I know that after bagging out French humour earlier, this video will be viewed in a critical light – but I haven’t included it as an archetype of British humour!

Instead, it emerges that useless textbook phrases have been reciprocally flung over the Channel, hampering any school child’s effort to effectively learn French or English. Along with the “essential” English phrases like ‘My tailor is rich’, ‘Where is Brian? Brian is in the kitchen’ and ‘There is a traffic jam in Piccadilly Circus’ (possibly the most useful of the bad bunch), according to English stand-up comedian Eddie Izzard, the phrases you must add to your Beginners French repertoire include: ‘The mouse is underneath the table’, ‘The cat is on the chair’ and ‘The monkey is on the branch.’

It’s ingenious really, what other inane phrases could be relevant to both Metropolitan France and les DOM-TOM*!?!

English-French stand-up comedy: a cross-cultural exchange

* DOM-TOM stands for ‘départements d’outre mer’ (overseas countries) and ‘territoires d’outre mer’ (overseas territories). With the word ‘colonie’ officially banned in 1945, DOM-TOM now describes the remnants of the French empire. The four overseas French ‘départements’ are Guadeloupe, Martinique, French Guiana, and Réunion. The DOM function like geographically-removed counties.

As for the TOM… well I think there were a lot more of them prior to the 2003 creation of the COM (collectivité d’outre-mer or overseas collectivities), but they include island groups in the Antilles and the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian Oceans. French Polynesia, for instance, is a COM. New Caledonia, however, has a different status again and is unique amongst the other French subdivisions, with referendum on independence scheduled for some time in the next decade. Gosh, I really opened up a can of worms there! All I wanted to do was share the scenario of a France-roaming transvestite with his mouse, cat and cheeky monkey!

With true last-minute aplomb, it seems that everyone in Paris had just realised that the legendary art nouveau boulevard Haussmann department stores were decorated for Christmas. However, we found ourselves amongst the pack at Printemps and Galeries Lafayette the other day for an entirely other (but far more dubious) pretext.

I’m glad we went though (but I’d already seen the decorations pre-Christmas in surprisingly far less of a crowd), as these 9ème arrondissement grands magasins are a sight worth seeing. Graced by stained glass and cupolas, they date back to the era of the rebuilding and modernisation of Paris by civic planner Georges-Eugène Haussmann in the mid- to late-nineteenth century.

I’m surprised Guillaume and I didn’t get stopped by visa control on entering the ostentatious upper levels of Galeries Lafayette though. We were obviously illegal aliens, entering foreign territory, but I had to hiss whisper to Guillaume “we can’t scoff too much, we’re in their designer world now…”

But this is like complaining of a chill in Antarctica, what was I honestly expecting?

Just as I was getting a bit antsy in the crush of people, Guillaume pulled me from the chaos on into a subterranean arcade to show me a shop he had discovered a few days earlier. It turned out to be the retail space of an “As seen on TV” shop, masquerading as a chic Paris boutique. It was awful. Guillaume wandered through shop, entranced by the bad taste and marvels of mail-order inventions, whilst I stood outside on the verge of a hissy fit.

In revenge, I took a catalogue to add to our collection of toilet reading magazines. It lasted only a few days at our place before Guillaume banished it to the recycling bin on the charge of bad grammar and ridiculous claims about a set of kitchen carving knives ‘used in aeronautics and surgery.’

Oh come off it! (or as the French would say, n’importe quoi – my new favourite expression, especially when pronounced as if the four syllables were distinctly emphasised individual words).

With the festive season in full swing, I’m forced to recall my long-fostered aversion to meeting a room full of new French people. I’ve never been one for close contact, and when I first arrived in France the prospect of greeting strangers with kisses was more likely to encourage a bout of the heebie-jeebies rather than any warm and welcoming sense of inclusion.

I’ve got used to it now, but when I first came to France… oh boy, I’d break into nervous sweats just thinking about it. I’ll paint the picture: We, the late arrivals, enter a room packed with people. Guillaume does a circle kissing all the girls (and men too, if it’s a family gathering). I, as the girl, have to kiss everyone. Talk about a social minefield – I never know how many times to kiss and always manage to awkwardly bung it up.

While I’m panicking about the prospect of kissing quantity, I find that “Bonjour” slips out of my mouth, while the other person says “Etienne.” I freeze in humiliation and confusion, the internal monologue going something like “Oh, Bettina, again? When will you learn that you greet a new acquaintance with your name, I should say it now… Bettina. Bettina. Say it now. No, he’s looking the other way, the moment has passed, he thinks my name is hello, ai-ai-ai!”

So I’m still a little bit of a social klutz, but I think I have my ancestry to blame for that. I was reading a great book about English sociology recently, Watching the English by Karen Fox, in which she describes the ritual of greeting à l’anglaise as ‘performed as hurriedly as possible, but also with maximum inefficiency. If disclosed at all, names must be mumbled.’ Typical traits of an English introduction, she writes, include self-consciousness (check), being ill-at-ease (check), stiffness, awkwardness (check, check), hesitation, dithering and ineptness (check, check, check!). Above all, embarrassment is characteristic – so it seems like I have a full score card in that respect!

‘In fact, the only rule one can identify with any certainty in all this is this confusion over introduction and greetings is that, to be impeccably English, one must perform these rituals badly.’

My goodness, I may as well drape myself in a Union Jack or become a little socially smoother if I’m going to make it through the New Year!

Here’s an excerpt from an article that I enjoyed reading recently about English words integrated into French language (but of course rendered incomprehensible to the unsuspecting English speaker due to pronunciation). Whilst French has infiltrated English through art, literature, fashion and food, the English words used in Franglais are the product of Hollywood, hip-hop and the business world.

I want to devote it to an Australian friend who recently bought a pair of super sassy vintage red leather boots, solely because the sales assistant advised her that they were “très cool” (and a newspaper article I saw that proclaimed that ‘Noël is (presque) back’)…

‘…The other day at lunch, while discussing favourite seafood delicacies (in this case sea urchins), my friend Julien resolutely declared, ‘Ah, c’est très foun, ça.’

I had been following the conversation fairly closely up to this point, but at the word ‘foun’, I had to stop and ask him what he meant. ‘Quoi?’ I ventured.

‘What, you don’t understand English?!’ he demanded. I gave him a puzzled look. He persisted.

‘Foun, you know, I lake, uh, tu have, uh, foun’. I stopped twirling my fork and pondered the sentence…then it dawned on me. He was saying ‘fun’. ‘C’est fun‘. Of course. I smiled politely, but deep down I found the whole exchange kind of weird…’

Read more at http://www.lonelyplanet.com/travelstories/article/franglais_1007/

For a better idea of it all, have a listen to Franglais

I’ve just found a great site on which a Brit living in France gives tips, advice and support for French learners. The worldly advice of “accompany it with a slight shrug and look totally French” has served me well so far. I’ve found that I can get away with not knowing a lot of French words by just puffing out my lips and uttering “pfft” as a sharp syllable on a sharp outtake of breath. It’s one of those more-than-words expressions, and I’ve just been working extensively to make it sound authentic. More often than not I can get it right, but occasionally it comes out with a foreign accent, which really gives the game away…

Look, I’m a sucker for superlatives, so any blog post entitled “The most annoying customers in the world… ever” has definately got my undivided attention.

Conjure yourselves to a mid-morning Provencal marketplace, add some slapstick misfortune and British tourists…

And quoting P.G. Wodehouse’s The Luck of the Bodkins: “Into the face of the young man who sat on the terrace of the Hotel Magnifique at Cannes there had crept a look of furtive shame, the shifty hangdog look which announces that an Englishman is about to speak French.”

I’ve been thinking a lot now about the role of textbooks in not only teaching language, but also forming a further dimension of that language for an other-mother-tongue learner.

I first came across this in Stephen Clarke’s A Year in the Merde, as his protagonist, Paul West, struggles to understand why his colleagues think “My Tea is Rich” is an hilarious name for a chain of British tearooms. They assert that “Ma Tea Eez Reesh eez funny nem. Eatis Ingleesh oomoor” because it parodies “My tailor is rich”, an expression known by the French as a proper English expression since its first appearance in L’Anglais sans peine by Assimil in 1929. Reading Clarke’s book before I arrived in France, I thought it was just a joke, or just case-specific… but no, I’ve heard numerous times “yes, I speak English, my tailor is rich” followed by peals of laughter.

I was even surprised to find that this joke had made it into my bible for all things Anglo, Franco and stereotyped, Asterix in Britain. In the French version, Obelix comments on the tweed worn by a Briton, and asks “c’est cher?” (“Is it expensive?”), to which the Briton replies “mon tailleur est riche” (“my tailor is rich”). In the English version, the allusion is more subtle, being lost in the translation of

- “Does it cost a lot to make up?”
- “Rather! My tailor makes a good thing out of it!”

Another common textbook expression is “Where is Brian? He is in the kitchen”. When I first met Guillaume, we were living in a university dormitory where, by chance, there also lived an American called Brian. As it happened one day, someone was looking for Brian, and he happened to be in the kitchen. I’m sure you can guess how the conversation proceeded. What couldn’t be predicted was Guillaume’s astonished reaction to this seemingly simple flow of question and answer. His jaw dropped and he spluttered, “I didn’t think that actually happened in real life!”

But as sure as there will be traffic jams in Piccadilly Circus, there will be Brians in kitchens, and, I guess, rich tailors… but maybe that’s more of a sign of bygone times.

Seems that waiting for my rejection letter to arrive has meant that I’ve missed the enrolment dates for 90% of available French language classes. Further disappointment arose on realising that the remaining 10% are considerably above an au pair’s meagre salary! I finally received the official response yesterday though – the class is full – handy, considering it started two weeks ago!

In absence of a language class, I’ve decided to take things into my own hands. After three months of lazing… ahem… I mean, non-academic immersion method, I’ve got myself a copy of Cours de la Sorbonne: Langue et Civilisation Françaises. I’ve started from the beginning (seemed logical) just to refresh for any greeting conversation that might pop up, in which I have to recite my name, age and nationality like a chirpy automaton.

The Sorbonne method embraces intimate interaction with the characters of the text, and great pains have been adopted to introduce you to the players in the evolving saga. By the by, Guillaume has just started a new job, so of an evening he tells me about this day and his colleagues. I reciprocate with fantastical tales of François’ birthday party, how Alexei and Takeo attended, and how Marie presented François with a cat, which caused some friction between Marie and Angela, the Brazilian photographer.

“Who… the? What… the? Where… the?” Guillaume splutters in amazement at my action-packed day and new-found thriving social life.

I have to admit that they are only fictional, from the pages of my textbook. In reality my day has amounted to a big fat zero, except a new-found knowledge that Egypt is linguistically regarded as feminine in French. (Well, you learn something every day!)

That’s it! It’s decided! I’m never going to leave my house again and interact with real people! I’m just going to learn French through karaoke! It might not be totally practical in that I won’t be able to hold a normal conversation, but everyone needs someone who can burst into a theatrical “hakuna matata, mais quelle phrase magnifique, hakuna matata, quel chant fantastique! Ces mots signifient, que tu vivras ta vie… sans aucun souci…” every so often… Thank you for opening my eyes to this magnificent new opportunity!

The cluttered pile of accumulated debris that I consider to be the sum total of my life’s organisational endeavours contains numerous to-do lists scribbled on the back of sudoku puzzles. The problem is, more often than not, I find another sudoku with which to distract myself. I procrastinate with number puzzles, and then find another day has unsuccessfully passed, though at least I have a new canvas for my next to-do list.

I’m pretty good at sudoku now, but needless to say, my French is still nonexistent. The class I’ve been waiting months for started today without me. I am still waiting in vain for my stamped self-addressed envelope to come back to me, inviting me to the class or, more likely, informing me that unfortunately the class is full, that my only chance to have made the class would have been to send away the form telepathically, before I’d even laid eyes on it, and definitely not after all the time it took me to get confirmation of my address. But even still, to receive no word – I’ve written the address, I’ve put the stamp – how hard can it be to let me know that I should seek my ‘Public non francophone: français langue étrangère (Niveau 3)’ elsewhere?

I’m going to launch myself into somewhat of a regime, but not in the French sense of the word (diet). I’m going to get studying, swimming and generally out enjoying life. I’m not going to be trampled on by mothers of under-10s, and I’m not going to waste any more time. It’s decided, I’m committing it to paper – I’m writing the to-do list to end all to-do lists!

The only thing is… Guillaume and I have just got this new thousand piece jigsaw puzzle from the Louvre. I find my hours are whittled away trying to pick between the shadows in the green of the plush carpet, or the creases in the rich green velvet curtains.

There’s always something, isn’t there?