I think the first French words I came across were, ‘Mode d’emploi’; Directions.
The backs of cleaning products were my bathroom reading in the early years and I couldn’t help but notice that it took many more words to tell you how to use the product in French than in English. Maybe the French are more expressive than the English. I know, ‘How to clean the sink,’ would work for me whereas those of the french speaking persuasion might want to know, ‘How to love to clean the sink’, and need a few more words to truly express the passion the product evoked. Well, we all know that French words have genders so right of the top every word is two words which would explain some of the added length. Must be a challenge for the label makers, though, to come up with the right words that both do the job and fit on the label. An interesting concept might be to continue the instructions on an attached second bottle’s label. Should boost sales, at least.
But this early introduction to bilingualism didn’t have a practical application; how was I to use, ‘Mode d’emploi’, in any imaginable situation and gain the upper hand and its accompanying positive impression? So I kept my eye out for a French phrase that I could use to impress, say, a charming mademoiselle who is in a state of reflection and not facing a sink to clean.
I ran across, literally, such a possible useful phrase in school; not in class, but on the floor, ‘Plancher mouillé’; Wet Floor. You know it’s ‘wet floor’ not because you learned it in school but because the folding sign kindly provided the English translation. So you couldn’t use the excuse, ‘Damn, I thought those yellow things we’re only in Spanish?’ as you skidded down the hall.1 as an aside, funny, isn’t it, how we like to test warnings, like touching the bench with the ‘wet paint’ sign and then wondering how you’ll get the paint off your finger? Or how to anonymously sue the city.
But again I thought, how could I use this, never-have-to-study-it-for-a test free education? I suppose if I were in a French speaking environment and a person were walking on a wet floor, it would be appreciated.
Mind you, I probably wouldn’t have pronounced it correctly. “Well officer, I tried to warn him. It was raining you see and we were on the Eiffel tower, and then I remembered how to help this guy before he tested the next slippery slope:
‘Plant-cher-mooly.
(looking down at the prone form) Is he still breathing, officer?’
While we’re on foreign instructions, how ‘bout ‘push’ and ‘pull’ for Canadians who never got closer to Quebec than Cornwall? ‘Pousser’ you could probably guess at but you could be standing motionless in front of a door for a while trying to avoid the embarrassment of deciding whether to push or pull when the only letters you have to go on were, ‘T-i-r-e-r’.
“Do you think that’s ‘push’ Clem?”
“Well, sure doesn’t sound like ‘pull’, Vern. I’m thinkin’ it’s closer to ‘Closed for the season.’”
On a similar note, after many years of high school French and German I can now comfortably say, ‘Do not lean out the window,’ in both languages. I’d deciphered these instructions while travelling in Europe. They were etched in a metal plaque which was firmly affixed to the sill of a train window. You’d think if you were illiterate, completely illiterate in all of the dozens of official European languages, you’d still hesitate to stick your head out the window of a moving train.
‘Boy it’s stuffy in here, let’s open the window’.’
‘What’s it like out?’
‘Let me see, I’ll just stick my head out the window …’
We were on a cruise recently and before each port the cruise director shows some slides accompanied by some polite banter on what we could expect to see and do there. Part of the routine is trying to learn a few phrases in the language of the land. Expressions like ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ andthe one that always gets a laugh, ‘My wife is missing.’
It seems this happens quite often, unfortunately, and this simple four word cry for help in English usually translates to an excited thousand word muttering with assumed accents of that port’s lingo.
I’m trying to picture local authorities, eager to help, straining to interpret the fractured dialect and looking for any facial expression or hand gesture that might clarify the desperate spouse’s plea.
‘What’s he saying, Karl, he seems pretty upset?’
‘I think the ship is out of toilet paper.’
Actually, English is the lingua franca in most tourist invaded destinations. And to add insult to a-single-language user’s injury, everyone’s English is very good.
I don’t think I’ll ever be able to be truly bilingual or fluent enough to converse comfortably in any language other than English. And even there I can be challenged. I confess to using sub-titles when I’m even streaming English productions.
I clearly recall a scene in a J. Arthur Rank film, edited for export, where this indecipherable cockney character is chatting up a tart who is leaning against a street lamp post late at night in a physically inviting way. I’m pretty sure he wants to know the price to pay to enjoy the pleasures of her company.
But you want to be sure; you’d hate to lose any subtlety that would make this a phrase to remember so you glance down at the sub-title just to confirm:
“Hi there yourself, Miss, and thank you, but I’m not a sailor, just visiting from Canada. Have a nice day, eh?”
| 1. | ↑ | as an aside, funny, isn’t it, how we like to test warnings, like touching the bench with the ‘wet paint’ sign and then wondering how you’ll get the paint off your finger? Or how to anonymously sue the city. |