LA en vie

Trader Joe's fights the good fight: Less vs Fewer

Apostrophe's

Few things embarrass me more than making a mistake in my writing, even though in English, at least, everyone makes mistakes sometimes. Intellectually, I know perfectly well that that a living language is constantly changing and that yesterday's grammatical mistake is today's normal usage. But I am still at heart a language snob and a conservative. If I were French, I would probably want to write estoit instead of était and find it normal that scholars are trying to fossilize the language in a huge prescriptive dictionary. If I were British, I'm sure I would look down my nose at Americans and spell "jail" with a g (so sensible!) and say "the government are."

Back in my own country, I am having a hard time with the assault of badly spelled English on all sides. One of the biggest differences between the English in England and the English here, besides the fact that most Americans are descended from non-English-speakers, is that in England, everyone who writes for the public eye has probably achieved at least an A-level standard in English. Here, even teachers and journalists for major newspapers make egregious mistakes. The mistakes are so common that I feel sure they will become the new standard usage.

A's school here, known as a very good one, sent home a reading list for the summer in which a history teacher recommends The Perfect Mile with "The rivalry that developed between he and Santee is riveting" (and an academic administrator writes of a famous book, "After reading this book I could not believe that I had never heard of it"). In general, everyone says "from he and I" and "with she and I."

No one in the entire United States under the age of fifty seems to know how to use apostrophes or the abbreviations "they're" and "you're." Let's not even get into "its" and "it's"! English is unusually hard to spell; French is even worse. Maybe we should just adopt the German method and do without apostrophes completely. Who need's them?

Whenever I get upset about these things, I remember that the word "grammar" is related to "grimoire" (book of magic, in French) and to "glamour" and that they all come from the idea that a Latin grammar book had something glamorous, magical, and unknown about it. The whole idea that there is a correct way to write and spell is a little kooky from a linguistic point of view anyway.

U.S. vs U.K.: the personals

Guess which is which?
[Edited to remove local refs]

Do you see a pattern?

Lady of the Bedchamber. A rare opportunity has arisen. Appeal, compliance and enthusiasm during the probationary period will greatly enhance your application for this prestigious post. Lingerie allowance. Full training given.
box no. *

Man, 24, interested in Wagner, Edwardianism, fortified wines, and debauchery, seeks older women for coy exchanges of Wildean put-downs, followed by forbidden candle-lit passions, leading to clandestine affair, epic betrayal, and eventual Götterdämmerung and redemption. Accountants and paleontologists need not apply. 
box no. **

..........................................

REALLY PRETTY, SMART, CEO—athletic, trim, divorced, with ever-present dash of self-deprecating humor. Gracious, irreverent, fun, hot ticket....international in outlook both in vocation and avocation. Easygoing travel companion, true explorer’s spirit, be it exploring around the corner or the world. Passions include: lazy afternoons on my dock, cooking fresh, delicious meals, photography, sailing, literature, movies, Italian hill towns, improving rusty French, The Economist, Peru, and my version of the Mediterranean pace of life. No big resorts, just wonderful hotels or a touch of old world decadence, remote villages, city buzz, authenticity. Would love to meet co-adventurer—bright, successful, cosmopolitan man, 49–65.

STUNNING, INTELLECTUALLY CURIOUS, and athletic. Consultant/educator—tall and slim with natural radiance. Adventurous, with calm, warm demeanor and genuineness of character. Expressive, affectionate, divorced, 5'8". Laughs a lot, thinks deeply, politically liberal. Interested in social change, literature, politics, psychology, nature, beauty. International outlook, has lived abroad. Actively enjoys skiing, hiking, trekking in Nepal, tapas in Barcelona, snuggling at home, Sunday Times, The Economist, theater, Mozart sonatas. Seeks healthy/active man (58–60s) with warmth and an intellectual bent.

INTELLECTUAL/PHYSICIAN, driven by ideals to be generative, to do socially relevant work, and also to have cut muscles (6'1", 56); seeks a woman who would enjoy someone emotionally connected, yet very male.

Texting 1, 2, 3....

"Do you use text messaging?" a new acquaintance asked me, as if to prove a point.

"Sure," I said. "Doesn't everyone?"

"You're the only person I know over 20 who does," he said.

I was surprised to find that in America, text messaging is considered an arcane art mastered only by the very young. In Europe everyone uses it, often in preference to a phone call. It takes less time and less battery power, costs less and leaves a written record. I can't think of any reason why texting should be expensive in the  U.S., but it is, unless you get a special plan.

"Texting is a problem at my friend's restaurant," someone else said. "The waitresses are texting all the time while they're working.

"But it was worse the other day when I went to a funeral and the people in the pew on either side of me were both texting and answering email during the service."

Give sorrow words

Yesterday a good, beloved relative died after a long illness. I told my children at various points during the day, and all two of them could think of to say when they first heard the news was a heartfelt, "That sucks."

Vous vs tu vs you (and thee)

I watched "Prête-moi ta main" the other day. I was feeling a bit smug-- I don't need subtitles, I speak French!

Halfway through the movie, one of my kids exclaimed, "Ah! the switch to tu!" After all these years in France-- I still hadn't noticed when the main characters, who are pretending to be in love to fool his family, switched back and forth--a major point in the plot.

Vous, tu, they're all still "you" to me.

Of course, English used to have a tu: "thee." It died out in speech about two hundred years ago, although it's occasionally used in song and prayer even today.

Losse-en-Gelaisse

This came from an ad for the SNCF (French national trains company). It shows a backwater village somewhere in la France Profonde, but the name is pronounced the way the French pronounce Los Angeles. Who's to say that's wrong?

Now that I am back in L.A. after the holidays, I don't need French any more, and that makes me kind of sad. On the other hand, everything is so smooth in your own native language.  Think how easily "hubcap," "hinge," "drain," "valve," "faucet," and other useful words spring easily to your lips in English. Do you know what "hors gabarit" means? (Better learn, if you are driving in France.)

Sometimes, though, the word that springs to mind is French, and then people think you are showing off. A few times on most days, I think of the French word first.

Bilingual people are all around us in the U.S., of course, but like most Americans, I rarely gave a thought to what that meant for those people before living in France and becoming one myself. I remember how weird it felt at first to be with French friends and have my own family members talk with me in French.

Anomalies of French Life: the Dictée

English speakers often assume that English is unbelievably hard for foreigners to learn, because of our eccentric spelling which must, essentially, be memorized.  Hence the famous example of ghoti, pronounced "fish":

gh as in rough
o as in women
ti as nation

But French, je vous assure, is harder to spell. Why? Because of matching. An adjective or past participle must match the thing it describes, and all too often this causes it to be spelled differently.  In English, you just have to memorize each word, and ça y est, you don't have to think about it any more. In French, you have to think about these matches [concordances] all the time. If you are a woman saying you got up this morning, you have to spell "got up" differently than if you are a man (even though they're pronounced the same). 

You thought spelling bees were a big deal? In France, there is a national and international dictée [dictated spelling/writing test] where adults compete to write French correctly. It is rare for anyone to have a perfect score. You can try one yourself if you think your French is pretty good. For me it has always been a sobering experience.

Here is translation of the entry for the word gens [people] in a book titled Difficultés du français, by Jean-Pierre Colignon, the main correcteur for Le Monde.

gens n.m. or f. plur. The adjective that FOLLOWS gens is masculine:  des gens courageux. The adjective that immediately PRECEDES gens is feminine:  de vieilles gens, de bonnes gens.

If several adjectives in a row immediately PRECEDE gens directly, they all become masculine if the last one ends in a silent e in both masculine and feminine:  de faux honnêtes gens, tous ces heureux braves gens; but if the last of these adjectives has a masculine form that is different from the feminine, all the adjectives become feminine: certaines petites gens, de bonnes vieilles gens.

If the adjectives which precede gens are separated from it by other words, they become masculine: heureux les gens sans scrupules!; annoncés par une lettre de leur protecteur, ces bonnes gens sont venus me voir.

Predicate adjectives and participles (with a composed past tense) are ALWAYS masculine: ces gens sont idiots, ces vieilles gens sont naïfs.

With tous: one uses the masculine when tous immediately precedes gens and is followed by a qualification....

The entry goes on for another few paragraphs, but I think you get the idea.