Parlez-vous anglais ?

Contrary to what I said in my previous post, Amit did go on a fast once.
It was Sivaratri, and apparently Amit's family followed a custom which required them to not have regular meals on that day.

Well, it isnt like he cant eat anything. He could have fruits and a few snack items.
Thats what he told me.

So, that day, when I returned from office, I found him patiently cutting a papaya into slices and removing its seeds. There were a number of slices on a plate nearby, ready for consumption

'Cool.' I said.

It was obvious that the last person he expected at that moment was me, because when I devoured the first three pieces, he gave me a disgusted stare, watching his half an hour of painstaking effort spent in peeling the fruit going down my throat in half a minute.

The stare lingered long enough for me to realise that he wouldnt have had anything since morning. So I stopped raiding his plate, and went to the kitchen to get a glass of water.

As I reached out for a glass, my eyes went to the unusually cluttered dustbin nearby.
There were three banana skins, an empty chips packet and an empty peanut burfi packet in the waste bin.

'So much for the fast', I thought.

With the realisation that some things in life just cannot be changed, I changed quickly and joined Amit in the hall where he was watching an English movie. By that time Kaushik had returned too.

It was an action flick featuring Jean Claude Van Damme.

'This guy's movies are all the same. If you watch one, you've watched them all.' I said to Kaushik with a dismissive wave of my hand. 'Have you watched Blood Sport ?'

'Yeah. But I cant recollect his name though. Whats it ?'

'Jean Claude Van Damme' I said pronouncing it like 'John Claude Van Damn'

'Ah, its not John. Its not pronounced that way'

'Yeah, it IS pronounced that way.'

'Come on, Oks, you've been in France. You should be knowing how to pronounce this.' chided Kaushik. 'Its pronounced Jawn where the last letter n is silent.'

I knew better than to argue with Kaushik on the subject of pronounciation. He is obsessed with the correct usage of language and even more obsessed about correcting others when they make a mistake.

He had a point though. I should have something to show for my stint in France - atleast the correct pronounciation of famous French associations.

Talking about languages, there's an interesting trend I observed among people trying to pick up a new language. At least among young men.

The first few phrases or words they learn are almost always obscenities. For instance, I can ask someone to fuck off in about 8 different languages.

Quite a feat, isnt it ?

Coming back to French, my friends and I have had quite a few interesting experiences in France. Before I narrate them, let me tell me how to find your way around the French words in the following passages.

When I am listing down a French word, I will list the pronounciation and the english translation in brackets. The disclaimer is that the pronounciation need not be the exact pronounciation.

And when I am listing down a phrase whose meaning I dont know myself, use google language tools. Here's a link - http://translate.google.com/translate_t. Select 'English to French' from the dropdown, paste the French phrase in the text area and just fire the button.

So here we go.

Bonjour (boshoor) is almost always the first word in French anyone learns. (There are exceptions though. My first word was foutre vous (foothre voo) and you know what it stands for).
Bonjour stands for hello. Its the first thing a person says when he meets someone, as a way of greeting.

Apparently this wasnt known to Balaji, fondly known as Bajji.
When a French guy stretched his palm and said 'Bonjour', he warmly shook his palm and said very pleasantly.

'Bajji'.

To avoid such situations, knowledge of the most basic words is essential. To put it in a better way, there are some words you cant escape. For everything else there's 'je ne parle pas français' (ja na pahle pa fronsae - I dont speak French).
Equally effective is the phrase 'parlez-vous anglais?' (Pahle voo onglae ? - Do you speak English)

I must say, that over time I learnt to say this phrase with nearly the perfect accent. So much that, when a French person came and asked me something, I told him with a swagger that I dont speak French, and ended up feeling extremely proud of myself for that.

'Excusez-moi. J'ai noté que vous ressemblez à un âne sourd-muet. Pouvez-vous me dire à quelle espèce vous appartenez?'

I would run a hand through my hair, look askance at the guy and give him a confident smile.
'je ne parle pas français'

Wow. Aint I cool.

After a few months we got so used to saying this, that we didnt even try to figure out what the person talking to us was trying to say.

One of my friends asked for a city map at a counter in a Paris Metro station. Guessing, by the looks, that we might not know French, the guy replied back, 'français or Anglais' (Fronsae or Onglae - French or English)

Bang comes the reply 'Parlez-vous anglais ?'.

Needless to say, it was usually a lot of fun when we traveled together as a group inside France.

Other than Paris, in no other place do people speak English. In fact, some French friends have told me that the French despise English, courtesy their historical enmity.

So even if a tourist asks something in a French which has absolutely no sense of verbs, adjectives and prepositions, the natives are delighted by the fact that a foreigner is making an effort to learn their language.

Naturally, this had inspired a few people in our Indian group in France to seek mastery of French.

One guy in particular, affectionately called Mittal bhai by us, took great pains towards a strong French vocabulary. He would take pages and pages of printouts of French tutorials from the internet and patiently go through them every night.

The next day, when we would gather during the coffee break in the lawns, he'd flaunt his grasp of French.

'Whats French for "right" ?' he'd test us.

'No idea.'

'droite'

'Hmm. Cool'

'Whats French for "left" ?'

'Umm.. leftie ?'

'No. gauche'.

And we would all look at him with awe and respect.

But the twist in French is that the pronounciation which people infer from the written word is often drastically different from how it should actually be pronounced. The reason for this is that French shares a part of its written alphabet with English, but the same letter may have a different pronounciation in French compared to English. For instance, 'r' is pronounced 'eh' in French.
Hence English speakers, especially those who read up written tutorials frequently end up in weird situations when they try to flaunt their French.

Mittal, eager to try his French, once volunteered to get the train tickets himself. This is how he asked the lady at the counter. Pretty much.

'Brusque bisque gibberish tibberish' (Google-translating this wouldnt help you much).

Obviously unimpressed, and more importantly, unenlightened, the lady replied 'Pardon?' (Pahdhown (n silent) - Sorry?)

'Blubber flubber blah blah ticketa fourppla', persisted Mittal, not one to give up.

'Parlez-vous Anglais ?'.

I thought that was our question. Who's the foreigner here ?

Despite the obvious lack of impact Mittal made on the French, he still was our leader in whatever trips we made over there. He took upon himself the responsibility of finding out about places from people.

One trip in particular is quite unforgettable.
We were in this place called Melon, and suddenly after all the sight seeing, we had a whim to go bowling. So we tried asking around for a bowling alley. Mittal was confident that there was one in the town.

'It should be somewhere in the neighbourhood', he said.

The first attempt Mittal bhai made was in a Pakistani restaurant. The communication was smooth because we didnt have to speak in French with the owner.

'Do you know if there's a bowling alley here ?' Mittal bhai asked him.

'Umm.' the guy paused, thinking.

'It should be somewhere in the neighbourhood. Do you know where it is ?'

'Oh yeah' the guy's face lit up in realisation. He led Mittal bhai to the middle of the road. 'You see the blue building over there ?'

'Yeah.'

'Take a left there. Then you have to walk down the street.'

'Ok.'

'Eventually, you'll come to a playground, where you can do bowling, batting and fielding - anything you want.'

Pause.
And you thought French was the only barrier to communication ?

Completely unperturbed by the results, Mittal led us on. Eventually, he asked us to wait at a particular place, while he strode towards two French men standing on the pavement.
He started a conversation with the men, while we watched from a distance.

Apparently he was having quite a raging discussion with them. We could see all three men gesturing and pointing here and there.

Maybe Mittal couldnt really connect with them in French, because a little while later he got down to demonstration.
He bent on one knee, ran a short distance and let roll an imaginary ball. His eyes then followed the ball until it struck all 10 pins, after which Mittal let out a whoop of joy.

It appeared as if it was working, because the men watching the demo with a serious expression, nodded knowingly.
There followed another round of gesturing and pointing at different roads.

Finally after quite some time, Mittal returned with a satisfied expression on his face.
Curious to know what exactly happened between them, we asked him if he got the exact location of the bowling alley.

'Mittal, you guys were talking for such a long time. Where is the alley ?'

'It should be somewhere in the neighbourhood, yaar'.

There wasnt a bowling alley within 50 miles of that place.