Amuse-Bouche No. 11: Double-Talk. What’s a foreigner to do when a French word can mean so many things?

Amuse-Bouche No. 11: Double-Talk

by Julia Frey

What’s a foreigner to do when a French word can mean so many things?
Sarah suggested lunch at L’Enfance du Lard. “C’est un resto médiocre, mais j’aime son nom” (Not a great restaurant, but I love the name). The French, ever champions of la nuance(subtlety), paradoxically love puns, particularly horrible puns for business names. L’Enfance du Lard (literally, “the childhood of bacon”) is a real groaner. Sarah explains: “'C’est l’enfance de l’art' means it’s the first thing you learn about any art or craft." Sort of like an American diner called A Piece of Cake.

Over our entrée (first course, not entrée), we chew on bilingual misunderstandings. Since there are only about two French words for every three English words, it takes a lot of words à double entente (“with two meanings” -- the American expression “double entendre” doesn’t exist in French) to cover everything. And as we’ve noticed, French words used in English as well as English words used in French can be faux amis. Take, for example, le footing, which means jogging. Words with unpredictable, multiple, unrelated meanings seem designed to make life problématique for newcomers.

Imagine you’re a foreign student, a girl (but not une girl—a chorus girl), looking for housing. The location (rental) you’re after is in a distant location. Your embarras d’argent (lack of money) limits your choices, but an embarras de voitures (“too many cars,” i.e., a traffic jam), makes you late to the appointment. As you arrive, a man coming out the door says, “Je viens de louer l’appartement“ (I just rented the apartment). Was he the landlord or the new renter? Va savoir (go figure). In any case you’re still à la rue (out on the street, homeless). But this doesn’t mean you’re une fille des rues (prostitute).

You call a friend: “Peux-tu être mon hôte?" (Can you be my host, i.e., put me up?) “Avec plaisir,” he says, “where do you live?”Quoi? Who’s hosting whom? It’s the same word: If you visit him, he’s your hôte (host) and you’re his hôte (guest). You explain that tu n’as plus où coucher (you no longer have anywhere to sleep). “Ah! tu es dans de beaux draps!” Why does “in beautiful sheets” mean “in a real mess”? He offers you his floor.

Your idées noires (black thoughts) promise une nuit blanche (“a white night,” i.e., a sleepless one). But your white knight cheers you up with little wine. Then a little more. Les meilleurs crus provoquent les plus fortes cuites (the best vintages/raw things make you the drunkest/most cooked). Finally you sleep sur les deux oreilles (“on both ears,” i.e., soundly) despite the contortions required.

At last you locate a location. You’re working part-time. You’ve begun to mettre de l’argent de côté (put some money to the side), so as to have de l’argent devant toi (money in front of you). One day your boss tells you she’s decided to te remercier.You think she’s thanking you for a job well done, but un employé is remercié when one is NOT content de ses services. She’s firing you!

Tu refuses d’essuyer (“to wipe up”—i.e., put up with) cet affront, so you decide you’ll laver l’ injure (wash away the insult) by sticking up for yourself. “Je ne partage pas votre avis” (I don’t share your opinion) you say. “Les avis sont partagés,” (opinions are divided) she responds, showing you the door. She won’t even give you your last paycheck. It’s du travail au noir (“work in the dark,” i.e., an illegal job), and if you complain, you’ll be deported. Why is the last blow called le coup de grâce (pardon or mercy)? Sarah and I ponder the complexities of life over a coupe de glace (dish of ice cream).

© Julia Frey 2009 

Amuse-Bouche No. 17: My Little Cabbage, If you learn only one word in French, make it chou.

Amuse-Bouche No. 17: My Little Cabbage

by Julia Frey
(julia.frey@aya.yale.edu)

If you learn only one word in French, make it chou.

Sunday night, coming back from the country, everyone’s starving.

Philippe: “Venez donc chez nous, manger à la fortune du pot (Come to our house and eat potluck). Nous avons de la soupe aux choux (cabbage soup).”

Bénédicte, our local food expert, steps in: “For centuries, la soupe aux choux (plural, because it could contain several kinds of cabbage) was staple peasant fare in France. If you were lucky, you had a little gras (fat ham or bacon) to put in it.”

Isabelle, banging on the table: “Vouiii ! (Yesss!) De la soupe ! J’ai une faim de loup (I’m hungry as a wolf) !”

François-Noël, our local Christmas expert, intones a children’s carol:

“Melchior et Balthazar
et le roi Gaspar,
affamés comme des loups...
Ils mangèrent de la soupe, de la bonne soupe aux choux.’’

Even the three wise men, when famished, ate cabbage soup! While the soup heats, we sip an apéritif and ruminate on l’humble chou with its multiple, contradictory, metaphoric meanings.

Béné: “When mes parents married, on the morning after, they were served une soupe aux choux, aide traditionelle à la conception. It must work. I’m their fifth enfant à naître dans un chou (cabbage patch kid). I know in the US, la cigogne (the stork) brings you. But in France, it drops you into a cabbage. Actually, to be precise, it only delivers les garçons (boys) in a cabbage. It serves up les filles in a rosebud.”

Phil: “Béné, mon chou (cream-puff, i.e., sweetie-pie), is that why your father called you un adorable petit bout de chou (little tiny cabbage) ?”

Isa surenchère (ups the ante, puts in her two cents’ worth): “Ben, you were si chou (so cute) wearing choux (puffy ribbon bows) on the ends of your pigtails. No wonder you were la chouchoute (favorite) de Papa.

Ben: “Maman was too fatiguée to chouchouter (spoil) anyone.”

François-Noël: “Voila des expressions hypocoristiques ! ”

Moi: “Aha! Linguistic one-upmanship!” I get out the Dictionnaire Grand Robert, volume H, and summarize. “ Hypocoristique: this obscure adjective describes a kind of affectionate ”baby-talk” by adults: using diminutives, or doubling syllables, as inchouchou”.

Flip (or is that Phlip?): “Chouette alors ! ”

Moi: “Attends ! (wait a minute!) Chouette is not the diminutive of chou. Une chouette is a screech owl!”

F-N: “But chouette and chou can be used the same way: t’es chou / chouette ( nice, charming, sympa’, délicieux, chic). The poet Rabelais invented the compliment ‘jolie comme une belle petite chouette.’ ”

Moi: “Pretty as a beautiful little screech owl? Well, I guess a crying baby is comparable to a screech owl.”

The game is on. We dig up expressions with chou.

Béné ( inventing a “Dupont” joke): “I hear Dupont was envoyé planter ses choux (fired.) Too bad. He expected to stay until he was ready to aller planter ses choux (retire).”

Planter ses choux means retourner à ses affaires privées. The difference is between envoyer (to send off, in this case from his position) and aller (to go willingly). La vie n’est pas toujours un lit de roses (life can be a bed of cabbages).

Moi: (riposte):“Well, at least they didn’t lui rentrer dans le chou (physically attack him).”

Here chou (singular) refers to a rounded, kickable body part -- head or derrière.

Ben: “But he was still dans les choux (in a bad place) !”

The original expression, “finir dans les choux,” comes from horse racing. Early racetracks were grassy ovals, surrounded by farmers’ fields. If a horse ran off the track, it could end up literally in the cabbages. There are some wonderful idiomatic synonyms for dans les choux, meaning messed up, out of it, mentally disoriented: hors course (off track, out of the race), à côté de ses pompes, de ses baskets (literally: beside his pumps, his hi-tops; implicit: he’s so off track he’s walking alongside his shoes).

Isa: “Now he writes for une feuille de chou (a cabbage leaf -- a tabloid).”

Béné: “Wait! I’m running out of material.” She gets volume C of the Grand Robert. “OK, voilà l’histoire ! Dupont avait fait chou blanc (had failed) in banking. When they offered him a journalism job, he thought: Ils me prennent le chou (they’re playing head games with me, wasting my time). Je m’y entends comme à ramer des choux (I know as much about journalism as I know about staking cabbages)."

Isa: “You stake tomates, not cabbages! Notre grand’mère, la vieille chouette (old hag) would call you bête comme chou (stupid as a cabbage)!”

Bénédicte: “Chut ! (Shh!) It’s my story. So how could he ménager la chèvre et le chou ?
He asked for a trial run on the rag, and discovered it’s bête comme chou. Now Dupont fait ses choux gras dans la presse à sensation.”

Moi (overwhelmed): "Quoi ?"

Bénédicte (patiently): “Voilà. To reconcile both goat and cabbage means to hold open contradictory options, be streetwise, play it cool. The English parallel is ‘run with the hare and hunt with the hounds.’ An idiotic person is bête comme chou, but athing that’s bête comme chou is easy as pie. Faire ses choux gras means to put fat in one’s cabbage, to make a quick buck. But le chou-gras (lamb’s quarters, chenopodium) is not a cabbage at all. It’s a spinach-like weed, mostly eaten by the very poor. Take the expression, jeter ses choux-gras, to be a spendthrift. Only a rich person would toss les choux-gras. The poor would eat them. Oh, yeah, and la presse à sensation means yellow journalism.”

François-Noël, slurring his voice: “Un chou est un chou.”

He’s corrupting "un sou est un sou" (a penny is a penny) an expression attributed to Auvergnats, who like my Scottish ancestors, have a reputation for penny pinching.

Isa: “This is making me even hungrier! Where’s la soupe!

Phil: “ Soup’s on! ( À table ! )”

Isabelle: (holding out her bowl): “Juste un soupçon (just a whisper, i.e. a little bit).”

Philippe (ladle in hand): “Juste un chouïa (from North African Arabic: un peu) ? ”


© Julia Frey 2009

Amuse-Bouche No. 21: Shop Names and Word Games: Store names often combine two French obsessions: shopping and jeux de mots.

Amuse-Bouche No. 21: Shop Names and Word Games
by Julia Frey
(julia.frey@aya.yale.edu)

Store names often combine two French obsessions: shopping and jeux de mots.

Walking to dîner with Albert and Maria, we passed their favorite librairie (bookstore, not library): Mona Lisait (Mona was reading). Great calembour (pun)! We don’t do that much in the United States. In France, “punny” shop names abound. Not to mention funny nicknames for well-known things. Going up the escalator of the Centre Pompidou (also known as le paquebot—the ocean liner—and sometimes ce tas de tubes—that pile of pipes), we saw la Tour Eiffel (pronounced Tour FL) begin to twinkle. Evenings, every hour on the hour, for five minutes, it looks just like an enormous sparkler. J’adore ! My Dutch husband, who thinks it’s vulgar, says that’s my Disneyland mentality.

At dinner we talked about how different cultures react to wordplay. In the United States, puns are considered the lowest form of humor (“P. U. That’s two-thirds of a PUN. Upon my word!”). But in France, linguistic cleverness adds prestige. A clever shop name implies intelligence, style and a sense of humor. “My favorite women’s clothing store,” said Maria, “is called Habitude” (“habit,” whose homonym habit means “garment”). “They hope I’ll make it a habit to go back.”

Some shops play with proper names: Cybèle (si belle) or cultural references like Chandail Express (quick sweater) with its similarity to the 1932 Marlene Dietrich movie Shanghai Express. The shop À Nanas (for gals) is a pun on ananas (pineapple). There’s also a girls' rock music group called Baz Art à Nanas which includes a multiple pun on bazar (“bazaar” and also “disorder, noise, uproar”), bas art (low art), and the slang word baz for lycée (high school).

In the French Midi (the south, not middle, of France), stores catering to the large Anglophone population often use bilingual puns like L’adresse (La dress). Others play with place names: Pantibes is a pants store in Antibes. A diet center in Nice invented Cellunice from Nice, cellulite, and the English word “nice.” Another weight-loss spa contracts silhouette (figure) andelle (she) to produce Silhouelle, evoking the English homonym “well” at the end. Presumably they cure figure problems. And if you don’t lose weight? Buy your clothes at Femmes en Formes (“curvy women,” a pun on femmes en forme: women feeling good, in good shape).

“We almost chose a restaurant tonight,” adds Albert, “called L’Enclos de Ninon,” meaning “Annie’s enclosure,” which corrupts the name of Ninon de l’Enclos, a 17th-century écrivaine (politically charged feminization of écrivain—writer).

Now that I’m tuned in, I realize that Rénov’auto, our Renault garage, is a conflation of Renault, rénovation and auto. The business that replaced our windows is called Système Baie (bay-window system, which refers to le système D: using unconventional means to solve problems.) I laughed at the sign for a construction company called Batiman (pronouncedbâtiment—building). It shows a “Batman” with outstretched arms, but to make things clear, he wears a house for a hat.

The worst offenders are pet stores. Aristochien (aristo-dog), after Aristochat, the French title of the Disney movie The Aristocats, sells pedigreed puppies. Want to train your dog? Send him to Toutou’s Cool: toutou (doggie) school. Does he need grooming? That’s a job for Esthéti Chiens (a play on esthéticiens—the ones who give ladies facials). For pet supplies, go toChat L’heureux (“the happy cat,” a pun on chaleureux—warm, friendly).

I’ve always wondered what French tourists think of the New York pet shop called Le Pet Store. Literally translated to French, that means “the fart store”. When I mentioned this to the (American) owner, he said, “We added the ‘Le’ to sound elegant. No problem. None of our clients speak French.”


© copyright Julia Frey 2010