Didier Juges wrote: > 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...
I had the same problem. After 7 years of French language lessons in school, I ended up in Montreal for a vacation. And I don't know what they were speaking, but it sure wasn't French! -Chuck Harris _______________________________________________ time-nuts mailing list time-nuts@febo.com https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts