Shoes with Mustard and other French Phrases Accidentally Uttered

Ever since our first trip to Paris when Geoff ordered some shoes with mustard (chaussures avec moutard instead of saucisson avec moutard) from a street vendor, I knew that learning French was more than just being armed with the words. Unfortunately, you also need to pronounce them correctly.

One might think that a year of grammar school French, four years of high school French, three adult education classes in the U.S. and four months of classes in Paris would render me fluent in French. If my admission of all this education for dubious results is met with astonishment, then I quickly blame the American school system which teaches children languages much too late. This usually gets me points by not only being self-deprecating, but also by criticizing social structure which is one of the French's favorite pastimes.

One thing I have learned in all my classes is that proper pronunciation in French depends largely on the vowel sounds. For example, it's been a long-running joke in almost every French class I've taken that when students mean to be saying something about someone's beautiful long hair cheveux they actually wind up talking about her beautiful long horse chevaux.

Just recently, I had one of the English-speaking salesmen in Dehillerhin finally explain to me how to say their store name properly - de-eel-ur-ahn. Turns out, I've been pronouncing that wrong for eight years. And I know for a fact that Geoff and I have several times in cafés actually ordered 12 espressos douze espressos instead of 2 deux espressos. Fortunately, they didn't take us literally.

To practice pronunciation, Geoff often likes to read something in French and see if I can understand. Our weekend in Cognac, one of the pamphlets described the cognac being aged in fût de chêne which sounded to me like the words for crazy dog fou chien. In fact, it was an oak barrel.

The benefit of knowing French pronunciation is that sometimes that's all you need to know the word. Many people joke that if you don't know the French word, your best bet is to simply say the English word with the French pronunciation. Actually, you'd be amazed at how far this can get you. First of all, many French and English words are the same, but pronounced so differently to be practically unrecognizable. The "a" in communication resembles the "a" in hat and the "tion" changes to the softer French "sion". Independence becomes more of a nasal word that you would hear as ahndaypahndahnce but is actually spelled indépendance. Marketing, of course being an American invention, stays true to the form and only slight adapts to mahketing.

But in reality sometimes even pronunciation doesn't get you comprehension. You also need the right rhythm. I can't tell you how many times in the past six months, I have ordered something in a café, only to be met with a perplexed look. One time I asked for some jus d'aNAnas (pineapple juice) and the waiter furrowed his brows. I repeated with more of a question mark. "Jus d'aNAnas?" "Ah," he said, "Jus d'ananAS." Yeah, like I said.