I just found this cute and handy flowchart that breaks down exactly when to address people with the formal French vous and when the informal tu is more appropriate.
It all comes down to the little box in the bottom right corner, I think. And yet, tu is always what pops out of my mouth first, because I guess I’m just a little punk.
[Photo: Marco Nunes]
Monday night, back at the French Meetup for the first time in quite awhile, I got into a conversation with a Parisian whose parents are from Côte d’Ivoire. It started with a discussion of the cultural and philosophical underpinnings of my embarrassment ‘vous‘ing strangers who are peers as opposed to elders or respected figures. Which led to a consideration of whether the United States or France has deeper ‘fractures sociales‘ between classes and races. Which led to him telling me the story of why and how his parents left Côte d’Ivoire for France. Which segued into a conversation about the weird rules of French colonialism. Which was followed by a summation (his) of the hundred-year social history running up to the Liberian civil war. Which brought us, in a roundabout way, to my Senegal dreams. And on and on…
When people ask me whether I speak French my answer is always no, because there’s so much French I don’t know, and so much I do know but muck up anyway. On nights like Monday, though, I marvel at all that I can say and understand, and I find myself thinking, “I do speak French.” No disclaimer or modifier necessary.
[Photo: Sputnick; terrible photoshopping: me]
When I was in France, I tried a pastry called a merveilleux, and it was indeed merveilleux. The bottom was meringue, the top was chocolate buttercream about one degree short of being all butter and no cream, and it was covered with chocolate ganache. I’m usually not a meringue fan but in this case the combination of flaky and crunchy and creamy was heavenly. The only drawback was that it was so rich and sugary – and humongous – that even between two people we couldn’t finish it. And not finishing dessert is just about the saddest thing there is.
A few weeks after my return I went to a party at which a box of the most delightful-looking confections was being passed around. Their appearance must have added to the enjoyment of eating them: little fluffy mountains of something or other covered in delicate pink and ivory and tan and brown shavings. They looked like something out of Marie Antoinette:
But I couldn’t find the person who brought them to ask what they were and figure out whether they were gluten-free, so I never tasted them. And turning down dessert is the second saddest thing there is.
Then my subscription to a daily email for French expatriots in New York (I know I am not a French expatriot in New York) paid off, because a few weeks later it heralded the opening of the first Aux Merveilleux de Fred shop in the United States, in the West Village. It turns out the adorable little things I had salivated over at the party were a modified version – nymphettes – of the big old merveilleux I had in Alsace.
I visited the shop the next day, and though I really should have stopped at two, I ate four of them because a. they were delicious and b. it was my first week at my new job. If you’re in the city, I’d highly recommend stopping by to try them, or at least to ogle them through the store’s picture window – they really are almost as beautiful to look at as to taste. I’m expecting them to go the way of the cronut any day now…
This morning I read a couple of chapters of L’étranger on the subway. I’m about halfway through and I am a fan of how easy it is to read in French but not really a fan of the book per se. I said to my French colleague, “I’m not sure I get the premise. Is he behaving like that because he has Asperger’s or something?” He replied that it was just like an American to jump to a psychological diagnosis and that actually this is a novel about existential ennui or something like that. Not sure I’m convinced.
After work I went to a French conversation Meetup at which I spoke with grilled a woman who had just returned from taking a year off to study French in Strasbourg. It’s a good thing my French sounds so silly because otherwise she may have been intimidated by my rapid fire interrogation: how did she do it, why did she do it, why did she do it when she did it, and every other detail I could suck out of her to inform my own “study abroad” decision.
On the subway ride home I wiped my Duolingo slate clean and started fresh with Spanish, even though I already got through the whole thing last year. I am in a no man’s land at the moment as I’m between one Spanish class and the next, which starts in September. I figured I may as well re-do Duolingo so I don’t lose the past semester’s hard-won progress. I’m looking forward to experiencing once more the haphazard juxtapositions of words that pass for human utterances. (To wit: You drink my cat’s milk.)
Alors, adios y bonne nuit!
[Photo: THX0477]
I just finished the childhood classic, “The Wind in the Willows,” and though its thematic focus is on the comforts of home, of course the quote that called out to me is all about the pleasures of taking off.
(Photo under quote: Daniel Axelson)
After a long day of work, wanting nothing more than to sit at a dimly lit bar and daydream, I wound up at a cozy spot in Soho. I started off the night staring blissfully into space, sipping my wine, feeling full of that intangible connection to the humongous universe that sometimes, unbidden but much appreciated, settles over and calms my angst. Then the bartender started talking to me.
She was from Siberia but had grown up in Poland. She had two master’s degrees, one in applied linguistics and one in international relations. And she had come to the US to work at the UN, first as a translator but then, after deciding she’d rather be a diplomat, for the European Union. She hated it and abdicated to the corporate world, where she was so bored that she researched and developed a skin care line, which is about to be exclusively distributed in the Middle East by some sheik or other. In the meantime, she’s been tending bar at two places – the one in Soho where I met her, and the other on the Upper East Side where she’s come into contact with a bevy of men who want to marry her. At one point she was juggling two fiancés (one twice the age of the other) because, as she put it, “I’m a yes woman.”
She was spinning the most fantastical stories, and nothing added up, but whether it was true or not was of absolutely no consequence because I was transported, exactly as I had wanted to be, to a land of being wooed by barons, and failing psychological tests to teach English to children in Beijing, and flinging Am Ex Black cards into soon-to-be-ex-husbands’ faces, and having every man you’ve ever slept with beg to impregnate you for your excellent DNA. In short: a land of hyper-emotion, excess, exaggeration, and extremes that I could never live in, but that I could visit with great delight.
She was the kind of bartender who tops you off without your asking, and then, when you say you can’t finish because you have to work In the morning, and joke that she should finish it instead, shrugs and says, “Somewhere in the world there is a sober Russian child, I’ll drink it for him,” and laughs maniacally. I’m sure after I left she did just that.
I almost walked into a pole on the way to the subway. It was just what I needed.
Moral of the story: it’s possible to travel to foreign lands while right at home. You just need to pick the right bar.
[Photo: 🙂 🙂 ]
I started my new job on a six-week contract, which ended last Friday, and now I’m on a four-week extension until the end of June. When my boss told me last week that he would try to get me a six month-long extension this time, I found myself telling him, “Actually, I sort of love the short-term contracts. Can you see if you can get me another four-week one?” I have since come to regret – and retract – that wholly short-sighted request, but I am still in thrall to its motivation: to feel that I can get up and go wherever I’d like, whenever I’d like (or rather, four weeks from whenever I’d like). My lease is up soon – August 1st – and the only other contractual obligation I have in New York is my job. Which means that as soon as it ends, I’m free as a bird – geographically if not financially speaking. I promised myself after my trip to Argentina a year and a half ago that I’d leave for an open-ended language-learning sabbatical in Senegal within two years. If I went in August I’d be six months ahead of schedule.
At first that thought was exciting, but as it sunk in I realized that I’m not yet ready to leave town – mentally, financially or in any other way. And there’s no good reason to leave a job this interesting and challenging before I’m forced to. So I decided I should embrace the longest contract I can possibly get – only to find out two days later that my preferences are entirely irrelevant, since the rules for my particular job designation prohibit me from getting a six-month contract. I’ll be month to month until I leave here, whether in August or next April (another big question mark).
So the roller coaster of uncertainty continues… as do my attempts to enjoy the rush and stave off the mental motion sickness.
[Photo: Bit Boy]
I’m not at liberty to say how this quote applies to me but suffice it to say that it does, and that I love it, and that it has helped me immensely over the past couple of months. Paying it forward…
Happy hump day, people.
Good evening! I write to you from my desk at work, where I am stuck in export hell. Six hours and counting to get five extremely short videos out the door and start my three-day weekend. I had a choice to stare at the Adobe Premiere countdown clock as it rose and fell and froze and rose and fell and froze for fifty-seven minutes at a time, or to write a few words here so as not to renege on my promise to myself to not disappear off the face of the blogging (and real) world.
I chose the latter, but I’m so exhausted that the words in question are not coming out very readily. Good thing it’s Friday when all I do is used to do was post links anyway.
So without further ado, two months’ worth of probably-by-now-obsolete digital clippings:
Decoding the rules of conversation.
Remember that fight over the white & gold / black & blue dress? How your language affects color perception.
The French answer to Eataly, open now.
Top 10 untranslatable French words. (The ninth is my favorite.)
These taste as good as they look. (I know because the day after I read about them I went to try them.)
Tricks and tips for planning your summer vacation.
How to best play the credit card airline miles game.
An American in Paris finds Paris in America.
There’s a dedicated raclette restaurant in New York!
3 research-based ways to speed up your language learning.
An official see-your-own-city campaign in NYC (I’ve been on an unofficial one for years).
And now my exports are finally done and I can be on my merry way to a long weekend of doing a whole lot of nothing. Enjoy yours!
[Photo: Tim Pierce]
So it turns out the longer you take a break from something, the harder it is to get back to doing it. I told myself I’d give myself a week off from blogging to focus on my work transition. One week turned into two and then three and now it’s been almost a month. Especially sad is that I didn’t post anything on April 21, my one year blogiversary. I had been planning to mark the occasion, but on that particular day and in the two weeks since I just felt too overwhelmed with job-related stuff. So my poor blog had to celebrate all on its own, silently and without fanfare. 😦
During my unintended hiatus, I neglected more than just the blog. I stopped doing my Spanish homework and quite frequently looked like this in class:
My last Spanish class was last night and now it’s up to me to carry on with it at home, after a month of slacking. Doesn’t bode well.
I also stopped going to my French conversation Meetups, ignored all emails and texts, and went for about one and a half runs total when in a good month I do two or three a week. In effect, all I’ve done is work, think about work, worry about work, semi-sleep, and over-eat.
Such is my way.
Luckily, my new place of employment’s foreign-ness – in every sense of the word – has been compensating for my lack of attention to all things foreign in my extracurricular life. It’s hands down the most international spot in all of New York – and really, anywhere. I’ve met people from about 20 different countries on six continents. I hear French constantly and I’ve spoken it nearly every day. I feel like I’m both at the world’s doorstep and on the world’s stage every time I walk through the doors.
Now in my third week on the job, I’m feeling a bit more acclimated and I’m starting to pick back up the other pieces of my life. Which, I hope, means I’ll be back to blogging regularly soon. We shall see…
talk foreign to me 