Colonel Mustard in the Lounge avec un tuyau de plomb?

Fess up, my fellow Canadian anglophones, what exactly is on the French side of your bilingual Clue cards? Once your four columns of Suspects & Weapons & Rooms are x-ed and circled and scratched out, do you contemplate toughing it out with les armes et les pièces?! 

How much linguistic confusion and deduction can your mind take?! Personally, I've drawn a blank. 

Are you Mlle.or Miss Scarlet?

Salle de bal ou Ballroom?

Bilingual minds want to know just exactly how many unmarked French Clue cards are in your recycle bin.(confess below)

BTW: clé anglaise is technically a "monkey wrench" - wonder why Hasbro left out the full translation? 

Je tweete -Tu tweetes - Il tweete - Nous tweetons - Vous tweetez - Ils tweetent

Gazouillement!

If you thought comparing English-French labels was fun, (You do, right, that's why you're here? Oui?), imagine how merveilleux it will be to judge contemplate the bilingual versions of our dear leaders' tweets!

Sociolinguists are up late RIGHT NOW wondering why our Justin's English tweet is très matter-of-fact and yet his tweet en français, according to my official translator (i.e. my brain), seems to wax a tad more poetic and personal: 

"My sympathies to the family of former British PM, Margaret Thatcher. I salute her public service and her devotion to her country" (128 characters in English)

Is this a statement on English vs. French sensibilities?! #jemedemande

BTW: Did you know that #hashtag is a dirty word in France?! The Commission Générale de Terminologie et de Néologie doesn't like "Facebook" or "Twitter" either. Read all about it.

BEST bilingual label EVER

I don't tend to get too personal here on Beaver Tails but my cup overfloweth when this document bilingue arrived at our home >>>>> 

Yes, it's true, #1 is off to university and to pursue a career in Canadian politics. Where better a place to start than la belle province and cosmopolitan Montreal?! 

To my label-bilingualist eye, "Enrolment Services" translates as "gestating effective students". Well, doesn't that just ring the bell. Way to go, McGill. Formidable!

<<< BTW: apropos of not much, Montreal is also home to "Funky Town", le club disco.  Come on, you know you want to...

Peu importe

 

I would never be so base as to conjure a stereotypical image of a très chic and oh so French mademoiselle, slim and tall as a long drink de l'eau, une porte-cigarette held between two slender fingers and eyes shining with un air dédaigneux. Pas moi! Non. 





Okay, maybe, yes, moi. I just. Well, I blame Thinsations. There's so much here I can't reconcile. 

Thinsations = Chunks Ahoy!  

                                                     

VS.

Mince alors! = Morceaux de chocolat de Mr. Christie 

It's all in the attitude methinks, and the subtle (Chunks Ahoy!) la difference dans la vocabulaire. The English lady - a gender at which I'm almost certain this product is aimed - seems most definitely at a disadvantage. Perhaps if this English lady can see past the body image that *Chunks* conjures, she may still be thwarted by the drool-worthy "fudge-drizzled". Our French lady, however, may simply sniff at her morceaux de chocolat and surmise: "Thin then". Mais, oui. Naturellement. <exhalation de fumée de cigarette>

BTW: I think the Chunks Ahoy exclamation point got lost on the French side. 
Also BTW: Mr. Christie was CANADIAN!!! Gobsmacked: William Mellis Christie  

Conjoint de fait

Full disclosure: this is not a post about a bilingual product label in Canada, like this one, par exemple --------->

It is about a type of label, however, a très important label, it seems: 

Conjoint ou mari? 

Conjointe ou femme?

Big news if you were under a rock this past week in Canada:

 "The Supreme Court of Canada has ruled that Quebec can continue to exclude common law couples from receiving spousal support upon the breakdown of a relationship. A majority found that Quebec’s exclusion does violate the Charter right to equality. However, a complicated split on the court led to a narrow 5-4 vote in favour of leaving the unconstitutional law intact." 

Sacre bleu! "in favour of leaving the unconstitutional law intact" ?!?!

And if that isn't wacky enough Canadiana for you, turns out Quebec is : 

"home today to among the highest concentration of unwed couples in the world. About a third of all couples in the province live common-law. The conjugal arrangements are so fluid that in Quebec, the French terms conjoint and conjointe are often used to refer to both a common-law spouse or married partner" 
(Globe and Mail article) 

(In English, of course, this is the equivalent of using "partner" and all the ambiguity that implies)

Looks like Quebec's one-label-fits-all needs its own translation, as our "complicated" Supreme Court just gave conjoint de fait a very clear definition. Vite! Check your label or you could be left sans ressources!

BTW: What WOULD Martha Stewart do?

Êtes-vous prêt?

A writer-friend of mine recently had her young adult novel picked up by an Italian publisher. Son très excitant!! One publishing challenge: each chapter is like an encyclopedia entry, and the whole book, naturally, ordered from A-Zed. Over a celebratory drink, we giggled a little and wondered out loud how an Italian translation could reconcile the English and maintain the alphabetical order. Wouldn't want to be in that junior editor's Zelli ostrich slip-ons. 

By a similar creative token, I've often wondered how singers/songwriters take a well-known English language song and well, you know, sing it in French. The rhymes would all be awry! The melody discordant! The audience confused! 
(trust me on that last one; at my son's most recent school assembly, the new O Canada "blend" of French and English had my brain, lips and tongue contorted in indescribable ways)

Enter bilingual chanteuse, Emilie-Claire Barlow, a sassy spark of an anglophone and recent guest on CBC's C'est la vie: (linguistically-riveting Interview with Emilie-Claire Barlow). She's released her first French-only "album" and while contorting her lips, also furrowed her brow and asked: 

Which lyric has more sass?

English: 

"One of these days these boots are going to walk all over you"

French: 

"I'm going to use these boots to leave you"

Well, Nancy? What do you think?



  BTW MUST LISTEN: Emilie-Claire's melodic, playful songs on Soundcloud  

p.s. I just found me a brand new box of matches...

Je me souviens. Full stop.

We'd pass the odd Quebec license plate on family summer road trips through interior British Columbia. For most of my childhood, I thought the sentence along the bottom meant I am a souvenir. In a way, I wasn't far off. 

When I finally learned its real meaning, I just assumed it was in reference to the World Wars and a tribute to Canada's veterans. After all, isn't that what all Canadians do on November 11, remember? Fiona's mind: "Je me souviens" = "I remember" = Remembrance Day. C'est logique, n'est pas?

Naturally, I had it all wrong and, while there still exists doubt and controversy, it is generally accepted that Je me souviens is but the start of a more meaningful declaration:

Je me souviens/Que né sous le lys/Je croîs sous la rose. E.E. Taché

(I remember that born under the lily I grow under the rose)

Nothing at all to do with Remembrance Day! The lily of course representing France and the rose, England. I suspect that this interpretation/translation ("grow") is not what it seems, that there is a defiance smoldering between its lines. Je ne sais pas pourquoi...

Regardless, here we are, November 2012, and the ever-defiant Pauline Marois and her fleur-de-lis pin are not only the center of her Remembrance poppy but became the center of another political storm. 
The headline, FLEUR-DE-LYS IN POPPY ANGERS VETS, signals an anglo- AND francophone rebuke of Marois that our veterans "fought for Canada not just for Quebec".

I have a secret wish that all Canadians will remember and honour our veterans, military personnel, and their families as they wished to be honoured, with a simple poppy and two minutes of silence. Je me souviens. Full stop. The remembrance poppy does not need a bilingual label. 

*thank you Globe and Mail for "borrowed" image of Marois

BTW: I still prefer "I am a souvenir". Really, aren't we all?

Bidimensionnel killed the QR code

I just don't even know where to start. I'm feeling battered and bruised from this month's PQ victory and what Paul Wells calls a bloody language war to end all wars. Ok, he didn't say that. But he scared me nonetheless. And where do I go with this label analysis, I ask you? Will it be death by sheer number of letters? Will our French language labels start battering us over the head with their plus-long explanations?! 

But if I have to start, I will say this, from a mere west coast anglophone to a mighty Quebecois language WARRIOR, wtf? I quite like your use of balayez. 

Sérieusement. Well, I was enamoured, until I realized it had nothing to do with  mountain-climbing. An irrefutable source    (Dictionaripedia) states that     
    "balayez" means both "sweep"  
   and  "sweep aside"     
    <furrowed brow>, which of course is 
    nothing like "scan". I think. 
    Does this mean the 
     PQ will "balayez" the    
     Constitution?! 
     Cric! Crac! Croc! 

Oh, and before I forget, if it takes someone, say a teenager, more than a nanosecond to read the instructions for a QR code, then, um, oh, sh*t, I missed my bus.

I'm just saying. Conserving letters is vital TO THE SURVIVAL OF THE HUMAN RACE. However terrified I am that the PQ will end Canada as I know it, I am so relieved to learn that a QR code is bi-dimensional. Phew. Can't touch me now bill 101. Over and out from a primarily-anglophone-but-French-loving west coast movie theatre. (Bourne Legacy in case you wondered)

BTW: pretty sure an *asterisk in any language means "fat chance of winning" - oh, and because its copy is way down at the bottom of this page, I'll bring forth the irrefutable Bill Murray on plus-long translations:

Kaboom

Sure, YOU knew it meant "pomegranate" but I thought if I opened this bottle of cider it would explode in my face.

Let's hope after drinking this refreshing drink in its entirety in the glorious B.C. sunshine, I won't feel like I've been hit by a...

BTW: How DO they squeeze those teeny-tiny seeds to make cider? Where does the crunchy bit go? And, um, how many pomegranates does it take to make a grenade  cider?

Seulement in Canada, eh?

Because where else would there be two names for the same character? 


So relieved to know that "Benjamin" is French for "Franklin" or I may have made a catastrophic social misstep. 







BTW: Bravo, Pauline! And can't resist interjecting a random anglophile Canadian mash-up of nonsense:  

Franco/Anglophone Cultural Hall of Shame

My dear, esteemed 
francophones, if ever 
there was an opportunity 
to alternatively translate an 
English product label, 
this was your chance. Where, pray tell, is the poetry and eloquence once mustered in 
Raisin Bran's "an avalanche 
of raisins"? I assure you, the anglophone writers that came up with "pillow fights" would be none the wiser had you mistranslated the English into something less cringeworthy, like a lyric from a Celine Dion song, par exemple.

Stealing from the très drôle Elvira Kurtz, I am inducting "Old Spice After Hours body wash" and its drag-racing product-label hommes des cavernes into the Beaver Tails Franco/Anglophone Cultural Hall of Shame. 

And is that a ship floating in a bicep? Mon Dieu. 

What the Phloque?

Friday family UNO night:
My 6-year old (has no cards to play): Sacre Bleu!
My 16-year old: (to his brother) That's a swear word you know.
Me: That's right, honey, but it's not really bad, right? What's the worst French swear word?
My 16-year old (so little brother gets confused): T-A-B-A-R-N-A-C
My husband: What?! Isn't there a bad word for female body parts?
Me: No, the French actually like women. 
My 6-year old (muttering to himself as the rest of us talk): mumble mumble...in French is phloque. Phloque. Phloque. Phloque.


My 16-year old (finally): No, it's PHOQUE.
6-year old: PHLOQUE
16-year old: PHOQUE
6-year old: PHLOQUE
16-year old: PHOQUE
Me (crying with laughter behind my UNO cards): Um, Qu'est-ce que c'est un "phoque"?
6-year old, 16-year old, 46-year old: What?! Didn't you learn that in school?! It's a Seal. 

BTW: I clearly missed that lesson in Miss Barron's French class and it certainly wasn't on any box of Rice Krispies I have read. Further note: my 16-year old is horrified that I spelled out t-a-b-a-r-n-a-c on my blog. 

I think there's an app for that

Sorry, what was his name again? Just when you've justified the bilingual documents, labels & signs expenditures...


BTW: Ollie predicts it will be an early spring

And you thought your car was small

There seems so much wrong with the cover of this book my son brought home in his sac à lire yesterday but nothing more so than the title. No wonder the car industry is in trouble. 






BTW: No, I will not let you give me a ride home.

From Coast à Côte

A west coast girl, I imagined Canada's east coast to be similarly and alternately rugged and green - sandy and rocky. Wind-swept. White-capped. Any photos I had seen didn't belie this perception.


So, when visiting New Brunswick last summer, I was totally unprepared for the primordial, awe-inspiring Bay of Fundy and its environs. Glopping in the mud, ducking under ancient rock formations, then climbing to escape the 50' rising tide left an indelible impression on me and my first born.

But something else washed over us in the francophone city of Moncton: the ebb and flow of an effortless bilingualism - the overlapping glory of code-switching. Forget official languages and product label crash courses - this is where the Great Canadian immersion experiment lives and breathes. However much I get my west coast knickers in a knot over language policy, the melodic langues of Moncton soothe the savage anglophile.

And, of course, there are signs bilingues - so I can practice being a good Canadian bilingual:

BTW: You haven't had a sticky bun 'til you've had one from Kelly's Bakery in Alma, N.B. Grab one after you've seen the Bay of Fundy and you can eat it in French or English.

Why my dentist is so rich

Another example of direct translation fail: Once removed from its well-known cousine, this, I do believe, speaks for itself:

Excuse me, madame, but would you like some raspberries with your rocks?

BTW: I'm currently on the hunt for Heavenly Hash AND just because nothing says ice cream like Weird Al Yankovic:

Now if it only cleaned my teeth

You have to know that the immortels at L'Académie française were right furieux around the mid-70's when "email" entered the English vernacular. French had employed the word for centuries. Problem is, it apparently means "enamel", so they are stuck with courrier (électronique). By my reckoning, not only does my toothpaste freshen my breath but it protects me from those deceiving Nigerian fraudsters! 

BTW: Arm & Hammer rocks

Imparfaitement bilingue

This wouldn't be a proper *bilingual* blog if I didn't make some comment on the recent brouhaha surrounding Montreal, Les Habitants, and their skilled, but sadly, primarily unilingual anglophone coach, Randy Cunneyworth. 

the Habs, it seems, have fired their mediocre French-speaking coach and hired a seemingly-better English-speaking coach.

   Zut alors!

But what really got me was not that one writer suggested that 

"the Toronto Maple Leafs may call themselves Canada’s team, but  they are not the heart and soul of Ontarian society in the same way. People do not look to the Maple Leafs as an expression of English Canadian culture, because they are not a cultural minority in the way that Quebecers are in this country." 

It was that she referred to herself as parfaitement bilingue! Why I never. If that doesn't have anything to do with ice cream, fruit, and whipped cream, then she must be saying she's perfectly bilingual. Fluent, even. Huh. 

And so to show solidarité with both the Leafs and the Habs, I declare myself: imparfaitement bilingue!

BTW: Lisa Fiorilli's article was one of the best on the so-called "Great Language Debate" AND This Hour Has 22 Minutes is hysterical on the same theme (clip plays after TWO ads - be patient, it's worth it)

Bonjour. Awkward pause.

The most challenging aspect about having learned French via dual language product labels is that I don't really speak French at all.  You are probably unsurprised to hear that while I have a vast franglais vocabulary, I can't actually string much of a sentence together. Or a question for that matter. This, naturally, in no way prevents me from trying, particularly if it will embarrass my children.


I get this opportunity only so often in our primarily anglophone west coast town and it's almost always on the telephone.


Canada has, of course, two official languages: French and English. This means that all government and quasi-government agencies must offer all communications in both languages. I know this and I also know this is why official Canadian forms are like endless rolls of papier toilette.

When you contact one of these organizations via the telephone, they will almost invariably identify themselves in French, then English, and then most likely will say, "Hello", then "Bonjour". I don't know what happens in my tiny anglophone brain at that moment but somehow I convince myself that the appropriate response is: bonjour. Well, that's the polite thing to say, you might be saying to yourself right now. Actually, no, it's the stupid thing to say because then Monsieur or Madame Bilingual THINKS I SPEAK FRENCH!


Guess what comes after my smug bonjour? Big fat rien, that's what. Awkward pause, then a burst of English like I've been holding my breath for too long. It's humiliating.


For all you fellow fakers out there, my dear friend, Lisa, who CAN really speak French, passed this along:


BTW: Perhaps I should try swearing on the phone? Oh, and I also answer the phone when staying in Mexican hotels with: Hola. Awkward pause.

Tomato, tomate

As they say, it's not the destination that matters, it's all about la voyage. So, I guess that's why even though "your hair's starting point"  looks like your hair leaving to my quasi-bilingual eyes, I'm not too panicked. Start. Depart. Isn't it all the same? Quite philosophical, n'est pas? 

BTW: If only "pour y arriver" were so simple...and curly

Tell me what it really says, WITH INTENSITY

We've all been there - perhaps in a foreign country where you don't know the language or maybe in a situation in which you are trying to help someone else who doesn't speak your language or perhaps, like me, you are just sitting around your dinner table with your smarty-pants bilingual children - it's the moment where you've uttered 3 words that are then translated into um, say, 50. In that moment, you think, what the?

I was (im)patiently grinding coffee at the local grocery store when:

Now, from #1-#3, I'm pretty cool - I've matched my "choisissez" to my "select" and my "coffee beans" to "les graines du café". I even figure out that "l'écran" must mean "screen". Not bad for a Sunday morning. 


But then, what the?! 


English #4: PRESS START SWITCH


French #4: APPUYEZ SUR L'INTERRUPTEUR DE MISE EN MARCHE



That imperative is waaaaaay too long! (and what does interrupting have to do with starting?! I ask myself, mostly)

I have it on very good authority that the French essentially translates into:

 "push the make-it-go button" 

Now THAT makes sense and now, I am going to have to take back everything I said in my last post about French being a dramatic language of love.

BTW: here's one of the funniest scenes ever about lengthy and short translations. With intensity!

Poetic Licence

They're not called the Romantic Languages for nothing. With their long vowels and dramatic vocabularies,  Italian, Spanish, and French, together epitomizing the language of love, have well-
earned their désignation. 
                                    
And so, it seems, even cereal boxes are not immune to la passion de language:


Why have maximum bran and raisins when you can have an 


AVALANCHE?! 


If that doesn't make you want to add fiber to your diet, nothing will. 


BTW: it's avalanche season in B.C. right now - watch out for falling raisins

O some-parts-of-Canada!

Try as I might, I have never been able to memorize the French version of O Canada! Over the years though, sitting through boring assemblies and school productions in smelly gymnasiums and staring at the two official versions in English and French which invariably flank the stage, even with my rudimentary bilingualism, I noticed something awry: the French isn't at all what I had always assumed to be a translation of the English - it is an entirely different anthem! Um, ok, you probably already knew that BUT have you ever really thought about how differently francophones feel belting out a significantly bolder, more passionate anthem. I mean really, compare:

From far and wide,
O Canada,
we stand on guard for thee.
With glowing hearts
we see thee rise,
The True North strong and free!

  

             AND

                                           

Car ton bras sait porter l'épée

Il sait porter la croix

Ton histoire est une épopée,
Des plus brillants exploits.
Et ta valeur, de foi trempée,
Protégera nos foyers et nos droits



BTW: You might recognize words for "sword", "cross", "epic", "brilliant exploits", "valour", "faith" - no glowing hearts here