Parlez vous Garlic?
There are two things that confuse me about the French.
One is that they donât seem to laugh very much, which is very surprising as they donât have Fianna Fail to contend with all the time.
The other is that they insist on speaking a foreign language.
I like French as a language. It isnât as guttural as German [why do Germans always sound like they are about to sneeze?] and it is one hell of a lot better than Spanish or Italian. Those two just sound like popcorn going off, and irritate the hell out of me. One of the few things I miss about living in suburbia is making life hell for Spanish students.
The French language is quite soft and is very definitely sexy. I have gotten into trouble with quite a few Fine Things over the last couple of weeks when they asked me something simple in French, and I thought they said something else entirely. But thatâs another story for another time [the first court hearing is in six weeks].
For some strange reason, quite a few French people copped onto the fact that I donât speak fluent French [translation â my French is shite], and a few of them actually started speaking English to me. When I replied in French, they got even more confused. They would then say [in French] that they were sorry, but that they thought I was English, to which I would reply [in French] that Iâm not English, so much as Irish. They would then reply that they donât speak Irish to which my reply was always that I donât speak much of it myself these days. It was usually around this time in the conversation that we gave up altogether, and spoke Japanese [of which I havenât a single word].
Shopping was the worst as it is very difficult asking for things that I couldnât point to.
Has anyone got any use for fifteen cartons of sanitary towels, a patio heater and a tame giraffe?
The language of love, Grandad. Whereas German is the language of osteoparosis. I’ll go a fiver for the giraffe.
Good to be home though, right ?
Cap’n – A fiver? For fuck’s sake, it cost me a fifty spot to get him through customs!!
TT – I’ll have to think about that one………
I spent 7 months in France telling everyone ‘Je suis très désolé, mais je ne parle pas Français’.
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Then I came home to Ireland and found I was actually quite good at it. It’s amazing what you can learn when you keep your mouth shut.
7 euro 50 cents for Gordon and you’ll throw in the rope?
Okay. Keep the giraffe. But you’ve quite literally got some neck:)
The refined culture of France is something good for us to admire and discreetly envy. I did six years of the language at school but can’t really speak it, and, like you grandad, have had the corrective response of Frenchmen switching over to Anglais after hearing me making a hames of their grammar and enunciation. I still like to read that most intelligent and wide ranging daily newspaper, Le Monde, online once every twenty-four hours. It often carries good photographs too.
I did two years of German at school and learned to pronounce its deliberate and guttural sounds fairly well, probably because I used to handle Irish pronunciation well. When hiking as a student through Germany I took the opportunity to practise speaking and believe I made myself understood. Invariably after preliminary small talk a motorist giving me a lift – Germans were generous lift-givers - would politely ask me: Wo kommen Sie her? and I would reply Ich bin Irländer. This reply would pleasantly surprise them as they wouldn’t in those days have expected somebody of my nationality to learn their language. I noticed that Germans didn’t get into a huff when I made grammatical mistakes or stumbled when grasping for a word auf Deutsch. Many of them politely corrected my grammar by repeating a phrase or sentence I had mismanaged interrogatively in its correct form.
Chris P – That was more or less the line I used all the time. I did find I could understand a lot more than I thought I could [and a hell of a lot more than the French thought I could! Heh!]
Cap’n – You’re bidding against yourelf now. I’m keeping the giraffe. He’ll be good company for five llamas I have somehow acquired.
Wally – Welcome! Apart from a few previous trips to France, my entire learning of the language consisted of French classes in secondary school, where I was taught by a religious[?] brother who was more interested in fiddling with the pupils than teaching French. My highest exam result ever was 15%.   It’s a wonder I got anywhere at all. My knowledge of German is zilch. Not a single focal.
Mais oui, les cinque llamas, ils mangent bien l’herbe douce autour de votre maison actuellement n’est pas, grandpapa? Is herself thinking of knitting you a nice white winter cardigan by any chance? Et les Gardai n’en soupçonnent pas. Shades of Shergar maybe. They should call in Inspector Clouseau immediatement.
Wally – Will you please stop trying to confuse me? [You are succeeding]. The Gardai can search all they like – they won’t find the llamas [or the three goats].
But what if the Gardai discover several big balls of recently spun coarse white wool?
me gustaria la jirafa por favor!!!!!