstone in her slinky little outfit, pouting all the while with those luscious lips of hers. A nice image, but haven’t the French missed the point slightly?

Edit: there was a film title on the tip of my tongue all day and I’ve just remembered it. Speeederman. Sounds like he should be wearing speedos, non?

If ever I decide to kill two minutes at work surfing Blog Explosion (usually between 17.58 and 18.00 when the countdown moves even more slowly), I invariably spend a few seconds of quality time in the company of 3 Republican wannabe pundits, 2 Democrats, 1 prairie apologist (whatever that means?), 2 knitting bloggers, and an animal lover. I am aware of the fact that this many sites = >2 minutes, but I do not count patience among my qualities.

Last week I stumbled across a blog (which sadly I can no longer find) which helpfully listed a great many figurative phrases and proverbs in the English language referring to cats. This set me off on a train of thought (m’a mis la puce à l’oreille) about similar expressions in French involving animals, and how these are translated into English. Just the sort of thing which keeps me awake at night.

After extensive research (i.e. looking at four or five entries for animals in the Collins/Robert dictionary and brainstorming with Mr Frog, for all the good that did me) I now share the fruit of my labours.

It transpires that French people do indeed shed crocodile tears on occasion, can be as stubborn as mules (personally I know of no-one more stubborn than my partner, so perhaps it should be changed to ‘as stubborn as a frog’?) They are wont to stick their heads in the sand (faire l’autruche - literally, do the ostrich). French females often eat like birds/sparrows (don’t believe any of this nonsense) and an unattractive person may be compared to a toad (être laid comme un crapaud).

However, for a French person, the day that pigs fly will be the day that chicken grow teeth (quand les poules auront des dents). It never rains cats and dogs, but like a pissing cow (pleuvoir comme vache qui pisse). Petite anglaise minus her glasses is as short-sighted as a mole (myope comme une taupe) rather than as blind as a bat. When French people feel a bit chilly they develop chicken skin (chair de poule), which is similar, but not identical to, goose pimples. The Gallic equivalent of having ‘other fish to fry’ is having other cats to whip (d’autres chats à fouetter). I’m not sure what the RSPCA/SPA/Brigitte Bardot would have to say about that kind of behaviour. A French person with a croaky voice has a cat in their throat, as opposed to a frog. (I can’t help feeling that the latter is a good thing and has probably spared me exposure to some rather unsavoury Mr Frog/throat jokes.)

But by far my favourite phrase, because of the lovely image it conjurs in my mind’s eye, is the French expression enculer des mouches. Which can be translated literally as ‘to bugger flies’.

In English we use the rather less colourful expression ‘to split hairs’.

‘Weee weee!’, announces Tadpole, finally tiring of the tissue she has been shredding into fifty-seven tiny pieces for the past five minutes.

‘You want a wee wee sweetie?’, I ask, having acquired the annoying habit of repeating everything Tadpole says in order to reassure her that she is being understood and improve her pronunciation. ‘Well, if you don’t want to do a wee wee in your nappy, why don’t we try sitting you on the potty?’

Tadpole is nineteen months old and I am in no hurry to go through the inevitably messy process of potty training, but as she has suddenly become very aware of the workings of her bottom (i.e. shouting ‘big poo’ while we are having a leisurely brunch in a local restaurant) a potty has been purchased and sits expectantly next to the toilet waiting for her to take an interest in it.

‘No potty. Wee wee!’, repeats Tadpole petulantly, as she doesn’t like not getting what she wants immediately. I sense that the rising intonation of her voice may indicate an imminent tantrum.

‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand what you want me to do,’ I reply, bracing myself for the piercing screams which are sure to follow. ‘Do you want me to change your nappy? Is it dirty?’

‘No dirty. WEE WEE!’

Tadpole glares at me, a glare which can be translated roughly as ‘mummy I can’t believe you can be so stupid. Are you sure you speak English?’ and storms off to her bedroom. She returns clutching a book, which she thrusts into my lap.

‘Wee Wee!’ She cries triumphantly.

It’s an Enid Blyton book. Noddy. One of the modern Golliwog-free ones where Big Ears and Noddy sleep in separate beds and Mr Plod does not make quite such liberal use of his truncheon. Known in France as ‘Oui Oui’ ( ‘Yes Yes’). I manage to suppress the urge to bang my head against a wall repeatedly. But only just.

Raising a bilingual child requires levels of patience I am not sure I possess.

I’ve come to the conclusion that being bilingual is not just about speaking and thinking in two different languages. It’s about having two distinct personalities.

When I first moved to France, despite my twelve or so years of French lessons at school, culminating in a university degree in French and German, I found it horribly difficult to express myself in French. I could get my point across, make conversation and understand what was being said around me, but I struggled to translate my actual personality. French people I met thought I was rather reserved and shy, quiet and not particularly opinionated. As painful shyness was something I had suffered from as a teenager and subsequently conquered, it was intensely frustrating to relive that awkward phase all over again in French. Another sticking point was humour: any attempt to communicate a dry Northern English sense of humour into French tended to result in disaster. What I had intended as sarcasm was often taken literally.

Ten years down the line I am far more comfortable in conversation in French am often mistaken for a native (a compliment I never grow tired of). Nonetheless I have realised that I am a slightly different person when I speak French. I think this is due in part to a conscious or subconscious desire to conform to French expectations of what it is acceptable for women to say (which means, for example, less swearing and crudity, even after a few drinks). Whatever the reason, my French alter ego is undoubtedly rather more polite and deferential than my English self.

Take answering the phone for instance. The English me is congenitally incapable of uttering the phrase “your welcome”. My mind goes blank when someone says ‘thank you’ and I mumble a bashful “no problem” or “that’s alright”, only to remember the existence of the phrase “you’re welcome” as I replace the receiver. My French self, on the other hand, adopts a syrupy sweet voice not unlike the invisible anchorwoman on the Arte channel (think the Cadbury’s caramel squirrel and you get the picture) and never ceases to amaze me when “il y’a pas de quoi” or “je vous en prie” trips effortlessly off her tongue.

In previous jobs, where I was the only native English speaker in the office, I often found it frustrating to be trapped in my polite, too nice French self all day long. I longed to let down my guard and relax into my English personality, and to have honest dialogue with my bosses and even inject a touch of humour once in a while. Eventually I made the move to an English firm where I really could be me all day long: the sarcastic, occasionally subversive, mercilessly piss-taking and smutty (after a beer-or two) me. It was the best move I ever made. My very mental well-being depended on it.

I doubt I would have ended up living with a Frenchman if he hadn’t been fluent in English. In the case of Mr Frog, I am not his first petite anglaise, so he already had some experience in that department, and in the early days he saw me mostly in the context of my group of heavy drinking, bar-hopping friends and definitely fell for the English me. I honestly don’t think I could have had any sort of meaningful relationship with someone whom I only ever spoke French to.

At the end of the day, although I did move to this country with the aim of becoming fluent in the language, and to live a French life, I am adamant that I don’t want to lose touch with the English me within. My French personality doesn’t feel quite genuine, it’s more like a mask I wear sometimes.

And it gets a bit uncomfortable after prolonged wear, not unlike my contact lenses.

Listening to the Tadpole chattering away this morning it occurred to me that she has developed a Yorkshire accent. Short ‘a’ sounds (bath, glasses), nice Yorkshire ‘u’ sounds (mummy) and little phrases (’come ‘ere!’) that wouldn’t be out of place in The Last of the Summer Wine. I hadn’t realised I was unconsciously teaching my daughter Northern English.

As far as accents go, I’ve always been a bit of a linguistic chameleon. It’s not an affectation. I don’t deliberately adopt a plummy ‘Received Pronunciation’ (BBC English) voice to speak to VIP clients on the phone, or a very broad Leeds accent when I see my ‘bioparents’. I just can’t seem to help myself. Whether I intend to or not, I mimic the accent of the person I’m having a conversation with.

I have a very clear memory of answering the phone as a child to a caller from my father’s company head office in Dundee. In the space of a two minute conversation I became Scottish. I felt rather awkward and embarassed at the thought the lady might think I was mocking her accent. However, if you asked me to ‘do a Scottish accent’ right now, it would be abysmal.

Apparently this is a well-documented phenomenon called ‘unconscious mimicry’. Most people do this to some extent, and it has implications far beyond accent alone: one person will often adopt the same sentence structure, intonation and vocabulary as another. A form of linguistic empathy or solidarity. While all children are natural mimics, as this is how they learn, most adults lose this ability as they grow older, which is one of the reasons why it makes sense for children to learn foreign languages from an early age. Evidently some adults do retain a greater faculty for mimicry than others. Whether they like it or not.

The upside of this unconscious habit of mine is that my French accent is near perfect. It is probably a Parisian accent, if such a thing exists in this cosmopolitan city, although I’m generally poor at recognising regional French accents apart from the very obvious North/South vowel differences. I do frequently get mistaken for a native, which is something I never cease to feel childishly gleeful about.

The downside is that when speaking English with Mr Frog, I adopt a faint, but tragic French accent. It makes me cringe, but it is beyond my control. Not only do I mimic the Frog’s (very charming) English accent, but I also reproduce his grammatical errors. Now that’s what I call solidarity.

So I suppose I should be thankful that this is not how I’m naturally inclined to speak to the Tadpole, given that she is as near to a linguistic clean slate as you can get, and at a very impressionable age.

I can definitely live with her being bilingual in French and Yorkshire. And I have a sneaking feeling my family back home will be delighted.

Tomorrow I shall be hurtling towards the Jura in a TGV, away from computers, broadband internet connections and civilisation in general. I’ll be back in Gay Paree briefly on Monday to let off some steam about the EVIL’s and will continue blogging from the UK for the rest of that week.

Merry Christmas to each and every one of you!

And thank you to Versac for his oh so charming link to me yesterday.

Tadpole has started singing. Mostly nonsense words, but it sounds incredibly cute all the same. She has a little electronic nursery rhyme book which sings to her in French. I had a problem with this at first, as it sounds like my mother in law’s voice on the recording, but I’m over it now. Anyway, I thought I’d have a look for the full lyrics of some French nursery rhymes on the interweb, as the book sings the first few lines and then just plays the music and I don’t know how the songs are supposed to continue.

Mr Frog, needless to say, can’t remember any of the words. I sometimes wonder if he really is French? Or whether he had a childhood. Maybe he’s actually an alien masquerading as a French person. I haven’t seen any evidence of super powers so far, but if I do you will be the first to know.

What I like about English nursery rhymes are the references to comforting things like tea - ‘Polly put the kettle on’, ‘I’m a little teapot’. Of course I am aware that some of our best loved nursery rhymes were inspired by rather unpalatable historical events: ‘Mary Mary quite contrary’, which appears to be Tadpole’s favourite, allegedly recounts the persecution of protestants during the reign of catholic Mary Tudor (the garden being a graveyard and the silver bells and cockle shells being instruments of torture according to one source). But let’s face it, to Tadpole it is just song about a garden with pretty things in it.

I can’t help however being a little perturbed after reading the full lyrics for Alouette, one of the best known French contines.

Alouette, gentille Alouette,
Alouette je te plumerai,
Alouette, gentille Alouette,
Alouette je te plumerai,
Je te plumerai la tête,
Je te plumerai la tête,
Et la tête, et la tête,
Alouette, Alouette,
O-o-o-o-oh,
Alouette, gentille Alouette,
Alouette je te plumerai…

So what do we have here? A song about a lovely lark. Getting plucked.

Lark, lovely lark,
Lark, lovely lark,
Lark, I’m going to pluck you,
Lark, lovely lark,
Lark, I’m going to pluck you
I’m going to pluck your head,
I’m going to pluck your head,
And the head, and the head,
Lark, lark,
O-o-o-o-oh,
Lark, lovely lark,
Lark, I’m going to pluck you…

The song can be repeated substituting the word ‘head’ for other body parts (nose, eyes, wings, whatever). I cannot help but be reminded of all those bucolic French films with close up shots of rabbits being skinned and pheasants being plucked. But are larks even edible?

I am not looking forward to the day in the not too distant future when Tadpole inevitably asks me to explain what ‘plucking’ means and why the poor lark is getting it.

The upshot of all this is that I think I’ll stick to my English nursery rhymes after all. Preferably the ones about making tea.

*I think I may be delirious - I have an ear infection and sinus infection and am taking very strong drugs today - so please bear with me if this is utter nonsense. But I was getting blogging withdrawal symptoms.

I seem to have teeth on the brain at the moment. Tadpole is simultaneously cutting a few molars, with the usual accompaniment of unpleasant nappies (why the two are connected I have never managed to establish) and puts up as good a fight as ever when I try to approach her with a baby toothbrush before bedtime. As for me, I keep having that recurring dream where all my teeth come loose and I spit copious amounts of blood and several teeth into the bathroom sink. A dream which is allegedly not related to anxiety about requiring a set of premature dentures, but in fact can be interpreted as relating to children. According to this website, dreams about losing teeth are actually quite common and tend to be triggererd by one of the following scenarios:

• I’m approaching the menopause and will no longer be able to have children (unlikely at 32, and I’ve been having this dream since puberty);
• I have a physical problem leading to an inability to have children (not that I know of, thank goodness, I wouldn’t mind another Tadpole at some stage);
• I’m not feeling capable of raising a child (does anyone ever feel really confident in their ability as a parent?);
• my child is ready to leave the nest (possibly a bit premature at 17 months, even if she is a bit precocious);
• I want a child but my partner doesn’t (n/a unless the Frog is keeping something very important from me);
• or, I am in a situation (at work, for example) where I cannot assert myself and am feeling frustrated. (I don’t think my boss would agree with that one. Not being assertive enough has never come up in my evaluations. Quite the opposite).

So, sorry to disappoint, but I remain convinced that my brain works in far less mysterious ways and this dream is in fact my unconscious mind’s way of reminding me that I really must get around to making an appointment for my annual dental check up.

In the French language, the word ‘tooth’ crops up in several rather colourful figures of speech, some of which I rather like because of the images they call to mind.

An ambitious person is said to have long teeth (avoir les dents longues), while an extremely ambitious person has teeth which scratch the floor (les dents qui rayent le parquet). Presumably ambitious people ought to look something like bugs bunny. I’d be interested to hear where this association between teeth and ambition comes from, andwhether it crops up in any other languages. I don’t think ambition is associated with any part of the human anatomy in English?

Negative uses of the word ‘tooth’ in French include the phrase ‘to bear a grudge’, which translates as to ‘have a tooth (against somebody)’. To ‘be scathing’ in French, you ‘are hard toothed’ (avoir la dent dure).

The Frog’s favourite threat when I do something naughty is: ‘je vais te faire voler les dents.’ What a charmer. No wonder I fell for him.

The integrity of the French language is defended by the Académie Française, an institution created in 1635 consisting of 40 immortels, who are not immortal, but do wear a very attractive green ceremonial sash and sword when they pose for photographs.

The mission of the académiciens is to protect the French language from the threat posed by English, or rather American English. New words appear in the French dictionary by their consent only.

Le rayonnement de la langue française est menacé par l’expansion de l’anglais, plus précisément de l’américain, qui tend à envahir les esprits, les écrits, le monde de l’audiovisuel.

The academy strives to keep apace with developments in science and technology, fertile breeding grounds for English neologisms, and for every new concept they invent an equivalent French word.

In 1994 the controversial Loi Toubon aimed to curb the widespread usage of anglo-saxon. A blacklist of proscribed English words was published by the Academy with recommended French alternatives. Many of the latter I have never seen in print (une frimousse for a smiley? un fouineur for a hacker?), so it would seem that this has not been a resounding success.

The law also introduced a minimum quota of French music on the airwaves, but that subject is deserving of a full post in itself. Let’s just say for now that I am not a big fan of French radio.

Surfing French (we)blogs of late I noticed that there is some (occasionally heated) debate among bloggers as to what they should call themselves and their output. The terms un blog or un weblog currently co-exist with un carnet web or un journal web, shortened to joueb. Strictly speaking as the Académie dislikes the word ‘web’, preferring ‘toile’, surely that should be un carnet-toile? In French speaking Canada on the other hand, their equivalent to the Académie has opted for un blogue.

I’ll let you know when the Académie makes up its mind… Given that the word fax (although télécopie is the preferred alternative) made it into the official dictionary in 2000, I’m not holding my breath.

apologies to anyone flying in from luc sainte-elie’s site expecting something ‘désopilante’. I realise, after reaching for the dictionary, that today’s post doesn’t live up to that very flattering description.

At the In Laws’ house last weekend I made a discovery: the Tadpole speaks French.

When I say speaks, I mean mostly disconnected words, like she uses in English. Her favourite party trick at the moment consists of pointing at ears, mouth, nose etc.and naming them each in turn. ‘Eye’ is rather hazardous and for once I’m relieved to wear protective glasses. I wasn’t too surprised to discover that she can also do this in French. I was astonished however to hear her say, in the correct contexts, ‘parti papa’ and ‘assieds-toi!’

It is all to be expected, given she spends ten hours a day with a French speaking childminder and two French toddlers, but I had never before been confronted with quite so much evidence of her abilities. And, as we were sleeping in the same room as her, I heard her talking in French in her sleep.

You may be wondering how it is that I don’t hear Tadpole speak more French at home. Her daddy is a Frog after all. Well, if the truth be told he only really sees her for any length of time at weekends, as she is in bed by the time he gets home from work, and he is uncommunicative, to say the least, in the mornings. But the main reason is that the Frog being a man, he doesn’t specialise in giving a running commentary about everything he is doing, the things he can see out of the car window or what Tadpole can see from her pushchair. Men just don’t do that as much as women, in my experience. So although Frog and Tadpole do spend time together playing, there is less actual talking going on than when Tadpole is with me, or with MIL last weekend.

Faced with a French speaking Tadpole/tétard, I got my first taste of what it is going to be like bringing up a bilingual child.

Whenever she used a word in French that she also knows in English, I was pleased to see that she had taken on board two words for that object or concept and rather proud of her progress.

However, when she came out with a word in French (case in point maison) that I hadn’t yet taught her in English, I felt a bizarre stab of jealousy that she had learnt it in French first and not in English. I couldn’t restrain myself from taking immediate remedial action by saying ‘yes, that’s right, but mummy says house.’

I think Mr Frog must feel something similar, because he has started saying ‘oui, mais papa dit…’ It’s starting to feel like a competition to see who can teach her the most words in their own language.

I have always known that living here means that French will be Tadpole’s mother tongue, regardless of the fact that I’m her mother and my tongue is English. But I think this fact is only just starting to sink in…

If you look at the use of the word ‘French’ in the English language and likewise anglais(e) in French, the usage yields valuable clues as to how Brits have traditionally viewed the French, and vice versa.

Phrases in English using the word French are mostly related to food and sex. The French would argue they do both better.

Let’s start with food:
French toast - which you don’t see in Britain much, I think it’s more American. I have yet to sample any. Probably the equivalent of pain perdu in French, but I wouldn’t know, as I haven’t tried that either.
French fries (or Freedom Fries as they are sometimes known in the US) - just ‘fries’ in France.
French beans - these seem to be the only type of green beans the French eat, known to the French simply as ‘green beans’. My father, allotment enthusiast extraordinaire, doesn’t believe me when I say I am not aware of a word existing for broad bean or runner bean in French. Quite frankly I would rather broad beans did not exist full stop (that’s period to American folk).

And now for a bit of sex. It would appear that the following expressions stem from Anglo-Saxons equating Gallic culture with sexual sophistication. Whether or not this is still pertinent today is debatable. ‘French kiss’: a kiss with tongues. Following extensive research conducted on both sides of the English Channel, my humble opinion is that the Brits actually have the edge (Mr Frog being the exception, naturally). Then we have the ‘French letter’, disliked unanimously by both French and English gentlemen, which confusingly goes by the name of un préservatif in French, thereby belonging to the category of ‘false friends’. ‘Cette confiture contient-elle des préservatifs?’ I think not.

I am told that the verb ‘to French’ means to perform oral sex. Likewise the seemingly innocent manicure/furniture restoration terminology, to have a ‘French polish’. I do not intend to develop this paragraph any further as I wouldn’t want to give the worrying numbers of people who arrive on my site via the search terms ‘petite porn’ any reason to come back.

Swiftly moving on, the following are expressions using the word ‘English’ in the French language.

Culinary terms using the word ‘english’ are rather evocative of English cuisine as a whole, I think. Crème anglaise is what the French call custard, that staple of stodgy British puddings and trifles. The French version of this is thinner and served cold, a little more refined than warm, gloopy English custard. I like both and will not be made to choose. Cuit à l’anglaise means boiled. Several of my French acquaintances associate English cooking with overcooked boiled food, even going to far as to suggest that we boil most of our meat. I for one have never boiled a piece of meat, but I must admit that the French expression conjures up memories of soggy sprouts in the school canteen.

Les Anglais ont débarqué is a somewhat old-fashioned expression to describe the bane of every woman’s life, menstruation. Something to do with the Napoleonic wars and the undesirable arrival of the English who wore red uniforms. Prior to that, another phrase commonly used was recevoir un courrier de Rome, as Cardinals also wore red robes. So the idea behind the phrase would appear to be more about colour, and not derived from ‘English’ being synonymous with pain, PMT and hot water bottles.

Finally, there is an expression meaning to go AWOL which the French and English ascribe to each other. Filer à l’anglaise: ‘to take French leave’. The Germans are with the English on this one sich auf französisch verabschieden, but the Italians are with the French filarsela all’inglese. So opinions vary, but basically both the French and the English are associated with impolite behaviour.

Now if you don’t mind, I’m going to bugger off now and do some work. Pardon my French.

…avec moi ce soir?

That wasn’t an invitation. Sorry to disappoint.

It is however the French phrase which everyone seems to know. And I’ll come back to it in a minute.

The fact that there are two words for ‘you’ in French is another of the things which makes it difficult for English speakers to master the language.

In a nutshell, tu is the familiar you. It demonstrates a certain closeness and informality. So you would address a friend, peer, colleague, relative, child or pet as tu. If you talk to yourself, I imagine you would use it too.

Vous is the formal and plural you. It is used to show respect or maintain a certain distance or formality. To complicate matters, it is also the plural form of both tu and vous. Typically you would use this when talking to someone you don’t know well, an older person, an authority figure, or to two or more people or animals.

So coming back to my opening phrase, if you say ‘Voulez-vous couchez avec moi ce soir’ then I would assume that you are a slapper/prostitute (a complete stranger?), you are in the market for a sugar daddy, a policeman, a ‘partouse’ (orgy) or a spot of bestiality.

During the French Revolution, and again in the liberal 60’s, waves of tutoiement helped to get the point across that all men should be equal and be addressed in the same way. Nowadays some companies advocate use of tuin the workplace when they want to be seen as progressive. But this can go too far. Sometimes a bit of distance doesn’t do any harm or a respectful Vous just feels right. When French TV interviewer Karl Zero addresses a politician he is interviewing as tu, which is his trademark, I inwardly cringe. He maintains that in so doing he is trying to bring down barriers and show that everyone is equal. To me this affectation makes him seem arrogant: it’s a case of look at me, I’m important enough to say tu to the Prime Minister…

If in doubt, you are supposed to ask the person you are talking to whether they mind you addressing them as tu. Former president Mitterand’s subtle rebuff in response to this question was apparently ‘Si Vous voulez…’

I call my in-laws vous. I can’t decide whether this is because they are old/authority figures/not in my family or whether it’s just me keeping my distance.

But it feels right.

It’s not often I come across a word I don’t know/can’t guess the meaning of. But this morning looking for the first time at the guide to the Paris metro on the station wall while waiting for my train, I saw this puzzling word:

podotactile

It sounds like a name for a foot fetishist, or possibly a type of dinosaur. But in fact, it is the word used to describe the textured strip which runs along the edge of the metro station platform, which you can feel with your feet. Presumably to stop people who can’t see very well/at all from falling off the edge. So foot fetishist was close: those GCSE Latin lessons with Mr Shaw (where Caecilius was cheating on his wife with the slave girl) did have their uses after all.

So, podotactile is officially word of the week.

I challenge you all to use it in conversation at least twice.

If the Frog ever utters the word ‘bag’, I now know that it is wise to run for cover immediately.

I learnt this the hard way.

It was four in the morning back in the year 4BT (Before Tadpole) and I was sleeping peacefully. The Frog had been to one of his soirées with his advertising agency clan. Whenever they are involved, ‘dinner’ means ‘not home before dawn’.

I was woken by a fumbling noise at the front door and muffled swearing as keys were dropped. The Frog then stumbled around the flat in the dark, probably trying not to wake me up, but about as subtle as a herd of stampeding buffalo. I pretended to be asleep, as I was not in the mood for slurred conversation. The stench of alcohol preceded him into the bedroom, and as he clambered into bed, he mumbled something. I caught only the word ‘grappa’.

Just as I started to drift back off to sleep, slowly becoming inebriated myself in the 90% proof air, the Frog made a strange coughing noise. He lifted his head up off the pillow, and then said ‘baaag?!!’ in a strangled voice. And I think you know what happened next…

I do not enjoy changing the bedclothes and washing down the walls at 4am but sometimes it is a necessity. I also hosed down the Frog in a (cold) shower. Revenge is sweet.

Two things occur to me about his exclamation with the benefit of hindsight:

First of all, who did he think he was talking to? An air hostess? Perhaps I should have a pocket fitted onto the headboard with an in-flight magazine and a paper bag for emergencies? A drop down oxygen mask for myself might also come in handy.

Secondly, and most surprising of all, is the fact that the word which sprang to his alchohol-addled mind was not ’saaac’. Only rarely have I hurt myself and said ‘aiiee!’ instead of ‘ouch’. It’s like a reflex : that kind of interjection usually comes out in the mother tongue.

But I must admit I do sometimes come out with an ‘oh là là ‘ of astonishment. On those grounds alone I think I should be awarded French nationality.

When buying a naughty breakfast snack this morning at the kiosk below my office, the lady serving me (in her 40’s, liberally made-up, raucous voice of a forty a day galloise smoker) called me ‘ma biche’, as usual. Literally: doe (a deer, a female deer…); but basically it’s like calling someone ‘pet’ in English.

And so I got to thinking about other common but rather odd terms of endearment in the French language.

My favourite has got to be ‘ma puce’, which translates as ‘my flea’. I don’t know about you, but if I could choose any member of the animal kingdom to describe someone I was rather fond of, a flea would not have been my first choice. Fleas are not cute, and definitely not cuddly. But I grant that the word sounds quite nice. Maybe that’s all it is.

If I had to choose a plant, or indeed a vegetable, to describe someone dear to me, likewise I doubt ‘my (little) cabbage’ would spring to mind, but in France ‘mon chou’ is another common affectionate name.

French ‘Mother in Law’ (because you don’t have to be married to have a MIL) calls the Tadpole ‘ma mie’, which is not a little confusing, as she calls herself ‘mamie’ (grandma)… If you were paying attention, you will recall that mie is the soft middle bit of a baguette, which the Frog scoops out and leaves in compressed balls on the dinner table.

What does the Frog call me?

That would be telling…

NB: Incidentally, the Frog will be forced to read all the comments in the ‘old maid’ post, plus his email (thanks Vit!) and I will keep you informed if there are any developments. I’m trying to persuade him to do a guest post at some point, but he says he wants me to build up some more vilainous traits in his character first. I’m not sure why.

These days I’m often mistaken for a French person, at least over the phone (because apparently I will always ‘look’ English). That is until I make some unforgiveably basic gender mistake. Because let’s face it, you can study a language to degree level, live in the country for donkey’s years, but you can’t re-programme your brain to think that a table is feminine and a glass is masculine. My theory is that when a French person learns to speak, the le or la is learnt as an extension of the noun in question, one cannot be dissociated from the other. Whereas when I learn a new French word, I retain the noun itself, but not its gender. I’m just not hardwired that way. This is the main reason I didn’t feel capable of teaching French. “Please Miss, you just said une verre but yesterday in the book Fifi la Folle said un verre…”

I’m always astonished when I get a gender wrong, for example when shopping, and the person serving me stares back blankly, genuinely not understanding what it is that I want. You would assume, would you not, that if you asked for une éclair au chocolat instead of un éclair au chocolat it wouldn’t be the end of the world? Apparently not. I am generally reduced to repeating my mistake a few more times, in a louder voice, until finally the shop assistant has a flash of inspiration and replies: “Ah oui Madame, vous voulez dire un éclair au chocolat, bien sûr…”

What really doesn’t help is that many words simply have the wrong gender, in my opinion. How can I possibly be expected to get my head around the following blatant mismatches between concept and gender?

masculine: le repassage (ironing), le ménage (housework), le sein (breast), l’accouchement (giving birth), le feminisme…

feminine: une bitte (sl. - penis), la guerre (war), la paresse (sloth, laziness)…

I propose a wholesale revision of the French dictionary and will be writing to the Académie Française forthwith.

Tadpole currently has a repertoire of twenty or so ‘words’ in English, if you count various animal noises and things like ‘nanaani’ for banana. Although these words are allegedly all onomatopoeia, I’m sad to say that the French and English simply do not hear the same noise when a dog woofs or a duck quacks.

On the wrong side this side of the channel, dogs go “ouah ouah” (wa wa), ducks go “coin coin” (kwan kwan) and cockerels say “cocorico” - which sounds like it should be the name of a cocktail. Pigs say “groin groin” (??!), birds say “cui cui” and frogs go “coa-coa.” Fans of Gigli (which I haven’t seen) will be interested to learn that turkeys/J-Lo’s say “glou glou.”

So I am having a dilemma: should I teach tadpole the English noises and run the risk in the future of other children at school thinking she is a bit soft in the head? Or do I stick do my guns on this one?

Incidentally gunfire in French is rendered as “pan! pan!” Is it only me, or does that sound pathetic?

I have been living in France for 8 years now and I’m saddened to admit that my English is now showing signs of serious wear and tear. Thanks to intensive use of my well-thumbed dictionary, I do aim to keep this blog free of ‘petiteanglaiseisms’ and spelling mistakes*. In conversation however - especially when tired - I frequently talk utter drivel, or worse, become hopelessly tongue-tied because I can’t think of a perfectly commonplace word in English.

There are some subjects which I’m definitely much more comfortable discussing in French, because my only experience of dealing with them has been in this country. Mostly grown-up things like employment, mortgages and gynaecological terminology. I could wax lyrical about my pelvic floor in French (should you want me to?) ‘til the cows come home, but I’d struggle in English.

The Frog speaks petite anglaise fluently and also makes charming mistakes of his own which I have been known to adopt. The fact that he must unwittingly slip some of my grammatically unsound constructions and invented vocabulary into casual conversation with his English-speaking co-workers is a little worrying, but I hope they find it rather endearing. After all, it’s not his own native tongue he is perverting.

I have no such excuse and also a highly impressionable tadpole to bring up, hopefully to be bilingual one day. I wonder if I owe it to her to sign up for English conversation evening classes?

* I look forward to a veritable deluge of comments pointing out all my spelling mistakes past and present