Faux Amis (et Vraies Amies) - Plantations

Sorry it's been a while since I wrote, but things caught up with me. I had two weekends in a row of visits from some good friends from the dear old Estados Unidos. It was lots of fun, though it's probably a good thing I don't have too many American friends in Europe, or I'd be super sick of visiting Toulouse's sights. It would get to the point where they would show up, and I'd just give them a map and tell them to knock themselves out while I chilled in a café somewhere.

Another catching-up note: There I was, eating lunch with a British friend, discussing how funny it is when British people ask for rubbers from Americans, or stick things in their pigeonholes, when she started to dig into her grated carrots and told me "I don't really want to eat... it's strange, but I have to think about it to avoid saying raped carrots." Faithful readers (hee, sorry, I just made myself chuckle with that) may remember my "Faux Amis" entry on râper... I love that there are other people affected by the similarity between an innocent culinary word and a very serious crime.

But now onto an actual faux ami, in honor of Karen's visit to the Ville Rose. It's not really a false cognate, but we saw a sign while wandering through various gardens that said "Merci de respecter les plantations," which really does mean "Thank you for respecting the plantations." You're welcome!


But plantation also means a planting, or a bed of flowers or such. But still, I'm going to continue to follow the sign's directions, yankee that I am.

Faux Ami:
plantation
English translation:
Well, plantation. And also planting, or bed of flowers/vegetable patch.

Prank Call

So, I just got a phone call on my cell from an unknown caller, and I pick it up. Usually unknown numbers are my parents, but just in case, I answer the French way.

"Allo?" I say. A little silence, and then the person on the other line says "Allo?" They sound confused, so I figure that it might be another Erasmus student that got my number somehow. I give another "Allo?", and they respond...

"Uh, est-ce que votre frigo marche?"

(my actual frigo, with postcards/magnets from my summer wanderings in France)

Well damn, who knew that prank works in French, too? I was a little impressed, actually. I always knew marcher meant to walk and to work, but I never connected them.

Touché, French kid. Touché.


Word of the Day
La bêtise
I think it best translates as foolishness, but I don't know of a good English word that would work in all of its various contexts. Faire une bêtise is to do something stupid: The guy in front of me at the counter the other day didn't have enough money, and he told the cashier "oh, j'ai fait une bêtise." Dire des bêtises is basically to talk nonsense, or drivel. And wordreference.com informs me that friandises ou bêtise is the French way to say "trick or treat."

Faux Amis - Preservatif

Thus begins my new series, faux amis (false cognates), or words that may trip you up if you're an anglophone in France (or a francophone in the U.S., why not).

Most of the time when I don't know a word, I just take an English word and French-ify it, which works most of the time, but you gotta watch out. Préservatif is probably the most important false cognate to look out for - it is not your friend!

There I was, discussing natural/organic foods and brought up the problem of food with too many preservatives in it - and the rest of the room cracked up. Apparently the idea of food with condoms in it is hilarious (and it is, when it's not you they're laughing at).

French word:
Le préservatif
English equivalent:
Condom

How did I become an expert on slang?

The following story really happened.

A bunch of international students are in a train in France discussing relationships. They begin teasing a Polish girl about her on-again, off-again boyfriend and someone calls them "friends with benefits." Being the only American in the bunch, they ask me to explain this phenomenon. I, with my friend who goes to school in Canada, try to explain in my broken French "friends with benefits," trying not to make Americans seem too trashy and finding it impossible. I'm already turning a little red. The Polish girl goes "Oh! F***ing friends!" To which I respond "Quoi?!?!"

I try to tell her, with the help of my pseudo-Canadian friend, that I have never heard that expression before, and that it is not a "thing," though she insists that it is, and each time she says "f***ing friends" on the crowded train I cringe and blush just a little bit more.

"Oui, f***ing friends"
"Non, c'est pas une chose. Ce n'est rien."
"Non, je suis sûre. Je l'ai entendu. F***ing friends."
"Je n'ai jamais entendu ça."
"Non, non..."
And so on, until finally our Colombian friend leans in and in a calm, pedantic voice explains "Elle veut dire 'f*** buddies.'"
Which results in a collective "OoOoOoh!" all around.
And I say "Yeah..ça."

I would never, ever be the go-to person on youth culture in America at home, and it's very strange to be put in a position to inform others on what's "cool" or "normal" in the U.S., a position for which I am not quite sure I am qualified. Let's hope none of the international students I've met here visit the U.S. and try to use the knowledge I've given to them. I can just imagine a Swedish girl in New York asking for a water ice, or a Polish girl introducing her boyfriend to some Americans as her "f*** buddy."

Word of the Day:
dégueulasse
(colloquial, slightly vulgar term that I've been hearing everywhere) repugnant, filthy/disgusting, unjust

Not Quite the Beginning - the story of the 3 little pigs

Here I am, sitting in my first-ever hostel in Nice, France (which is, indeed, very nice), decided where to start. Since I've been traveling for almost a month, it doesn't quite feel like a start at this point - though I suppose it is for you, dear reader (aka some of my friends with time to kill).


Quick background then: My name is Sam, I'm an American university student, and I'll be studying abroad in Toulouse for a school year. I made my way to France August 1st with my family, they ditched me on the 12th, and now I'm making the rounds of France on my own until school starts in September.

Now that's out of the way.


So let me tell you the story of my first night staying in my first hostel, because it's possibly the scariest/funniest thing to happen to me yet.
I was a bit nervous going into this whole hostel thing. Before now, I've been staying in places where I have my own room, and my own bathroom, and even a TV if I'm lucky, though rarely lucky enough for a good English-language station.
Maybe, I thought, they won't fill up the room. Maybe there will be super nice people I can go traveling with. Maybe they'll all be super creepy kleptos who steal my things. The reality is, I fear, well....you'll see.
When I get there, the only person in the room is a nice German girl who speaks perfect English, so I get to choose a nice top bunk right by the window, and I have a nice talk with my new sort-of friend.
Then the Brits arrive. Now, after a few days, I know 2 of their names, though I have no idea which one is which, so let's just name them the 3 little pigs. They are not literally pigs - they are actually just the incarnations of some of my worst hostel nightmares.
They seemed cute at first, but then midnight arrives, and the first bloke, the one with a house of bricks, stumbles in drunk and locks himself in the bathroom. Locks himself as in, he can't get out of the bathroom. This creates quite a ruckus, as you might imagine. Then he drops into bed and is asleep instantly. Not too bad, though the debacle did wake me up, and I was planning on waking early the next morning, so I was a little ticked. But hey, not so bad, I thought. If that's the worst this place is throwing at me I'll be fine.
Wrong.
The pig with a house of sticks comes in. I sleep through this, but then, in my dream, I'm all of a sudden attacked by an angry grizzly bear. I drift back awake to find that the sound was actually from the limey in the next bed over, who was snoring like a chainsaw that drank its weight in whiskey. The sound was insistent, loud, and impossible to sleep through. Oh great, I thought, a snorer. Fantastic. I'll get through this.
Wrong.
In comes the pig with his house of bricks. But he doesn't come back alone. You see, I was back in dreamland again, and in my dream, the world started shaking. But the world was, in fact, actually shaking. I wake up, and the bunk bed is shaking pretty violently. I scramble to find reasons for this sudden earthquake: he's having trouble getting into bed, there's a bug in his pants he's trying to shake out, the poor guy's having a nightmare. Nope.
Ringo was actually, on his first night in a 5-bed hostel room, playing bottom-bunk bingo with some Australian "lass," right on the bed below me. You see, I know this because she was still there the next morning. Pretty much class all the way, don't you think? And seriously, the room wasn't that big - his "mates" were no more than 5 feet away from him the whole time - and he was on a bottom bunk.
I've heard stories of people in dorms at Tufts bringing home a friend while their roommate's trying to sleep in the next bed over, and it always struck me as being only a few feet away from a menage a trois, and pretty stupid. But hey, maybe you didn't have many options, and you've been living with the guy/gal for some time now, I don't know. But this guy's in a tiny little 5 bed room, on the bottom of a bunk bed. And I'm wondering afterward how well he actually knows his travel buddies, and whether the better he knows them, the creepier it is, or the other way around.
The moral of the story is: Yuck.
But the story ends happily enough, since I talked to the three little pigs the next day, and they turned out to be alright guys, and they managed to go out and drink last night without waking me up on their return, so I'll forgive them. Plus I got to travel with other people for the first time in a while, instead of going solo, when I tagged along with them to Eze and Monaco, so it turned out okay in the end.
But seriously. The bottom bunk in a 5-bed room. Class all the way, those Brits.
But now for the good news: This is the view of Nice from my room in the aforementioned hostel.

Word of the Day:
Dormir
To sleep