Tuesday, July 21, 2009

C'est la vie

Okay - I had a really weird dream last night. It wasn't that I was in a strange place, or that it had strange people, or a strange theme. The weird part is, I was speaking French in my dream. Jerry said that when you dream in another language, it usually means you are becoming proficient in it, but I don't know any French - just ask the people in France that I tried to speak it to. They all immediately said - "I know English." (Inference - stop murdering my language!)

1 comment:

Wendy said...

I have been told... but have no way to confirm it without personal experience... that in France, if you just try to speak English you will get largely ignored. But that if you at least *try* to speak French, even if it's bad, the French people will feel much more friendly to you. Like they feel you have tried to respect their country & their language.

I know Americans who are like this, too. Not me. When someone can't speak English but I think they may be a Spanish speaker, I'm all, "ooh! Let me practice!" I must be really bad, too. Our yard crew giggles a lot and they hide smiles behind their hands when I try to talk to them. The only English they know is "ask the boss. ask the boss." It took me a while to figure out this was their polite way of deflecting questions they couldn't answer. Very clever, I thought.