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.

Bippers and Zébras

On our way up the stairs to our apartment last week, we noticed this announcement, taped to the wall:


Without going through the trouble of translating the whole thing, it's basically about automating the heavy wooden doors (porte cochère) that allow entry into the apartment complex from the street. It used to be you had to pull your car up, get out, open the doors, get back in your car, drive through, then close the doors behind you. Now, all you'll have to do is press a button to open and close the doors from the comfort of your own vehicle.

There were two things we learned from this announcement. The first was that in French, a garage-door opener is called a "bipper."

Bipper is one of those French words that comes from an English word but that adopts a French phonetic spelling based on the English pronunciation. Bipper pronounced à la française is pronounced the same as "Beeper" in English. It's just that "bipper" looks a lot funnier, no matter which language is your native one. (I can't think of any other words in French that look even remotely like it.)

The other thing we learned from the announcement is a second meaning of the word, "zébre."

Yup - it means stripes, whether they're on the eponymous animal or marking a spot where you might get clobbered by automatic doors if you're not paying attention. The word is also used to describe crosswalks, which makes sense.

Too bad we don't have a car, otherwise we could use our bipper to open doors that swing gently open over black-and-yellow zébras. Maybe next time.

Rehearsal Excitement

So as Maggie recently reported, I'm getting ready to perform in a few concerts in May, and yesterday I had a rehearsal/coaching session at the apartment of the piano teacher of our group's pianist. This teacher, Noël Lee, happens to be an American composer and concert pianist who's been living in Paris for more than 50 years, so it's always a pleasure and an honor to play for him.

As you'll hear in the clip below, we were in the middle of working on a section when I saw something strange through the window. (I've taken the liberty of amplifying the sound around 30 seconds in so you can hear the conversation better.)

Here's a little transcript of the beginning, showing just how much work my French still needs.

Me: Il y a un mec qui a, qui vient de . . . comment tu dis . . . he just climbed in the window over there
Noël: What?
Me: There's a guy who just climbed in the window. Il a . . . [Noël: Where?] grimpé, il a grimpé dans la fenêtre, juste en face . . .

There were two problems with my observation. First, no one quite believed me, since how crazy is it that someone would just climb in the window of a 2nd-floor apartment across the street? And second, I kept saying "greeempay" when I should have been saying "grampay" (as Noël quietly acknowledges around 1:07), so it's possible Dominique (my accompanist) didn't understand.

We all kind of laughed about it at the time - you can hear Noël say, "well, bravo!" at the end, and just after that, he wonders if maybe the guy just lost his keys. But today I got an email from Noël proving that what I saw was no laughing matter:

You might be interested to learn that the man you saw yesterday climb the building opposite was a thief; he got away with money, restaurant tickets, and such and left by the same route, but I guess you didn't see him go down.   My neighbor who lives underneath told me this morning.  If you have any details about what he looked like, let me know.

Oops. All I remember is that he was wearing a white jacket, he was skinny, and he had dark hair. That describes about a quarter of the guys in this city, so it probably won't be very helpful.

The rehearsal, on the other hand, was very helpful. Dominique and I are making good progress on a piece we're playing for fun, rather than for either of the concerts in May. Just in case you're curious, it's the Sonata for Clarinet and Piano in F minor, Opus 120 No. 1 by Johannes Brahms, and so far we've gotten through the first and second movements. Below is a somewhat choppy cut-and-paste from our rehearsal/coaching yesterday so you can get an idea of what the two movements sound like.

The French Protection

For a few days this week, you could see this ad coming out of Métro Belleville:

It reads, "Condoms protect against AIDS" and I'll let you figure out the rest. This is a good example of the different standard of propriety that applies to French ads. Lots of near-nudity, lots of suggestive prose, tackling the tough issues, it's all good. No abstinence-only education here.

This ad is actually one in a series. Here are the two other versions:

It turns out you can make your own (if you're so inclined) by going to the Têtu website. Just put in your name, the number of capotes, and upload a picture, et voilà! You're fighting the spread of HIV/AIDS. Or so the website claims.

While that might be a little weird, you have to give the French government credit for backing up words with deeds. Within Métro Belleville (as well as many other Métro stations) you'll find condom vending machines:

Notice on the left side of the machine it translates condoms as "préservatifs" (rather than capotes, which is more informal). Keep this in mind if you ever come to France and end up talking about food preservation. The phrase you want to use is "agents de conservation" - saying "préservatifs" will only confuse everyone.

Language Learning

This is the first time I've been to France where I haven't been spending 90% of my day with native speakers. Or at least, with speaking native speakers - the library is a very "shhhh!!!!" kind of place. I still feel like my language is improving - especially my comprehension (I can now understand people on the phone!) - but the change doesn't feel as drastic as at other times. I find it most difficult to improve my accent, since the older I get, the farther I am from that formative age when accents are still malleable.

This video, a Flight of the Conchords classic, captures how I tend to hear myself, even if it's never quite this bad:

Engrish

Maggie and I have been noticing more and more signs that Engrish* is creeping into French society, despite the best efforts of the Academie Française to weed out any and all vestiges of Anglicism from the French language.

This example is frighteningly close to where we live.

* No, that's not a misspelling. Click on the link. You will not be disappointed.