Faux Pas Friday

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We discovered a new anglophone-in-Paris blog recently called "paris (im)perfect" and I hope its author (Sion Dayson) won't mind if I blatantly rip off one of her regular segments: Faux Pas Friday.

Yesterday, I had a rehearsal with Dominique, the pianist with whom I gave a concert last week. (Maggie and her mom came along to listen.) We got to talking about the recording I made and he complained about the "flatness" of the sound quality. I wanted to reply that any flatness must have been due to the poor quality of his (and most other) computer speakers. Here's where things went wrong.

Quick vocab lesson. Enceinte is a noun with three meanings:

1. The various walls encircling the city of Paris over its history were known as enceintes.

2. Enceinte is one way of saying "pregnant." (This is an ad the French government published recently in an attempt to promote their vision of France's future, which only succeeded in infuriating women and the political left - there's a good analysis of the scandal here.)

3. A Google search for "enceintes" (plural) shows the meaning I was going for - speakers. Even with the S, it's pronounced the same as the other two. But just to be clear, as I said the word I gestured as if I were picking up two little computer speakers.

Except I didn't actually say "enceintes," not even after a moment's hesitation when I weighed it against the other option, which is spelled slightly different, but which is pronounced the same as the middle syllable as enceintes. Instead of enceintes, as I reached for the two "computer speakers" in front of me, I said "seins." Which means breasts.

Me, the idiot: "Si l'enregistrement semble plat, c'est à cause de tes ... seins;" "If the recording sounds flat, it's due to your ... breasts."

Happily, in the context of this sentence, it must have sounded more like I dropped the "en" of "enceintes" in a lower register, making it inaudible, but still "heard." (The French do this all the time, especially in their frequent use of the word enfin, which resembles the ubiquitous "like" of American English.) Dominique certainly didn't notice. Maggie, on the other hand, noticed, and after I made eye contact with her (which was immediately) she could barely keep herself from cracking up.

Oops. Hopefully next time this situation comes up, I'll think of the three meanings of enceinte (as compared to the one meaning of sein) and choose correctly.