The ugliness of French media

The stars of the first season (only one I will watch)
of Spiral - there is Gregory Fitoussi,
that rarest of French
male media stars - an attractive one.

I want to thank this English writer for pointing out something that is not pointed out often enough:

...for male French stars, being good looking is not a requirement. Better that you look like an aged, post coital rhino who has been rutting in a swamp all night, or if you have a nose like a deformed butternut squash. In L’Homme Du Train, Johnny Halliday is meant to be sexy, despite looking like a crocodile handbag with a wig on. Add Serge Gainsbourg, Gerard Depardieu and Jean Reno into the mix and you’ve got yourself a great big buffet of ugly quiche.

This is something I noticed early on in my voyage to learn French by watching French media.

This is one reason why it's so hard to watch French films and TV, even for the sake of learning French - the male actors are almost all ugly AF. This isn't just a French preference for ugly people - the women in French media are beautiful and young. Only the men are allowed to be - nay, expected to be - old and ugly

This use of old ugly men as film stars in France tells you everything you need to know about how much French culture is still completely dominated by men. Although if you need further convincing just read about how fucked up and sexist Cannes is.

And of course the beautiful young French women actors are expected to play scenes in which they are incredibly attracted to ugly old men.

The worst example of this I've seen so far is the first episode of a TV series called "A French Village." It's set during WWII and the first episode opens by explaining that Nazis are invading. Directly after, we see a scene of a middle-aged businessman played by unattractive (of course) Thierry Godard (also in Spiral AKA Engrenages - you cannot avoid him if you watch French media) have sex with his mistress who is played by Nade Dieu who is twelve years younger and looks twenty years younger and is much better-looking (of course) than Godard.

Did I mention that while middle-aged businessman is having adulterous sex there is a Nazi invasion happening?

There are occasional exceptions to the ugly old French male actor rule- the previously-mentioned series Spiral has, in the first season at least, one handsome regular - one - played by Gregory Fitoussi but his relationship with the tough female cop that promises to get serious by the end of the first season (they hold hands in the last episode) has completely disappeared without explanation by the beginning of the second season, at which point I stopped watching Spiral, since without a worthwhile relationship to root for the show is basically one woman - or girl - after another being raped, tortured and murdered.

And there is no big "will they or won't they get together" of unexpressed sexual tension between the cop and Fitoussi's character - the first moments of the first episode the cop mentions that she finds Fitoussi's character attractive and by the second episode (or third but it's very early on) they end up in bed together and go on to have a very casual, no-strings, emotionally muted relationship that fizzles out by the second season. Ugh.

I also tried to watch the French TV series "Maison Close" about 19th century prostitutes but the male ugliness was extreme even by French standards - absolutely intolerable - and by the time I could see the young intelligent woman with a fiancee was about to get trapped into life as a prostitute I was done - couldn't even make it through the entire first episode.

And then there is the series "Call My Agent" which is all ugly older men having sex with attractive younger women - at the office - except for the rich handsome new owner of the agency who ends up having sex with and impregnating the agency's only lesbian. Is it any wonder that sexual harassment at French companies is completely insane?

I've heard good things about the show "Marseille" but not good enough for me to watch anything with fat ugly old Putin-loving alcoholic slob Gerard Depardieu in it.

Why do the French have a reputation for romance? Based on the French media I've seen, there is no romance, just a bunch of casual, unemotional hookups between pretty young women and (mostly) ugly old men. Who the hell wants to watch that, except ugly old men who don't really like women?

(And I detested the Oscar-winning film The Artist - I didn't realize until after I wrote this blog post that it was French - but I'm not surprised.)

Mes animations françaises

Well the quest to learn French continues - I've been at it seriously since Trump became president, since I rightly guessed he would be a disaster for the United States and there would come a time when I would have to escape to Canada, which is officially bi-lingual.

I still am only about level B2, just maybe on the edge of C1, which is "expert" level. I'm pretty confident in my ability to read and even to write in French. My French speaking ability is OK except when confronted with an actual francophone, and then I become embarrassed about speaking it. 

And as far as understanding when French people talk - I can understand French politicians and other professional speakers pretty well, but regular street French still sounds like a big mush.

But the quest continues and I've taken to creating silly videos as a learning aid.

The first one I created "Les Perroquets" was because I kept mixing up the word "perroquet" - parrot - and "perruque" - wig. And then the goofy story about wig-wearing animals came to me. Voilà.

This next one, "La Pecheuse" I made because I find it funny that "pêche" means to go fishing, as in "J'aime aller à la pêche" - "I like to go fishing," but the word pêche also means "peach." Yes I realize English has weird homonyms too, like "bat" the mammal and "bat" as in baseball bat, but I'm used to those. The French ones still seem funny to me.

Then I switched to writing "comptines" which are French nursery rhymes. The first one, "Pain Perdu" was written in a Covid haze - yes Covid finally got me at last, this past July. So I was thinking about the French term for French Toast, which is not, as some have guessed "le toast francais." 

The French call it "pain perdu" which is pain = bread and perdu = lost. Lost bread. So I came up with three verses on the subject of "pain perdu." 

It's trickier to rhyme in French than you might think, because although a LOT of French words rhyme with each other - in practice, French almost always throws out the last consonant of any given word, which means most of the words end with a vowel sound. 

 On the other hand, the word you want to use may change depending on whether the subject is male or female, for example. 

The main character in these three Pain Perdu verses is a French woman, but in the second verse I wrote "Une jour il va me rendre fou." which means "one day it's going to drive me crazy" (literally "one day he is going to me render crazy.") 

Not only did I get the gender of the word "jour" - day - wrong - it should be UN jour (but the similar word "journee" IS feminine - don't get me started) but since the person speaking is female, it should be "il va me rendre folle" A crazy man is fou. A crazy woman is folle.  But "folle" rhymes with "goal," which does not rhyme with perdu. Oy.

Since my voice was a croaking mess at the time I was making the animation (I was referred to as "sir" by the receptionist when I called to cancel my dentist appointment) I decided to use AI for the voice. And since I hate my voice even when it is not impacted by Covid, I like the results much better. 

Pain Perdue is the first to not feature le chat qui porte une perruque, but the second one to feature outer space. 

The cat in the wig is back in the most recent video, "Les Nouvelles Comptines Pour Les Nuls" (New Nursery Rhymes for Dummies.) The first rhyme is about a tea kettle, only because the word for tea kettle, "bouilloire" is hard for me to say. Like many French words it has too many vowels in a row. Although at least it has consonants. There are two French words I can think of off the top of my head - oie (goose) pronounced "wa" and eau (water) pronounced "oh" that have NO CONSONANTS. 

 And I also confuse bouilloire with two other words -  "brouillard" - fog and "brouiller" - blur.

The second rhyme is because I think it's funny that the French word for kite is "flying deer" - cerf volant.

The third rhyme is because I think it's funny that the French word for "bat" in the mammal sense is "chauve-souris" which literally means "bald mouse." I mean, really? You see a flying mammal and the thing you notice is the condition of its head hair? And I don't think non-flying mice exactly have long flowing locks either.

Also the word for "to smile" in French is "sourir" - which, when you conjugate it for first or second person singular (well present tense, they have a dozen other tenses, don't get me started), is spelt "souris" exactly like the word for mouse. "Une souris qui sourit" means "A mouse who smiles" but even though the word "sourit" in this case is conjugated for third person singular, it sounds the same - so it sounds like "Oon sue-ree key sue-ree." And yes, I spelled it wrong (souri) in my animation. And yes that is a stylized representation of the Moulin Rouge.

Don't even get me started about the confusion between voler meaning to steal and voler meaning to fly. I'm thinking of making another animation about that.

La souris qui sourit et la vache qui rit - ca va me rendre folle.

I created all the music using Garage Band, and hand drew the illustrations in the first two videos, mostly, but used canned images for the second two. And the AI voices were created in murf.ai. I put it altogether in Adobe Premiere Pro, which I am finally getting the hang of - I was pretty happy with the bat. 

Justin Trudeau: French vs. English

Justin Trudeau has some interesting things to say about the differences between French and English, which I discovered in his autobiography "Common Ground." This is a subject of especial interest to me right now since I am attempting to learn French.

On page 67 he writes:

During my years at (his Montreal school) Brebeuf I began to think about language in a different manner. To sovereigntists (in favor of the Quebec province separating from the rest of Canada which they almost did in 1995) language was a major political issue as much as a medium of communication. You were either an anglophone or a francophone, and each label aligned you with different cultural values and perhaps different goals for Quebec. Until then I hadn't thought of myself as either a francophone or an anglophone; in my bilingual milieu in Ottawa, it simply hadn't seemed necessary to define myself one way or the other. 

At Brebeauf and Quebec generally, the climate made me mindful of the language I chose to speak, depending on whom I was speaking to and what the subject might be. With this new awareness I began to monitor the words that popped up in my thoughts and my dreams, at times second-guessing myself as I spoke. Were the words French? Should they be English? Decisions I had once made without thinking became deliberately conscious.

On the next page he writes...

I have always loved both languages, but I came to realize how very different they are, not just in the way they permit a person to express thoughts but also in the way they guide the creation of those thoughts. For example, French grammar requires you to know how your sentence is going to end before you start to speak or write, which imposes a certain rigor on your expression. If your sentence begins this way, it must end that way. This is why so many French intellectuals seem to be channelling their inner Proust even when they are speaking casually to a mass audience on television. 

In English, I always felt that the grammar allows you to get to almost any conclusion, regardless of how you start your sentence. Halfway through your sentence, you can change the direction of your thought without breaking too many rules. There can be a certain sloppiness in English that is almost non-existent in proper French, where the complexity of the concordance between words and within clauses requires sustained attention. Perhaps this explains why my father, who was never one to mince words on such matters, told me that he found me less persuasive in English compared to in French. Many years later I thought about his comment when I took part in a debate that the McGill Debating Union conducted in French. Afterwards my teammates told me I was a more formidable debater in French than in English, which, coming from anglophones, I took as a backhanded compliment. 

Like many bilingual people, I sometimes flip an internal switch from one language to the other in a seemingly arbitrary way. For example, I do math only in French, because all my life, that was the language of my math classes. When I was teaching French out west, and confronted the challenges associated with getting Vancouver teenagers interested in studying a language that seems so far from their daily lives, I used to point out the more romantic aspects of the French language. When telling someone that you miss them, you say "Tu me marquees." So you is the subject of the sentence - as opposed to the English equivalent, "I miss you," in which it's all about me. It may seem a subtle difference, but hormonally charged teenagers sure got it.

Très intéressant.

Here he is debating in French. I'm able to pick up only about 20% of what is being said here.

My other French teacher Justin Trudeau

I believe Trudeau is cursing in French Canadian here.

Yes I enjoy looking at him, of course but another good thing about watching videos of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is that he often speaks in French and sometimes he'll say a phrase in French and then repeat it in English, or vice-versa which is very handy.

I really love Justin Trudeau and it isn't just for his manly hotness combined with his proud feminism - although what the hell is not to like there???

No it's also because he is always trying to do the right thing. He's super-conscious and for the most part carries it off with a fair amount of grace and not too much self-consciousness. And he almost doesn't have to -  he's pretty much Canadian royalty, as the son of former Canadian PM Pierre Trudeau. The fact that he tries so hard to do the right thing makes him so admirable.

Another nice thing is that he's only been PM for a year, and so there are lots of videos from earlier in his political career and even before he went into politics, when he has a Justin from the Hood vibe. Also his hair tended to be longer in the old days and mon dieu, je l'adore!

And in this video I found, shot 10 years ago, see screen cap above - bonus! - he appears to be uttering a French Canadian curse. One of the hysterical things about Quebecois French is that they have an entire system of curse words that are based not on your standard shit-fuck-bitch trilogy beloved of most languages, but instead on ecclesiastic paraphernalia! Hence the "box of baptisms" above. I should mention that I couldn't understand him saying that in French, I only caught it because I had the English captions going - and luckily I had already read about the unique approach to swearing of the French Canadians previously and didn't just assume the caption translator was wonky. I mean WTF is a box of baptisms?

As this article from the Washington Post in 2006 says:

"Oh, tabernacle!" The man swore in French as a car splashed through a puddle, sending water onto his pants. He could never be quoted in the papers here (Montreal). It is too profane. 

So are other angry oaths that sound innocuous in English: chalice, host, baptism. In French-speaking Quebec, swearing sounds like an inventory being taken at a church.
English-speaking Canadians use profanities that would be well understood in the United States, many of them scatological or sexual terms. But the Quebecois prefer to turn to religion when they are mad. They adopt commonplace Catholic terms -- and often creative permutations of them -- for swearing. 

In doing so, their oaths speak volumes about the history of this French province. 

"When you get mad, you look for words that attack what represses you," said Louise Lamarre, a Montreal cinematographer who must tread lightly around the language, depending on whether her films are in French or English. "In America, you are so Puritan that the swearing is mostly about sex. Here, since we were repressed so long by the church, people use religious terms." 

And the words that are shocking in English -- including the slang for intercourse -- are so mild in Quebecois French they appear routinely in the media. But not church terms.
"You swear about things that are taboo," said André Lapierre, a professor of linguistics at the University of Ottawa. In the United States, "it is not appropriate to talk about sex or scatological subjects, so that is what you use in your curse words. The f-word is a perfect example. 

"In Canadian French, you have none of the sexual aspects. So what do you replace it with? You replace it with religion. If you are going to use a taboo word, it would be anything related to the cult, to Christ, the Communion wafer, Jesus Christ, vestments, and elements of the altar like tabernacle. There's quite a few of them."

Le français est incroyable

Translation:
"Those French are crazy."

This has been driving me crazy, the French over-use of the sound "sawn."

I made the letter "n" in "sawn" smaller to represent the nasal "n" sound that is so often heard in French. It's like "dawn" but instead of using the tip of your tongue against the top-front of your upper palate to pronounce the letter "n" you pronounce it behind your nasal passages.

This is an actual French sentence:

Cent sens sans sent sang.

According to Google Translate it means: "One hundred senses without the smell of blood." 

That is technically a meaningful sentence. Granted it's unlikely to be used, and when I flipped it back and forth between English and French translation it turned into "Une centaine de sens sans l'odeur du sang" which means "A hundred senses without the smell of blood." Which is damn close to the original sentence meaning in English.

In print "Cent sens sans sent sang" looks like five distinct, if somewhat similar words. But you can easily see they are different words. Visually. 

 Now this is why French, as spoken, is so hard for non-native speakers to understand. 

Because according to Google Translate at least, "Cent sens sans sent sang" sounds like this:

"sawn sawn sawn sawn sawn"

That's right, those five distinct words are pronounced exactly the same way.

It's like the stereotypical French laugh "hohn hohn hohn" (see the French chef in The Little Mermaid for an example) but with an "s" in front of each "hohn."

I mean, sure, English has plenty of homophones, but I can't think of any you can use to make a five-word sentence.

And it's made worse by the fact that the French don't like to emphasize words when speaking sentences - they don't even like to emphasize syllables in a word, they try to make them all the same. Which is why French sounds like rat-a-tat-tat-tat.

Here is an article about French homophones which rightfully complains about this particular one.  And there are quite a few others.

And don't even get me started on "le souris qui sourit" which means "the smiling mouse."

The main problem, in my opinion is the French often don't pronounce the last letter of their words. In English we can tell the difference between sis and sit because we pronounce the last freaking letter. But in French, souris and sourit both sound like soo-ree. And BTW - it's not soo-ree where you grit your teeth together to pronounce the "r" sounds. Instead you have to make this gargling sound in the back of your throat for the letter "r." The letter "r" is probably the worst for English speakers - it gives me a sore throat after speaking French for a few minutes.

Ça me rend si fou!

Solange talking at you

Now that I'm serious about learning French I'm reviewing the public television series French in Action. You don't even have to scrounge around on Youtube for episodes anymore, it's available for free via the Annenberg Learner web site (their CPB project was the original producer of the TV show version of FIA.)

I find I am understanding it much better this time around, possibly because it's now available as online videos instead of broadcast TV - if you miss something you can easily go back. And of course you can watch it whenever it's convenient, not when it is scheduled. I first saw this show when I was living in Pennsauken NJ and working at a print shop - I would come home for lunch and watch this show while eating. I had just enough time. Now of course I can watch it while I'm at work.

I also find that it's helping to increase my comprehension by continuing to watch Youtube stars of the francophone world. I've already mentioned PL Cloutier and his best friend Theo Gordy - and by the way PL is definitely gay, here he is with his boyfriend Thierry Doucet.

I also discovered Solange Te Parle (Solange talks to you) recently. She has recorded what seems like an infinite number of Youtube videos of her sort of rambling on about one thing or another.
She's unknown in the Anglophone worlds but she's pretty much a celebrity in the Francophone one. Here she is on TV. She has a Wikipedia entry - but only in the French Wikipedia and under her real name Ina Mihalache.

The entry says in part (thanks to Google Translate):

... Around the age of ten, she decides to lose her Quebecois accent to adopt the accent "to the French", it means the radio or on chains television French as TV5 . She explained that it was for her an "aesthetic choice", fueling a controversy in the province home

I think this means that she switched from her native French Canadian accent to a Frenchy-French accent to be better accepted by media in France. Google Translate isn't perfect.

But what is really great for me, pour apprendre le francaise, is that, not only do some of her videos directly address issues of language - the video in this post is the first of hers I've watched, in which she compares a French Canadian movie to a  France-French movie and counts and discusses the number of English words each uses - but even better, her videos have both English and French subtitles. I find it easier to understand spoken French when I can read along with the French subtitles, which I try to do, but it's great to be able to double-check that my comprehension was correct by re-watching in English.

It's a brand new world of language skill tools these days. What an improvement over my workweek lunchtime French in Action sessions.

Did Brigitte Macron and her first husband appear in an episode of "French in Action" - mystere et boule de gomme!

"Brigitte" says "we save it" ("On l'economize")

I am 99% sure that this brief clip from the 1980s educational TV series "French in Action" shows Brigitte Macron, current first lady of France.

The clip is part of a 20-second segment, originally, I think, an advertisement for a French bank called Caisse d'Epargne ("savings bank").

Here is the episode of French in Action in which the segment appears, beginning at 12:00.

The segment features a variety of French people being asked what they would do if they suddenly had a lot of money - they all say "put it in the bank" as far as I can tell. My French comprehension is still only about 70%.

A teacher in the 1990s

The woman in the clip not only looks a lot like Brigitte Macron, she's about the right age (late 20s/early 30s) and there are photos of her from her younger days where she wears the same exact hair style, and she has some orthodontic issues, fixed since then, which can be seen in photos from her teacher days.

The key to the mystery is the guy in the video next to her. It is impossible to find a photo of Brigitte's first husband, André-Louis Auzière online - and not even all the French language media has apparently been able to find one since even in articles about Auzière, they never run a photo. If it turns out he looks like the guy in this video clip then the mystery will be solved.

If nobody else has noticed this apparition of Brigitte Macron in French in Action except me it's probably because a. she wasn't famous until a couple of years ago and b. I have watched the entire French in Action series all the way through about ten times in the past year and even I didn't notice this until today.

Oddly, I had wondered if Emmanuel Macron would ever show up in the series - he would have been around ten years old - like in the background for one of the puppet shows they keep showing in the series. I hadn't considered Brigitte might show up.

French in Action - oh lah lah!

Also oddly, this clip is from a  commercial for a bank and André-Louis Auzière had a career as a banker. Maybe that's how they ended up in this video.

Also oddly, in this same episode of French in Action there is a scene of "Aunt Georgette" reminiscing about "the one that got away" - a guy named George who - spoiler alert! - she reunites with by the end of the French in Action series.

And he is much younger than her.

VIVE LA REPUBLIC! VIVE LA FRANCE!

Here is the clip of "Brigitte" from the French in Action episode.

Really, French people?

This guy hurts my eyes.

I'm certainly not going to claim we've banished sexism in the US, but it's my impression that the French are somewhat behind us, in general, when it comes to gender equality.

There would never have been a controversy about an aesthetic gap between actors there, as there was here about the TV series Love because almost all the male actors in French movies and TV are ugly. Not surprising since Gerard Depardieu, who has been an ugly blob for at least the past 30 years is considered sexy there.

These posters for French romantic comedies demonstrate the extreme lack of attractiveness of French movie actors. My French teacher, who is from France, claims to find Gad Elmaleh (top image) attractive - this is probably the result of being fed ugly men as the romantic ideal her entire life.

This guy is handsome by French film
standards - of course he's paired with a hotter
woman who is ten years younger.

The pairing of ugly men with attractive women is the surest sign that the French film industry is dominated by men even more than Hollywood is, and French society even more accepting of male dominance than American society.

But really, this concept for "Moshi" is over the top even for the French. According to the web site for Albertine, where I first heard of Moshi:

MOSHI is a witty mustache which sticks on children’s face to teach them how to philosophize and express their ideas in artistic ways.
Every MOSHI workshop is unique but are based on 2 pillars : philosophy and arts. Indeed, philosophy is a tool to develop children’s creativity.

So to learn how to philosophize and express your ideas in an artistic way you have to symbolically become a man.

Ugly and he looks about 60

Although two of the most important leaders of the French-speaking world are feminists (Macron and Trudeau) the French still have a ways to go.

They actually did have a beautiful hot actor once in French films, Vincent Perez, but he's old now. 

Arretez! C'est le French Language Police!

She says: "we are criticized for using too many anglicisms in our newspaper."

His response: OK (anglicism) Partons en debriefing (anglicism) pour faire la

check-list (anglicism) des items a updater (anglicism) dan les news (anglicism). 

("Let's have a meeting to make a checklist of words we should update.")

The French are sick of creeping anglicisms and have an entire organization devoted to dealing with this scourge: The Academie Francais. Here is the section of its web site devoted to Neologisms and Anglicisms on the AF web site. 

You can see why it's such an issue for the French - right across the English Channel (called la Manche by the French) is England and a thousand years of cultural exchange. 

And as if that wasn't bad enough there is the cultural dominance of the USA all over the world, and that means a double-whammy of English for the French.

The English language has no equivalent to L'Academie Francais in part probably because of the de facto dominance of English, and also because the English language has no problem with grabbing words from other languages. 

And then there's the fact that 29% of all English words already come from French and another 29% comes from Latin - and a lot of French comes from Latin. Paul at Langfocus thinks that English is a Germanic-Romance Language hybrid even though English is technically classified as a Germanic language.

The British have something to say about the French Language police:

Ask a French person to get back to you and they are unlikely to do so ASAP. The abbreviation is the latest term to fall foul of the Gallic word police, the Académie Française, which says it is 21st-century rubbish.
The Immortals, as academy members are known, have published a damning condemnation of ASAP in their ongoing campaign to protect what is known as "the language of Molière".
"This abbreviation of as soon as possible, which is far from transparent, seems to accumulate most of the defects of a language that hides its contempt and threatening character under the guise of modern junk," the Académie writes.
"The use of developed French forms would be more relevant and would not feature this unpleasant and restraining nature. It is a safe bet that the urgency of a request would be indicated in a more refined manner, and the answer would not be any slower."
It goes on to suggest dès que possible as the appropriate response.

 But although the English language is a thieving magpie, we certainly have our English-language purists in the US and it might be even worse in Canada in part because French is an official language there.

I feel like the French should relax - no matter how many English words they borrow from us - like we borrowed from them - French will never sound like English - it will always have that certain je ne sais quoi.

The French Scandal Continues!

Justin Trudeau in 1994. Just because...

The Canadians troll the rest of the world by flaunting their absurdly petty problems.

What happened: Justin Trudeau, during a townhall event in Quebec, a famously French-speaking province, was asked a question in English, by a woman bitching that it's difficult to get government-funded mental healthcare in English, there in Quebec.

Trudeau, who is fiercely pro-bilingual, answered the woman in French. This was a week ago, but the Canadian pundits cannot let it go.

Meanwhile my French language skills are increasing, slowly but steadily. I'm getting a good handle on French numbers, thanks to practicing with my English-French iPhone app every day. But I still cannot imagine why the French have such a crazy numbering system - they count from one to sixty-nine in the English language style. OK, their teens are a little off - they say onze (11), douze (12), treize (13), quatorze (14) quinze (15) and seize (16) but then they give up on unique words for seventeen through nineteen and say ten-seven, ten-eight and ten-nine (dix-sept, dix-huit, dix-neuf).

But then they switch it up from 70 - 100: They say sixty-eight, sixty-nine (soixante-huit, soixante-neuf) so far, so good, but then, instead of having a distinct word for "seventy" they go sixty-ten, sixty-eleven, sixty-twelve  (soixante-dix, soixante et onze, soixante-douze) et. cetera. THEN instead of having a distinct word for eighty, they call it four twenty (quatre vingt) - presumably because 4 x 20 = 80. No I am not kidding. And then they use the same system as with seventy when they get to ninety. So if you want to say 99 you say quatre vingt dix-neuf - four twenty ten-nine. It's like you have to do math problems just to count.

The French do take their language very seriously - I just discovered they have the Académie Francais to police the purity of the French language:

The Académie, a council of 40 writers and artists, is entrusted with protecting French from “Anglo-Saxon” attacks and writing an official dictionary, of which the latest unfinished version began in 1992.

One of its tasks is to come up with French equivalents to unwanted English words that slip into French – for example turning “email” into “courriel”.

There is a Quebec version too.

It's quite a contrast to English, which borrows everything it can from every other language - we ain't proud.

French Canadian Rendez-vous

A Canadian dude analyzes the Trudeau-Brazeau boxing match.

To mark the fifth anniversary of Trudeau’s third-round win by TKO, Postmedia enlisted the expertise of Armand Teodorescu, the head coach of Atlas Boxing Club in north Toronto. Teodorescu’s father, Adrian, coached Canadian boxers Lennox Lewis and Egerton Marcus to Olympic medals in 1988. More recently, Atlas veterans Mandy Bujold and Arthur Biyarslanov each won gold at the 2015 Pan American Games.
Teodorescu had never watched the Trudeau-Brazeau fight before last week, but he knows a favourite when he sees one. And in his eyes, the smart money would have been on Trudeau.
“Physically speaking, the advantages are more on Justin’s side,” he said. “Sometimes, you look at two fighters and you see one guy thick and built, and you have the common thought that he should win. (But) it just depends on skill.”

Sun News, the now-defunct network, Canada's answer to Fox News was the foremost provider of footage and commentary for the boxing match, but there is also a French version.

And speaking of French Canadian things I've been watching French-Canadian movies which are so far much more entertaining than French France movies. First is this funny and atmospheric movie about a love triangle Les Amores Imaginares, called Heartbeats in English. They use the song Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down) first recorded in the 1960s to a stylish slo-mo effect. The dialog is all in French.

The first fully-staged production of a play of mine, NEW RULES was on the subject of a straight woman and a gay man competing for a bisexual man. Way back in the 20th Century. Although the object of desire in this movie is... well you'll have to see it.

The TV series Sensitive Skin uses a version of "I Put a Spell on You" by Screamin' Jay Hawkins under its slow-mo sequences. It is set in Toronto and in English, but a major plot line in Season 1 (much much better than Season 2) is the protagonist Davina (played by Kim Catrall who dated Justin Trudeau's father - small Canadian world!) getting involved with a French Canadian guy.

Last but not least is Les Grande Chaleurs which I just saw last night. The movie isn't especially great although I like the May/December plot line. The plot was fairly predictable though - in spite of the fact that it's in French and I could only get about 40% without the help of Google Translate even with French subtitles. But I am obsessed with its soundtrack which includes both a beautiful song which I cannot find the title for - I've narrowed it down to either Donne Donne or Ch'T'Attends  and a completely addictive song called Bon Swa written by the mysterious DAZMO of whom I can find no information except credits at IMDB, although it might have something to do with this web site. There may also be a Facebook Page.

I cannot find lyrics online for this song, and my translation apps won't touch it because it's a song and they can't understand sung French. All I can make out is:

Bon swa, doo doo bijoux (something) belle bebe - (something) bijoux (something something something something) and then some French talking.

Bijoux, if that's what he's singing, means jewel. Once I start taking my Frenchy-French classes on Monday - and on Wednesday since my Monday-only class was cancelled due to low enrollment so I had to take the more expensive and twice as long course on two nights - I will get somebody to tell me what is being sung here.

Bienvenue à Equestria ~ My Little Pony in French and English

I am a fan of "My Little Pony" which makes me, what, a "brony?" Or maybe, at my age, a crony?

I was aware, back in 2012, of the unusual My Little Pony fandom of young men between the ages of 15 - 30. I know I was aware because I can see I wrote a blog post about it back then. 

The brony fandom is considered so fascinating that two separate movies were made about them: Bronies: The Extremely Unexpected Adult Fans of My Little Pony and A Brony Tale. I've watched both of them.

However, I was so clueless in 2012 that I included in my blog post an image of a "My Little Pony" toy from an earlier generation of the My Little Pony franchise, instead of one from the generation that really captured the brony imagination "My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic."

The Friendship is Magic (FIM) animation series includes little knowing asides, which is one of the reasons it is enjoyed by adults. In one episode, called "Too Many Pinkie Pies" there is a reference back to the look of an earlier generation My Little Pony.

A FIM generation pony looks like this:

Animated...

Grace à la langue française

So how did I become a Pony crony? It's because of the French. When the convicted felon Donald Trump was elected POTUS in 2016 I began to learn French with the idea that if I had to ask for political asylum in Montreal (the closest big Canadian city to New York) I would be ready by becoming bi-lingual. And as Trump is threatening to be POTUS again, I still have that escape strategy in mind.

In addition to taking classes at FIAF in 2017 I began to watch cartoons on YouTube that had dubbed French versions. Cartoons because they are mostly aimed at children which means the dialog was slower, clearer and with a smaller vocabulary than anything aimed at adults.

I started with random videos like this one, La chanson des squelettes. Then I graduated to the French version of the British animated series Peppa Pig which is aimed at four-year-olds. When my French got a little better, and I had seen every French episode available of Peppa Pig, I moved on to another British series "Ben and Holly's Little Kingdom" called in French Le Petit Royaume de Ben et Holly, which is for eight-year-olds.

Like all good TV shows for kids since Sesame Street, these shows have humor that parents can appreciate, especially Ben and Holly. Peppa and Ben and Holly were created by the same team.

So finally I had seen all the French version Ben and Holly episodes and was looking around for something else when I hit on My Little Pony: La magie de l'amitié en français. 

At first I watched the episodes strictly for the French, but my French was not good enough to understand all the. dialogue, and I sometimes struggled to understand the plots, so I would watch the English language version of the episode I was struggling with. And then I became interested in the show. There were two episodes in particular that I thought raised the MLP: FIM series to a level above Peppa Pig and Ben and Holly. I will write about them soon.

On y va à French 203

I have finished my third French language course and am registered for French 203. At the rate I am going I will have completed the last of the Expert level French courses in 2019.

In addition to classes at FIAF here are some of my resources for learning French:

• Google Translate online
• And on my iPhone - the advantage to the iPhone is that it can understand when I speak - if I pronounce correctly - this helps my pronunciation 
• Siri - on my iPhone, set to speak in French
• Conjugumos - with my favorite, French verbs Battleship
• Académie Francaise - these are the people who defend against creeping anglicisms and they have many language questions 
• French-Canadian radio
• franceinfo
• Youtube - Justin Trudeau in French, French politics, Damon & Jo, so much more
• French Canadian movies - like Les Grandes Chaleurs 

Learning French with Theo and Pierre

I'm not definitely moving to Montreal, but it has crossed my mind. If it happens it won't be for at least a year while I learn French. I've been studying French off and on since high school but have decided to get serious about it.

One of the great things about this Internet age is access to so much free educational options, and language studies is definitely included. I've been looking around YouTube to learn French, both from official "learn to speak French" sites as well as more casual French lessons. One of my favorites in the casual category are videos by these two guys, Theo Gordy and Pierre-Luc Cloudier. Theo is from France and PL as he prefers to be called, is from Montreal.

They make videos separately and together. The ones I like best so far are the ones where they make each other guess the meaning of French and Quebecois slang expressions.

They both appear to be Youtube celebrities, as I discovered by going to PL's web site which lists a schedule of appearances. But what, I wondered, did PL do at these appearances? As far as I could tell he just liked to make Youtube videos with his bon ami Theo. Well turns out, thanks to Google Translate that the appearances are for a bunch of parties:

PL Cloutier does not like to grow old!
To make his birthday better this year, he goes on tour to celebrate with his subscribers ... Many times rather than one!
In each city, PL will host two different YouTubers to party, in a "basement party" atmosphere where the public will be involved!
With hat and trumpet, Happy Birthday to me is the first tour of shows of a YouTuber in Quebec. Find the child in you, and be a party!

So for 25 bucks you can join PL in a basement party. Tres moderne. Also I assume, pretty gay. I guessed that these guys were gay based on the first videos I watched, and then I saw PL's Twitter feed where he mentions he likes flamingos and Zac Efron.

You can tell Cloutier is the Canadian one (besides the fact that he is wearing the Québécois fleur de lis on his t-shirt) because he is much more likely to break into English than Theo - in minute 7:50 in the video above he exclaims: "awww back at you Theo."

The answers to the slang expressions are:

The Quebecois expression "Etre le boss des becosses" means "boss of the outhouses" which means a petty dictator. (Theo can't guess it.)

The French expression "avoir le cul borde de nouilles" means "to have your ass surrounded by noodles" which means to be lucky. (PL guesses it.)

The Quebecois expression "Grimper dan les rideaux " means "climbing the curtains" which is similar to "climbing the walls" in English except more positive, I think. (Theo guessed it.)

The French expression "Etre au taquet" means to "be at the cleat" or rather be at the ultimate limit. (PL can't guess.)

The Quebecois expression "Peter de la broue" means to fart beer, which means to brag. (Theo guessed it.)

The French expression "Avoir la dalle" means "to be hungry" (PL can't guess.)

Siri (qui n'aiment pas des sacres) & SIRI

French Canadian Siri found this expression "indecent."

I decided that if my goal is to at least visit Montreal, if not move there for 4 - 8 years, I should switch Siri's language from Frenchy-French to French Canadian.

I tested to make sure the transition was complete et voila - Siri was highly offended when I said "boîte de baptemes" (box of baptisms) to her, and replied:

je vous prie de faire preuve d'un peu plus de décence

Which means: "I ask you to show a little more decency."

Formidable! French Canadian Siri knows the "sacres."

I mentioned a couple of months ago that Justin Trudeau (in 2006) used that expression, "box of baptisms."

I asked Siri what a "sacres" was and she said "If your mother could hear you!"

Then I said "osti batarde" (host bastard) and she "je vais debrancher votre micro... je prefere etre sourde que d'entendre ça!"

Which means "I will unplug your microphone... I prefer to be deaf to listening to this."


Ça ma fait rire!

Saying "osti du tabernak du chalice" got the response "je vais faire comme si je n'avais rien entendu" which means "I will act as if I had not heard anything."

And "chateau de marde" (castle of shit) got this response: "Pourquoi recourir a ce genre de vocabulaire... Le français est une langue tellement riche!" which means "why use that kind of vocabulary? French is such a rich language!"

And speaking of French Canadian Siri, it appears that there is a play being produced in Montreal at Théâtre d’Aujourd’hui called SIRI. The web site says (in French of course I translated it via Google Translate)

Talk to her in a natural voice. Siri understands not only what you say, but also what you want to say, and responds to you. Talk to her like a real person. "Siri is the personal assistant created by Apple and integrated into each of the iPhone. What is the power relationship with this technology? What are the real differences between modern man and machine? Is it enough to have a body to be human? 

In a staging by Maxime Carbonneau, actress Laurence Dauphinais enters into dialogue with Siri. For if the application is at our service and knows all of us, we do not learn anything from it. Little by little, by a methodical question-and-answer session, the actress pushes the limits of the machine so that it betrays itself, until their two identities merge and reveal the mystery that connects them.

In the video snippet on the web page, their Siri uses a woman's voice so I assume that is also the case in the show, but the French translation originally said "Talk to him in a natural voice... Talk to him like a real person."

And the reason for that is that in French, "talk to him in a natural voice" is "Parlez-lui d’une voix naturelle."

"Parlez-lui "is "talk to  with the pronoun "lui" - but lui could be male or female so the translator assumed male. I made the adjustment manually. But I find it odd that the French make such a big freaking deal about genderizing everything - like putting an extra e on the end of things like your country designation (if you're a guy you're an Americain for example but if you're a woman you're an Americaine) and they genderize things randomly - for instance if you are a woman you are la femme, but if you are a female teacher you are le professeur. Professor is male. And your body parts have different genders - your arm is masculine (le bras) but your leg is feminine (la jambe). OMD!

So with all that genderizing you'd think they'd do it in a situation where it would really come in handy. But no.

Oh well, I will try to catch a show when I visit Montreal, probably in the summer.

LE CHAT NOIR ~ en francais

Well I finally have a French translation of my play LE CHAT NOIR that I like and I got a bunch of francophone actors to perform it on Zoom this past week. What an experience. It was so weird but fun to hear the whole thing in French. 

And it was so appropriate since, as I just found out, this week is la semaine de la langue français et de la francophonie. That is to say, the French government is, from March 15 - 23, celebrating the French language and French-speakers, which includes those outside of France.

By chance, the French speakers I assembled for the Zoom reading included a Ukrainian, a Franco-Turk, two French people from the south of France, a Quebecois and me, because I decided to play the role of Madeline Valadon, the mother of Suzanne Valadon. Only because she does not have a lot of lines and I practiced her lines night and day for a month. 

And I still couldn't quite get some words right. I practiced with Microsoft Word, which has a dictation feature - you speak and Word transcribes what you say onto a document. And you can do it in lots of different languages, including French.

So I practiced saying the words with Microsoft Word and watched how it was transcribed. I got pretty good after a while but there were some words that were incredibly difficult to pass off to Word as if a French-speaker was talking. Words like "scélérat" (scoundrel), "pour louer" - which means "to rent for" but Word kept thinking I was saying "polluer" which means "to pollute." And "meule" which means "millstone" and it's sort of pronounced "mew-lah" but Word though I was saying, at various times, "mur" (wall), "mûle" (mule), "molle" (soft) and "nul" (zero, but also an insult along the lines of "loser.")

I did finally conquer "la fée vert" which means "the green fairy" - it's what people sometimes call absinthe, but I had to practice a million times before Word understood I was saying "fee" for fairy, instead of feuille (leaf) or fait (fact) or veille (the day before) Oh lah lah!

But worst of all is "love" - or "l'amour." Usually when I said the word it came out "la mort" which means death. And they are fairly distinct- "la mort" is like lah mehr, while l'amour is like lah-moor. I don't know why it took so long to get it right. And I have to get it right! French is the language of l'amour, not the language of la mort!

 

Those crazy French numbers

Illustration from the NYTimes:
The Benefits of Failing at French

I am now an advanced beginner in French (201) - I stepped up from the upper level of beginner (103). WHOOHOO!

While I like French I really do have an impulse to reform it. French could do very well without genders for inanimate objects. I understand from Mark Twain this is true of German too.

There is absolutely no purpose to genderizing things which do not have actual sexual functions. And especially because there is no logical sense to the assigned genders. For example the word for milk is "lait" which is masculine. Now milk invariably comes out of females. So why would milk be masculine? Semen (sperme) at least is masculine.

But even worse, while milk is masculine, the products of milk can be masculine or feminine. Cheese (fromage) and yogurt (yaourt) are masculine,  while cream (creme) and ice cream (glace) are feminine. So you're probably thinking aha, the higher fat incarnations of milk are feminine. Except sorry, no, butter (beurre) is masculine.

And as if that isn't bad enough, your adjectives must have agreement with your nouns as to the gender. For example, here I am saying: "that is a good milk, that is a good cream."

• C'est un bon lait
• C'est une bonne crème

Notice that the words "that is" - c'est - is the same but every other word is different. You have to use un for milk because it is masculine, but une with an e because cream is feminine. And you have to stick an extra n and an e on the end of the word for "good" - bon - because cream is feminine. So you have two chances to screw up the gender in the sentence.

And the numbers! French has a crazy numbering system. It doesn't have a separate word for the numbers seventy (sixty-ten), eighty (four-twenty) or ninety (four-twenty-ten). I've mentioned it on this blog before.

English has plenty of its own oddities and irrationalities but I have to say, as much as I enjoy French I don't see why they don't just invent a word for seventy, eighty and ninety. It's not that hard and they are certainly welcome to borrow English words in the way that they also borrowed "weekend" and "jogging" and "email." And English speakers have no problem appropriating words from other languages, so I don't see why the French are so snippy about anglicisms.

I am actually better than the rest of my classmates (only four others besides myself for this 5-week course) at numbers because I was in the habit of practicing my numbers every day using my Google translate app on my iPhone. But I still can't get it to recognize when I say the French word for 100 which is "cent" in part because so many other common French words sound like that - sans (without), santé (health), saint (holy), son (his), sont (are), centre (center), son (sound), sent (smell), sen (feel) and Dieu sait combien des autres.

*sigh*

Malheureusement, my invitation must have been lost in the mail

Les beaux cheveux! Macron as a college student

It seems that one of the members of my beloved trilogy of feminist heads of state will be visiting the US on September 19 and he will be practically right across the park from me.

Emmanuel Macron of song and legend will be at the 92nd Street Y to get some love from French people living in the US, but it's by invitation only and my invitation must have been lost in the mail. Quel dommage!

According to "French Morning": 

Emmanuel Macron vient à New York pour participer à l’ouverture de l’Assemblée générale de l’ONU – sa première depuis son élection. Il doit prononcer le traditionnel discours du chef de l’Etat dans l’enceinte des Nations-Unies dans la journée de mardi. Le lendemain, à CUNY, il participera à l’inauguration d’un fonds pour soutenir le développement de programmes français-anglais dans les écoles publiques américaines. 

La rencontre avec la communauté française de New York est une tradition pour tout président en déplacement pour l’ouverture de l’Assemblée générale. En 2009, Nicolas Sarkozy avait organisé un pince-fesses au Manhattan Center avec champagne et petits fours. Plus de 3.000 personnes avaient fait le déplacement. En 2012, François Hollande s’était livré à un bain de foule au Roseland Ballroom en présence de plus de 1.000 personnes et en avait profité pour demander à une admiratrice corrézienne d'”embrasse(r) Paulette“, une connaissance commune (voir ci-dessous).

Which means:

Emmanuel Macron comes to New York to take part in the opening of the UN General Assembly - his first since his election. He must deliver the traditional speech of the Head of State at the United Nations compound on Tuesday. The next day, at CUNY, he will participate in the inauguration of a fund to support the development of French-English programs in American public schools.  

The meeting with the French community in New York is a tradition for any president on the move for the opening of the General Assembly. In 2009, Nicolas Sarkozy had organized a pair of buttocks at the Manhattan Center with champagne and petits fours. More than 3,000 people had made the trip. In 2012, Francois Hollande gave a crowd to the Roseland Ballroom in the presence of more than 1,000 people and took the opportunity to ask a Corrèze admirer of "embasse (r) Paulette", a common knowledge (see -Dessous).

OK I have no idea what "a pair of buttocks" is slang for. I assume it's slang. Dear god I hope it's slang!

If I really want to see a famous French guy next week I could get a ticket to see the dread Gerard Depardieu at my French language school FIAF.

I just mentioned Depardieu yesterday. Ugh. I'd rather see the President of the Republic speak than a fat ugly slob who is also a traitor - he isn't even French anymore:

...he announced he was renouncing his French citizenship and has now — apparently — been granted a Russian passport by order of Vladimir Putin himself.

In the last month, Depardieu has become the public face of France’s tax exiles, wealthy citizens who have moved to places like Brussels and Switzerland to flee the steep taxe rates — up to 75 percent — that President Francois Hollande is looking those with an income of more than more than €1 million.

Of course he did it because he's a rich bastard who doesn't want to pay taxes. Also he loves Putin because of course he would. And I'm sure Putin was thrilled when he trashed the US:

Gérard Depardieu has launched an anti-American broadside in his latest demonstration of affection for Russia, his adopted country of citizenship.
In comments made at a press conference recorded in Moscow, but broadcast by French radio station France Inter, Depardieu railed at the US as “a people who have constantly destroyed others”.

Yeah well fuck you, Jabba Le Hutt. And tell your pal to stop messing with our democracy.

French I have learned thanks to Justin Trudeau

Since Trudeau is a politician and talks about politics constantly, there are certain words and phrases he hits on repeatedly, and so I have learned them more quickly than other French words and phrases thanks to watching so many of his videos.

Including...

• Le class moyenne - the middle class
• Le chef - leader - the English word chef comes from "chef de cuisine"
• Pays - country
• D'abord - firstly 
• Je trouve - I find
• Tres content - very happy 
• Tout a fait - absolutely
• Besoins - needs
• Ecoute - listen
• Combat de box - boxing match
• Quarante et un - 41 (the age Trudeau was when he boxed Patrick Brazeau)
• Prochain - next
• Peut-Être - maybe
• Tellement - so much
• Tres tres - according to a French language learning video on Youtube, it is common for francophones to repeat a word for emphasis and Trudeau does this all the time, in French and English. It's much more noticeable, I assume, in English than in French

And then there is Trudeau's favorite phrase. He uses it so much that all you have to do is Google "not in spite of our differences but because of our differences" and the search results will be a whole bunch of speeches by Justin Trudeau.

And he's been using this phrase since at least 2011. He says it, in French, at minute 17:00 of this video shot in May 2011.

Pour moi, la réalité est que le Canada est un pays fort, non pas en dépit de la diversité, mais à cause de a diversité.

It's so hard to understand what French speakers are saying in part because everything is pronounced differently. Take the name Justin for example. In English it's pronounced "JUST-in" but in French they pronounce it "yoos-TAHn" with just the tiniest hint of an "n" sound there at the end. Mon dieu!

Do the French say OMD instead of OMG? I have found no evidence for this yet.

OMG Siri! Je ne désire PAS la prostitueé!

I discovered a free language app for my iPhone and it's great - it can hear what you say in English and translate it into French - or vice-versa. It's really helpful for me for learning how to speak French properly. You really have to roll and/or choke on your Rs like a mofo if you want to be understood. I have to make at least five tries when attempting to say, for example, the French word for fur ("fourrure") - you have to go all in on the back of the throat rrrrrr until it sounds like you have to hack up a massive fur ball ("boule de fourrure") To be honest, after practicing speaking French for ten minutes or so I end up with a sore throat.

Also you have to make the "eh" sound at the end of words, really clearly for the phone to get the word. For example, in order to be understood when you say 11 (I am practicing my French numbers) you can't just say "ounz" you have to go "ouunzzeh" or it thinks you're saying "on" which is translated to "we."

Although I can't get the app to understand me when I say the French word for 100 ("cent") - it hears me say sans, centre, sante, and trente. I've tried every possible way to pronounce it and I still can't get it to hear me right. The only way I can make it work is if I say 103, for example (cent-trois) and then for some reason it understands that I said "cent."

OMG Siri! WTF???

Siri can't translate what you say into English (not while I have her on the French Canadian setting) but she responds to you and she can even do math.

But OMG Siri is SUCH a hypocrite. As I reported yesterday, she freaked out when I used the French Canadian version of curse words,  "les sacres" like she's such a delicate flower. So when I told her the other night that I was going to sleep ("J'ai aller coucher") she thought I said I wanted to talk to an escort and she gave me the name of two escort services!!! 

Is "I'm going to sleep" the French Canadian phrase for "get me a whore"? Zut alors!