La marché française
Saturday, July 28, 2007On the last weekend of July every year, there is a French market in Ealing. Today I bought some pain a l’oignon, as last year, because it’s right nice.
So I put my GCSE French to good practice by asking for the bread in (crap) French, asking how much it was in French, and thanking them for the bread. In French. And every single one of their responses was in ze finest English.
Fair enough, thought I – perhaps they’re just trying out their English on me. Until, that is, housemate Jess visited the same stall separately to buy pastries and conversed cheerily French with the ladies! I guess I just don’t look or sound like a linguist. This does not bode well for a planned 10-day stint en France next month…
That’s all. It’s been a hectic month, and more interesting, word-worthy things have happened, but I have a bee dans ma bonnet about this one…
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Wow… I was there but didn’t see the market? C’était ou? =)
Martin
on July 30th, 2007
C’était dans Ealing Green, opposé des Ealing Studios :)
Simon
on July 31st, 2007
To be completely picky, its “Le marché français”. Had it have been a female noun though, you would have been exactly right!
Unfortunately, it was not.
Where are you heading to in France? Send me a message if you make it to Paris …
redking
on August 7th, 2007
Oh and not ‘opposé’ either – its “en face de” – opposé is for people I think.
A great resource for language stuff is wordreference.com. Not only is it very detailed with lots of good examples, but you can look up rude words in the dictionary like you did at school, and have the website read them out for you:
e.g. http://www.wordreference.com/audio/en/uk/4387-2.mp3
Moreover their example sentences for other swear words are extremely bizarre, e.g. the last one on this page http://wordreference.com/enfr/shit
redking
on August 7th, 2007
Actually, just checked with a workmate and opposé *can* be used in this sense, but never is in practice because it has some abstract, nebulous meaning about symmetry and things being between two other things or whatever, that he can’t quite explain to me apparently.
Therefore, ignore any of my advice on the French language.
redking
on August 7th, 2007
Balls. Can’t believe I made the masculine/feminine mistake (though, on the other hand, how appropriate!)
And I got an A* in GCSE French, too. Bah.
Not going to make it to Paris sadly – we’re heading to Bordeaux and then inland towards Bergerac…
Simon
on August 7th, 2007