Les mots, les mots, les mots

— Le Shakespeare

I’ve recently started mixing up the French words gentil (nice) and joli (beautiful). This has led to hilarity all around.

For some reason, gentil and joli sound the same to me when sloshing around in my brain. Not phonetically – even with my English-deadened ears, I can tell the difference between the sound wave for /ʒα:nti:l/ and that for /ʒOli/ – but rather semantically. They both have this bland, happy association, and I can’t keep straight the subtleties of the particular qualities each word refers to. Basically both have the same entry in my mental lexicon, something along the lines of “positive but emotionally vapid word”. As a result, I keep using the wrong one.

The first few times I described someone as joli, the oversight was ignored. The next couple it was chuckled at and corrected. Hopefully there won’t be a third group of switches, as I’ll probably end up being propositioned by the roving bands of relatively sketchy Frenchmen who are constantly and completely timidly trying to get every girl in the city to have coffee with them. (Note to concerned parents: don’t be concerned. Sketchy they may be, but agressive, insistent, or at all imposing they are not.)

While on the subject of French words, I found a book of French idioms and their English counterparts at a bookstore the other day. Here are a sample of the best ones:

Tous les trente-six du mois
(Every 36th day of the month) =
Once in a blue moon.

Vouloir le beurre et l’argent du beurre
(To want the butter and the money of the butter) =
To want to have your cake and eat it too

Avoir d’autres chats a fouetter
(To have other cats to whip) =
To have better things to do

And this book was completely inexplicable.

-Julenisse is a Norwegian elf who lives in barns and on ice floes. He feasts on the fish he catches. Every year in December, with Hannukah Harry, he visits children and their families. For 10 thousand generations, more than 400,000 years, Hannukah Harry has protected the earth from cold, heat, and the weather. Come back soon, Hannukah Harry!
-The weather has gone crazy!
-Dad, why don’t you tell the story of Hannukah Harry?
-That’s a great idea!
-Hello my friends – is there a little cake left?
….

Chandeleur – Le Jour des Crêpes

Yesterday was the coincidental coincidence of my birthday and a lab Chandeleur party. This meant everyone sang me happy birthday in French and I got to blow out candles on a crêpe cake! Both firsts.

Chandeleur (aka Candlemas, in case anyone knows what that is), is an apparently not-widely-celebrated Christian holiday, as no one at the celebration could actually tell me what it commemorates, other than that it was “something religious”. While most French are nominally Catholic, I’ve been told that most people aren’t particularly observant. Which would explain why we were having a party to celebrate a holiday no one attending could actually explain.

But truth in advertising, the real reason for this party was that Chandeleur is also, maybe more importantly, known as the Jour des crêpes. Of course there’s a French holiday dedicated to eating crêpes! If eating crêpes is the correct way to show one’s devotion and patriotism, who am I to refuse?

A couple of grad students made huge stacks of crêpes and everyone else brought in fixings – nutella, honey, maple syrup, jam, strawberries, bananas, apples, and sugar. When news spread that it was my birthday as well, someone dug up four candles (2 and 2, get it?), stuck them into the stack of crêpes, and lit them for me to blow out after a ringing rendition of “Joyeux Anniversaire”. It was pretty awesome. I got an Asterix comic book as a present – he’s a French comic book character that everyone grows up reading and my education unfortuntely sorely lacks. I’m super-excited to get cracking on it, and since the target market is French children, I think it’ll be about on my reading level.

In other news, while the east coast of the US is getting completely pummelled with snow, I was eating breakfast outside in my backyard. It was absolutely gorgeous this weekend – about 15°C/59°F. Clearly I chose the right year to move to the south of France…

A flea market on La Canebière this weekend, with Réformes church and a giant giraffe made out of paperback books.

The Mareille train station in the midst of a glorious Saturday, February 6.