John Day wrote: > Funniest thing is I have a very good friend, a librarian in Paris, > who comes to Canada regularly. He prefers to converse in English with > Francophone Canadians because he says it is easier to understand than > the 18th century, rural France, based accent of the French spoken here. > > Since we are so far OT, I might as well continue:
On my 1st trip to Canada from the US (around 1986), I was in line at the check-in counter at the hotel and I could hear the young lady behind the desk speaking in French. I did not really pay attention to what she said because I was in a conversation with a colleague, but I knew it was French so when my turn came, I told her in French my name and reservation number. Bad idea! After a minute or so of utter confusion, we both switched to English and all was well from that point on... It happened again at the company I was visiting (in Quebec). My hosts made a point of speaking French to me, which was the most embarrassing thing because I had no idea what they were telling me, and I was too embarrassed to tell them. After a while, they figured out and we had a good laugh, in English. I was born in France and left when I was 33, so French is no foreign language to me, but in Canada, it was... Even stranger, I had absolutely no problem watching television or listening to the radio, the problem was only with people in the street. Now that I think of it, maybe I was watching an English channel??? :-) Didier _______________________________________________ time-nuts mailing list [email protected] https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts
