Bilingual
I went on a French immersion course last week. The instructor asked each one of us to address the class for ten minutes in French. When my turn came, I stood up and announced that I didn’t know what to say.
The instructor then suggested I tell the class about my dreams. What do you dream of? I said that I didn’t have any dreams, I just had nightmares, not rêves but cauchemars, you know, nightmares. She asked me to describe my nightmares and I said I couldn’t. So, she repeated, describe your dreams. I don’t have any. Do you dream about your mother? Yes, I said, but I don’t call them rêves / dreams I call them night-mères / cauche-mères, sometimes couche-mères. Couche-mères, the instructor repeated the word. The look she gave me: finger-nails scraping down a chalkboard. She turned her headlights on me and I sat there, frozen in the twin beams emanating from her eyes. Yes, night-mères, I repeated, because I set myself goals, not just dreams, achievable goals, and then I have night-mères, inspired by my mother, who says I will never achieve any of my dreams, because they are not her dreams, the ones she has for me, and they are the only ones that count.
You are here to speak in French, the instructor said, and you must speak French for another five minutes. So I told the class about the seals in the Parc du Bic in Quebec. The seals are like a plague, I said, like mosquitoes, only bigger and nastier, quite vicious, in fact. So the people who made Off to keep the mosquitoes away designed a new chemical spray that would keep the seals away. Now the French for seals is phoques, and since this is mainly a problem in Quebec, at the Parc du Bic, and not elsewhere, they called their product, you guessed it, Phoque–Off. It’s quite simple to use, I said. It’s a spray, not an ointment, and you point the spray in the general direction of the seals. Then you squeeze the button and loudly say “Phoque–Off” at which point all the seals slide off their rocks with a little splash and vanish into the sea, leaving you alone on the beach. I have tried it myself, I tell them, and I know it works so I highly recommend it to anyone who is plagued by seals.
I still don’t know why she threw me out of the class.
Enjoyed that Roger. I remember the first time I heard the French word for seal, I thought I was being set up for something.
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I was surprised by how many people said something similar after the reading. Amazed too at the number who had stood up to be counted in French in front of a room full of people.
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Took a trip home to Cornwall the other week- seals were massing off the coast path between Mousehole and Newlyn. Wonder what the kids and the other walkers would have made of someone yelling “phoque off!!”. They were Cornish seals but I think they would have got the message… 😉
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Hi Polly: so good to see you here again. I got a really good reception for that little bit of pholly! A jolie phollie!
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I was checking in but you and I both seem to have taken a little break for a bit. Glad you’re back and full of words and phollie!
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Thanks for sharing Roger. Loved the piece and got a good laugh out of it.
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Very funny, Roger. Welcome back!
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Thanks, Mia. So happy to be here.
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Thank you for the laugh! It is so good to see you back.
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It’s good to be back, Tanya. A lot of water under many bridges since I was last here. I don’t often do comedy on the page. Glad to see I haven’t lost the touch. The live performance yesterday was hilarious.
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I am sure it was!
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Bloody Hilarious, Roger. ROFLMAO, if you know that it means (the polite version).
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Thank you, John. I don’t often “do comedy” so this is a new departure for me. It certainly caused much laughter when I read it yesterday at Corked.
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Hahaha! Chuck
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Thank you, Chuck. I love the bilingual plays on words. It takes two to tango though and I wonder how they come across if the reader isn’t reasonably fluent in French. I guess it’s pretty obvious though. Hope you are feeling better. Today’s sunshine should help.
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