Where is the spirit of the Revolution in France?

Culture
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I have mentioned before my frustration with French formality, especially in regard to the numerous aides who visit our home.

We are encouraged to use their first names, as evidenced by the prominence of them on their uniforms, almost all use Fran’s prenom and even sometimes give her a light kiss on the head when leaving, but me? Apparently I am the Lord of the bloody Manor with their Monsieur this and Monsieur that. ‘What happened to the Revolution?’ I demand in vain.

Anyway I may have hit on the answer this morning. Thierry arrived on his own and proceded to the kitchen where Fran was already in her chair (she had had an occasional ‘sit in’ last night, flat refused to go to bed) and he waited while she finished her breakfast before taking her through to the bedroom. I retreated to the living room, mainly to be out of the way but also because it was the only way that young Shanna would leave him alone.

Soon I though I heard Thierry calling our surname and thought at first that he was having trouble with her, but the reason was he was calling me by my aristo title to know if he should re-dress her in her jogging set (no, she doesn’t do jogging but that is her normal daywear). I went through and gave him the answer before saying ‘btw I have changed my name to reflect my Welsh heritage and from now on you must use that’ . He was puzzled but left it 'till he was leaving when I showed him my new name on the computer screen:

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To be fair he made a laudable effort to read it before I did it properly for him and then said ‘from now on you must call me by my new name…or perhaps Daveed, your choice.’ 'Au ‘voir Daveed’ he said :rofl:

I am thinking of printing it out to go on the wall, I wonder if it will do the trick, whether or not, we will get some amusement out of it. :joy:

BTW I think the pronunciation aid underneath the sign is not entirely accurate. Thierry read the 2nd syllable as a Frenchman would, ‘vee-er’, whereas in my opinion ‘vyer’ would be more accurate. :thinking:

It was interesting one day when Christine, the English Aide began talking to me in French because there was a French woman there with us and we thought it more polite. The lady was impressed but was anxious to know if Christine did not think she was presumptive and that I would be offended by being addressed as ‘tu’. Of course not she told her, there is only one way for English people to communicate and that is the way. “Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité” I intoned solemnly. She got the point and we all laughed about it. :laughing:

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I have had a closer look at that sign and, while it is a nice touch for them to try and educate foreigners, and splitting the syllables is a very good idea, I do not think they have done justice to the pronunciation throughout. To pick out one thing, their depiction of the ‘ll’ in Welsh is entirely wrong. ‘ch’ as in the Scottish ‘loch’ would be nearer the mark, though not entirely, but certainly better than ‘q’ or just ‘ll’.

Just for fun I’ll see if I can do better but I have my doubts, the spoken word might be the only way and also, I might be confusing northern and southern Welsh accents. :roll_eyes:

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I just go with the flow and allow people to use what they feel comfortable with. We know a younger couple, and he always tutoies me. She uses vous. I said I was happy for her to use tu and she replied that she was not brought up that way and would make her uncomfortable. Fair enough.

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You’re absolutely correct. Your suggestion of ‘vyer’ is probably as close as it’s possible to get along with ‘vyre’. Some of the others are not very correct either, especially ‘pooll’ which should be something like ‘pook’ or ‘puuk’. Trying to do Welsh syllables in English is hard :smile:

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It is, but I would say your example would be better said as ‘pooch’ but with the tongue tip pressed against the roof of the mouth, thus ‘pooch’ as in Scottish ‘loch’ but with the tongue tip up stopping the flow of air over it.

@JaneJones Some may remember me being granted the right to address Chrystelle as ‘tu’ several years ago when she came here to do the weekly house cleaning but was puzzled by the fact that she never uses it to me. But she does not call me Monsieur, always Daveed. Does your young friend call you Jane and do you use her first name too? I never use ‘tu’ to any of the Aides apart from the English ones, except by mistake as we are chatting in such an intimate manner, but it really makes me feel uncomfortable this one sided prenom thing. So I have in some small way a common feeling with your friend.

With the old boys in the bar, much the same age or older than me, I made no fuss but just naturally switched to ‘tu’ within only a couple of weeks of daily contact and they reciprocated, or it might have been them who used it first, maybe even from the outset. It was so seamless I never noticed.

Meanwhile, I have realised that signing a cheque with my new name will be somewhat of a problem, but I absolutely refuse to put ‘Llanfairpg.’ :rofl:

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Love the sign! We always used to say the difficulty with speaking Welsh lay only in the consonants :smile:

Phonetics are funny things, and rather subjective. I don’t use them much for English because a received English pronunciation will not be of much help for a learner’s understanding of all the different accents they will hear.

Interestingly, for Mandarin Chinese, I prefer the old Wade-Giles phonetic interpretation because it creates the right sounds more accurately for English speakers. However, the officially approved ‘pinyin’ phonetic interpretation of Chinese characters may in fact be easier for French speakers.

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Where the word ‘pidgin’ comes from isn’t it?

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:joy:

The pinyin phonetic system, developed in the 50s, began being in official use in 1958 and was a way for China to ‘take back’ the Latin translation of their language to the world.

Chinese 拼音 pīn-yīn , literally ‘spell/ piece together + sound.

The term “pidgin” is believed by etymologists to be a corruption of the pronunciation of the English word “business” by Chinese who came into contact with European traders beginning in 1630. It was a sort of melange of Chinese words, phonetic translations and English words. It was a creative way to communicate and is really rather endearing but the term has become a bit non-U now.

In HK, where Cantonese speakers do not end words with consonants, words from English are adapted, like “baasi” for bus. There are many words that created a wonderful new language reflecting the cultural marriage between our cultures. I like “dixi” for taxi and I still use it like that now.

Sadly, official Chinese pinyin is for Hanyu, Mandarin. The words are not pronounced like that in Cantonese, which is another attempt to marginalise Cantonese, an older and harder version of Chinese, but not Han.

Sometimes, language pivots into political and cultural protest

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Some fun with morphology :nerd_face: