It’s not you, it’s you!

Yesterday 2 unrelated occurrences happened… I was chatting via Facebook with someone. Martha from (Plowing Through Life) posted a comment and joined our blog. To me both are connected.

Even though I am French Canadian, I am much more comfortable writing in English.  However, yesterday I was writing to a friend on Facebook and I made a mistake.

I wrote: “I don't know how to be depress... maybe you don't know how to be happy!”. Usually I write something and then I review it before sending to make sure it reflects my thoughts. Unfortunately I forgot that with Facebook chat, if you press ‘enter’ it sends your statement… ahhhhh

I am not kidding, I felt bad all day…  If I had reviewed my statement it would have been something like: “I don't know how to be depressed... maybe there are people who don't know how to be happy!” I just don’t have the skills and insights for telling people how they are feeling and why. I am really sorry.

‘You’ is a pronoun I have problem with in English. In French, there is 2 “you”, the first one –tu- is when you address one particular person, the second one –vous- is when you address 2 or more persons (there is something else but it’s irrelevant for this French lesson :)). So when I write, I always review the ‘You’ and its context!

Time to bring back Martha! She is living in Kingston, this is an awesome town about 100 miles south of Ottawa. To my wife and I, it’s the last place where we lived in 2 different barracks, while we were singles! We got married right after we left Kingston. My English abilities were limited to a few words.

Cases in point: Once in a while, I would order pizza, to be delivered to the women’s barrack where men were allowed to be present in the basement.  There were tables, a shuffle board and a tv room.  I was not allowed to go to her room… (I’m NOT saying I didn’t go ha ha ha). We never knew if we would get the pizza or not, I could place the order but I couldn’t understand what the answer was. I couldn’t confirm if they understood where I wanted it delivered or even if they understood my thickly-French-accent order.

Even going to McDonald was a challenge! In French, glace means ice… I would forget about this and order a coke without glass… I was so proud of myself to be able to order in a foreign language until I looked at my wife-to-be who was laughing at me… I was just not getting any sympathy from that girl!

I was not the only one having trouble in English… once, a few of us from class went to McDonald (at the time there was only 1 McDo in Kingston) and one of the guy didn’t know what  “Anything else?”, means so after he ordered: “One Big Mac, One fry and a coke”, the cashier asked: “Anything else?”, “One Big Mac, One fry and a coke” he repeated, and again for 4 or 5 more times, the cashier was starting to look at him with question marks!  Finally, someone else from our class told him what she mean “Anything else?” meant. We all had a good laugh!   

The worst thing when learning a new language is when you are so proud of using the right word in a sentence and to find out you were way off…

One of our first English speaking friend couple were Keith and Pam.  One night we were at home and it was only the 2 of us and we had nothing to do… there was a knock at our door, it was Keith asking us if we had anything planned, they had leased a movie (on Beta) and they invited us to watch it with them. “YES!” was our instant answer.

At the end of the evening, as we were leaving and I told them: “Thank you very much, it was a really boring evening!”. They just looked at me.  Christiane who was standing behind me came to my help (I think), said: “WHAT?”. I didn’t know there was any thing wrong. I was so proud of having said exactly what I meant! I repeated: “Thank you very much, it was a really boring evening!” Now my dear wife is laughing and I’m thinking that MAYBE I did a small mistake here, I reviewed it in my head… “boring” that’s the right word – Check, “Thank you very much”  that’s a polite sentence to use in social context – Check, “was” it’s the past tense of “is” – Check – but wrong past tense! It should have been… “Thank you very much, it would have been a really boring evening!” Darn!

One more example no one asked? Well yes I do have another one… Years later we were shopping at a computer store and I was buying an inexpensive item. The cashier asked me: “Would you like our membership card?”. I was starting to be pretty confident in my ability by then… so I answered quickly: “No I’m not a frigging customer!”. My dear wife who was beside me, turned around and said: “WHAT?”.  “No I’m not a frigging customer!” annoyed me answered… and now she is laughing, the poor cashier does not understand what is happening, and to tell you the truth, neither do I… “What is wrong?” I’m trying to ask. When Christiane was finally able to stop laughing, she explained to me that it’s not “frigging” but “frequent” that I wanted to say… Who would have guessed there is a difference between “frigging” and “frequent”? Not that I hold a grudge, but I think it’s the last time I shopped with my wife and the last time I went shopping to that frequent store :)!

Today my wife is getting blood work done and tomorrow we are back in cancer land for the first chemo “threat-ment”… I don’t know when will be the next post as I might be losing my proof reading gal and I will be back in my nurse uniform! :(  (comment from Christiane: the uniform fits him real nice :).  I’ll add one more sample of “Lost in Translation”; in his very last sentence, Richard had written: “I might be loosing my read-proofing-gal” WHAT! :) )