NOTE: This was originally written for the weblog Straight White Guy, where I am guest-posting for Eric.
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Eric asked me to help keep the place running while he’s on vacation, so while I won’t necessarily give the same psycho rants that he regales us with, I do have some odd stories.
The main reason I haven’t sat down with Eric to compare our favorite Scotches is because I currently live in France. I plan on visiting Scotland soon so that I can discover first-hand what Eric loves about that land.
Living in another country has certain challenges that are not routinely encountered when moving from one place to another within the United States. Take the language, for example.
In French, the nouns have gender, and the adjectives need to match the gender of the noun. For example, the word for “car” is feminine, so I have to use the feminine version of the word for “my” when I say “my car”, ma voiture. The word for “apartment” is masculine, so I say mon appartement.
Recently, I had to introduce myself as someone’s manager, and the person who works for me is a woman. So, in my mind I was thinking “her boss” and I ended up saying “sa patron.”
Unfortunately, it is MY gender that is important in that phrase, not hers, so I ended up referring to myself as a woman…
Oops.
Of course, that is better than another instance where I used the wrong word.
In English, we say “I am hot” or “I am cold” to describe our condition, but in French, the literal translation of the phrases that have those meanings are “I have heat” or “I have cold”.
This created a wee bit of confusion in my mind between the verbs “to be” and “to have” when speaking French, and I occasionally used “to be” when I meant to say “to have” or the other way around.
So, one day I was riding my bicycle next to a river out in a rural area, and I was passed by a car that parked on the side of the road. A woman got out and opened the rear door so her dog could climb out of the car. She said hello to me when I stopped to take a quick rest and drink, and we had a quick conversation. In the course of talking, she referred to her dog, and I tried to say, “I have a cat.” I actually said, “I am a cat.” I realized my mistake when I saw her eyes open rather wider than one normally sees on a person.
Oops.
The reason why I was trying to make sure I used “have” instead of “am” when saying “I am hot” is because if you say the literal translation in French, Je suis chaud, you have just said you are horny. Not the message I want to convey to certain folks here.
Another pitfall, one that I managed to avoid, is related to some of the local drinking establishments.
Here in France, they have places called bar americain.
They are not what you might think they would be… unless you hang out at certain types of bars in America.
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Look carefully at the shop across the street if the sign for the bar americain two blocks from my apartment did not make it clear exactly what kind of bar it is:
(click on the image for a larger photo)
I’m going to have to check out how it compares to similar establishments in the United States. I went to The Yellow Rose in Austin a couple of years ago for a bachelor party. Visiting the bar americain close to my apartment is cultural research, you see…
Technorati Tags: France, humor, letters from Europe
