In an effort to show my parents a little bit more foreign strangeness before they left, I decided to buy one of those couronne des rois things at the bakery today (bready item being sold in order to celebrate epiphany. The idea is that everyone takes a bit of the cake/bread/whatever it is, and whoever is lucky enough to get the bit with the wee metal king in it (and possibly break their teeth) gets to be the king for the day. Although I suspect it might be rigged towards those with very small heads, because the wee cardboard crown they gave us was very, very small).
I went to the bakery. It went something like this (but all in french):
Me: Can I please have a couronne des rois?
Her: Pardon?
Me: The bread thing being sold specially today? A couronne des rois [note that I wasn't actually sure what the things were called, but this bakery had a big sign outside saying "couronne des rois", so I was going with that]?
Her: I'm sorry, I can't understand you at all. You're making no sense to me.
Me: The special bread thing because today's the 6th of January ...
Her (to colleague): Can you understand what she is saying? I can't understand anything she says.
Me: You know, like a crown [gesturing at my head] ... for kings .... [petering off]
And then someone else helped me. Who miraculously understood me. Really, I'm not that incomprehensible. It was annoying.
As it turned out there were 2 kings in our galette des rois (it was more like a collection of cinnamon snails than anything properly bready. And one of the kings seemed to be a lady). I got one of them, but the crown didn't fit. Sigh.
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3 comments:
It is actually possible that you're quieter in french than you think you are. My husband has told me for years that I speak more quietly in German than in English, a hangover from lacking confidence in the language.
That's a good point. I probably am quieter in french than I am in english (and I'm quite quiet in english, so much so that a friend of mine once had a hearing test after being on holidays with me for a week because he assumed it was his problem, not mine. As it turned out, his ears were fine), and I definitely mumble more in french, but after the first time this woman said she didn't understand me, I made an effort to be clearer and louder etc. Not that that necessarily means I was clearer and louder ..
Don't worry. I learnt French at school for 8 years. I then I went to Lausanne and did 5 years of materials engineering - in French! And I still get in trouble with the stupid girl in Bastian's local bakery... It seems that you have to say the word EXACTLY like a local to get your bread. Proper grammar and choice of words is obviously not enough...
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