The history lecturer used one of my jokes!

When we did our May '68 extravaganza I had to talk about the massive population growth post WW2, and I said "ça s'appelle en français le baby-boom*", which is perfectly true, but it got a laugh at the time.

Well in history yesterday he was talking about the massive population growth post WW2 and he said "en français on dit baby-boom", and everyone laughed again, but I thought "someone remembered a joke I made ... in French!"

* you have to say "bébi-boum", that is with two french-style syllables in baby and a very round projected oo, but it is spelt baby-boom.

Comments

Andrew and Cora said…
France has resisted the incursion of English words and phrases much better than some other countries. In Brazilian Portuguese we are constantly needing to use words like "insight", "cheeseburger", "background" "feedback" "shopping centre" "home theatre" and "outdoors".

The difficult part is that these words sometimes have meanings rather different from in English. A great example is "outdoors," which means "advertisement hoarding" or (for North Americans) "billboard".

The other thing is pronunciation: these are the words we find HARDEST to say. We KNOW how to say them, but if we say them the way we know, no one understands. So you say "insyche" and "sheezebooerger" and "feedgeback" and feel stupid. But you get in the swim eventually. Though you have to be pretty tuned in to know which band, book or film are being referred to by: Hedgy Hodgy Shilly Pepairs, Airhee Pottair and Hachlee Anjie Un.

And you have to be careful not to laugh when you discover that the common pronunciation of "baby sitter" is "baby sister."

Or cry when someone spells your name Whendreul. (He knew there was a W somewhere...)

Love to all our French colleagues
2:43 pm
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A bit about music exams in UK and France

They're really different. I think I have already mentioned that while in the UK people generally find a private teacher for their instrument, or do it through a school scheme, here there are municipal music school, conservatoires and so on. The situation is a little more complex than I had first understood, because the schools vary in the rigidity of their organisation: the most, the conservatoires, next the municipals, then the associations. Our music school is an association, but it tends to apply the standards of the municipal schools with its programme of cycles, etc. Britain - grade 1 to 8, grade 8 being roughly equivalent to A-level, pre university/conservatoire. France - 3 cycles, each taking about 4 years, with 3ème cycle being roughly equivalent to grade 8. Theory of music - UK to take grade 8 you need theory grade 5. In France you study theory alongside your instrumental studies, very slowly. Catrin's flute music is MUCH more difficult than the stuff she does in theor...
Read more

Good news from my sermon buddy

Yesterday we went over my script from August 13. There really wasn't much she had taken exception to. Once or twice she wondered quite what I was getting at (they had the same problem at Deeside, I think...) and I do have difficulties with the word " de ", but then she said "Who doesn't?" So I felt very encouraged. I also took the opportunity to ask her about one or two things: 1) Direct preaching. Like I used to in Britain, I preach saying you - using "vous" when I am talking to the whole wide world and "tu" when I want it to feel as if I am addressing each person individually. French preachers tend to say rather "What will we do, what will one do". So I asked her if she felt my way was too direct, too brutal for the French ear. She said "I think you can get away with it with your English accent". In fact several people have commented on how much they appreciated being spoken to directly in preaching. 2) Liaisons Last...
Read more

A brief sortie to North Wales

 Following the Great Keswick Debacle, when our volunteering at the Keswick café was sabotaged by our assorted indispositions, we had airline tickets to use up. Yes, we had not taken travel insurance, so we paid even more money to change our tickets to fly for a short visit to North Wales. This time we were able to go. We passed extremely slowly through a very crowded Bordeaux airport but in good time to get our plane. All seats in the terminal were taken so we leaned against whatever we could find while waiting to board. Hey, bags need seats, too! though sometimes pointing out to Pat, "No, that's a bag seat", makes the bag find a new refuge on the lap of the person sitting next to it... Once on the plane we quickly found our allocated seats - right at the back on the left hand side - stowed our bags and the flight was smooth and uneventful.  We had 30 minutes in Manchester to disembark, get through immigration , hustle off to the station and board our train for Shotton. I...
Read more