Date:  Wed, 16 Mar 1994 14:54:13 CST

From:  Dennis Baron <debaron[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]UIUC.EDU>

Subject: la belle France



Funny how my request for information triggered an outpouring of good/

bad French stories, all of which point to the cultural power France

still holds in our own, poor, colonial estimation.



My own experience in France was mixed. I was last there on a Fulbright

in 78-79, in Poitiers. Michelin gives Poitiers 2 hours. I was there

for 10 months. Get it?



I've always read French well, never spoke it too well, and that was never

much of a problem. But I clearly resented French when I first got there.

In a fog of jet lag and culture shock for a month, aided by the doldrums

of a university strike that delayed the start of the school year for a

few weeks, I finally had a nightmare in which I was speaking perfect

French -- and couldn't understand a thing I was saying.



I had a little trouble with weights and measures. Intent on fixing

spinach salad for the three of us, my first experience at the

open air marche was a disaster. After a struggle to get a clerk's

attention I hastily ordered a kilo of spinach and got

enough greens to stuff a good-sized pillow. Not wanting to give up

the clerk's attention while I recalibrated, I downsized my mushroom

order and asked for `un quart de champignons,' unaware that while

spinach went by the kilo, mushrooms were sold by the pound.

My three ounces of mushrooms were a sorry sight next to all that

spinach. That night we ate out.



I never did understand the meteo, the weather report. I had converted

fahrenheit to centigrade often enough in physics class in high school,

but I spent the year never knowing the ambient temperature, and dressing

my daughter for school by sticking my head out the window.



Speaking of school, my daughter attended sixth grade in Poitiers (there

are no English schools there). There she got in trouble when she told

the teacher there were 7 continents (the French count only 5). She

took English as her foreign language, and got into trouble there because

her teacher, who had little English herself, insisted that the English

for numero de telephone was number phone. When Cordelia told her the

proper phrase was phone number, the teacher got mad. She told my

daughter that it might be phone number in the US, but in her class they

spoke British English, and in British English the expression was certainly

number phone.



Some things are not worth fighting your child's teacher for.



Bonne chance, mecs.



denis

--

debaron[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]uiuc.edu          (\          217-333-2392

                  \'\       fax: 217-333-4321

Dennis Baron            \'\     ____________

Department of English        / '|    ()___________)

University of Illinois       \ '/    \ ~~~~~~~~~ \

608 South Wright St.         \      \ ~~~~~~~~~ \

Urbana, IL 61801           ==).     \ __________\

                   (__)      ()___________)