Sad. Very.
April 3rd, 2006 byI realized today that the *only* French phrase I know is “Parlez-vous français?,†which means “Do you speak French?â€
Let me begin by saying that the only purpose of this phrase is to begin a conversation in French. Now don’t get me wrong, that’s just fantastic…
My problem, however, is that I don’t know any French. No, I never took French in school. This is seriously the only conversation I can have:
Me: Excuse me, parlez-vous français?
French person: (Yes)
Me: …
I actually stopped in my tracks when I realized this today. I can’t believe how useless knowing this phrase is. It’s just like when super heroes have useless powers.. Like the ability to sneeze on command or the ability to turn invisible when it’s completely dark. My skill is the subtle knowledge of knowing how to ask a French person in their native tongue, if they speak French..
You have no idea how sad this all makes me..
April 5th, 2006 at 2:43 am
um. c’est la vie. yeah.
April 5th, 2006 at 5:25 pm
Fortuantely, I have the slightly better power of telling Arabs I don’t speak Arabic. Fluently. In Arabic itself.
Yeah, that pisses folks off quite mightily.
April 6th, 2006 at 11:51 am
Ditto, Waleed.
I do that every time in french, spanish and hindi/urdu =)
Heh.. try being brown and telling brown folks you don’t speak the lang.
April 8th, 2006 at 8:05 am
what’s more fun is not looking brown and whipping out the lang… throws ppl off even more!
akds, here’s another word for you: ‘oui’ means yes. use sparingly because you might unknowingly answer ‘do you speak french’ w/ a yes… then you’re hosed.
April 8th, 2006 at 12:16 pm
-ahem-
Au revoir mes chouches!
April 9th, 2006 at 1:38 pm
Substitute ‘francais’ with ‘anglais’- et voila!
April 13th, 2006 at 7:49 am
do you realise how crazy this is? ive been sitting in the computer lab laughing (laffing (?)) out loud…
i know an expression in french. although im not sure how it’s spelt….
voulez vous cochez avec moi… (cant spell cochez…)
this means will you sleep with me.
the answer could either be yes or no.
since we dont know no, but we do know yes (oui
April 13th, 2006 at 7:51 am
and since your comment box et half my comment, here’s the other half, retyped…
oui, as very nicely explained by syd, we go with yes.
i can ask “kum haza” in arabic. but since my arabic numeral vocabulary is very limited, i can only buy cheap things, under khamsa riyals.
April 20th, 2006 at 5:42 pm
Je ne compais pa. (hope i spelt it right, it means i don’t unsderstand).
Je suisse fatigue (I’m tired)
Je suisse Americanne (I’m american)
Tres bien (Very good)
Au revoir (good bye)
Mon ami (my friend)
April 24th, 2006 at 4:34 pm
Nice blog. Funny.
Nice French you speak.