Fabienne, A neighbor and health food fanatic, had invited Patrice and I, and some three dozens of her (mostly) French friends to a soiree. Thus, the evening’s language was French.
We have ben making progress in French. One flounders, then one day, you order your morning coffee without pause, then a couple years later, the gendarmes stop you for a minor traffic check, and you trade war stories for 45 minutes (The French Gendarmerie is the French equivalent of the US National Guard, sort of).
So at this soirée, I started a conversation with a young woman, and, upon parting she said, Tu parles vraiment bien le français, sauf les faux amis.”
Ah, faux amis…false friends…these are words that sound and are (often) written the same, but have different meanings, sometimes terribly different meanings. Faux amis seem to me common in French, less so in German, and almost non-existent in Russian. But, in any language false frieds can bite you in the butt.
It brought to mind the bad boy of French Cinema, Gerald Depardieu, to me a great great great actor (His Retour de Martin Guerre was a tour de force) a man without filters (reminds one of a certain famous New Yorker, eh?), who had a bad encounter with des faux Amis.
1991: Depardieu receives a nomination for the best actor Oscar for his performance in “Cyrano de Bergerac.” But controversy ensues after Time magazine carries an affirmation by Depardieu that he took part in a rape as a 9-year-old. The movie suffered a bloody nose at the Oscars. Depardieu categorically denies saying he took part in rape. “It’s outrageous at 9 years old or at any age,” he told the French newspaper Le Monde. “Yes, one can say I had sexual experiences when I was very young, but a rape, never. I respect women too much.” https://www.bastillepost.com/global/article/4839292-a-timeline-of-the-rise-and-fall-of-french-movie-star-gerard-depardieu
The French media, appropriately so, asserted that a bad translation had also prevented him from winning the Academy Award for Cyrano de Bergerac. On a 1990 David Letterman show, Depardieu spoke English with difficulty equivalent to my French of six years ago. He had said, in English, that he hand ‘assisted in a rape’ when he was young. The French verb assister à means ‘to witness;’ only its last meaning has some sense of ‘participation.’
assister à quelque chose v —attend sth. v · watch sth. v · witness sth. v · hear sth. v · participate in sth. v. assister à une réunion v—attend a meeting
I assume he meant that in the slums of his childhood, he had witnessed rapes, but the Faux Amis entangled him. I sympathize; the first couple years in France, the French words publicité (fr) = advertisement (en), but Advertisement (fr) = Warning (en), caused me no end of confusion.
So, these are my words to take to heart this next week.
| ENGLISH WORD | FRENCH WORD | MEANING IN FRENCH |
| Actual | Actuel | Current or present |
| Advertisement | Avertissement | Warning |
| Publicity | publicité (fr) | advertisement |
| Bless | Blesser | To hurt or injure |
| Coin | Coin | Corner |
| Deception | Déception | Disappointment |
| Envy | Envie | Wish or desire |
| Fabric | Fabrique | Factory |
| Library | Librairie | Bookstore |
| Sensation | Sensation | Feeling or perception |
P.S., Gerald was recently convicted of rape in a French court.
