Fabienne, French, a neighbor and natural food fanatic, invited Patrice and me, and some three dozens of her (mostly) French friends to a soiree. Thus, the evening’s language was French. The misinformation caused by errors in translation was hilarious.
We are making progress in French. One flounders one day getting an oil change, and headlights adjusted.The gendarmes (The Gendarmerie is the equivalent of the US National Guard, sort of) stop you for a minor traffic check, and we trade Vietnam war stories for 45 minutes .
False Friends
At this soirée, I started a conversation with a young Frenchwoman, and, on parting she says, “Tu parles bien le français, mais attention aux faux amis.”
Ah, faux amis. False friends are French words that sound and are (often) written the same, but have different meanings, and sometimes a terribly different meaning. Faux amis seem to me common in French, less so in German, and almost non-existent in Russian. But, in any language false friends can bite you in the butt.
Expectations
It brought to mind and incident with the bad boy of French Cinema, Gerald Depardieu, to me a great actor (His Retour de Martin Guerre was a true tour de force). But Gerald, he is a man without filters (and reminds one of a Donald Trump, n’est pas?), who had a bad encounter avec des faux Amis.
In 1991, Depardieu had received an Oscar nomination for the best actor for his performance in Cyrano de Bergerac. But controversy flared. On a 1990 David Letterman show, Depardieu, speaking English with a fluency equivalent to my French of six years ago. He had said, in English, that he had assisted in a rape when young. Depardieu and the movie movie suffered a bloody nose at the Oscars. Depardieu denies he took part in rape, 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.
It was a ‘false friend foul-up. The French verb assister à means ‘to witness.’ He meant that in the slums of his childhood neighborhood, he had witnessed rapes, but the faux amis entangled him.
I sympathize. the French words publicité means advertisement in English, but advertisement in French means ‘Warning.’ It caused me no end of confusion.
So, this my language lesson next week.
| ENGLISH WORD | FRENCH WORD | MEANING IN FRENCH |
| Actual | Actuel | Current or present |
| Advertisement | Avertissement | Warning |
| Publicity | publicite (fr) | advertisement |
| Bless | Blesser | To hurt or injure |
| Coin | Coin | Corner |
| Deception | Deception | Disappointment |
| Envy | Envie | Wish or desire |
| Fabric | Fabrique | Factory |
| Library | Librairie | Bookstore |
| Sensation | Sensation | Feeling or perception |
P.S., Gerald Depardieu was recently convicted of rape in a French court.