French Haiku

So, I just got an emergency phone call from my friend E, the pharmacist. He was filling a prescription for some guy named Jason who had just been texted a haiku in French which he could not understand, and E thought I might be able to help the poor guy out. After much time spent with Jason spelling words to me over the phone because I couldn't understand his horrible pronunciation, it turns out that the haiku was this:
Ce matin j'ai pensé
où est le beurre de cacahuète?
et tu m'as rendu heureux.

Which, as I told Jason, means:
This morning I thought
where is the peanut butter?
and you made me happy.

Jason laughed, said thanks, and hung up! How unfair is that?! Now I'm left wondering who the guy was (I'm sure you all noticed that the masculine form of the adjective "heureux" indicates that the writer was male, or else really bad at French grammar) and what exactly they did with the peanut butter!

And wondering whether there's some kind of future in using my previously unknown super-powers for translating French haikus.

HYS: Boutons

Headnotes:
1. HYS = How You Say?
2. Bouton is French for "button" and also means "pimple, blemish, or bud."

Last Saturday my friends P and A invited me over for dinner. A is my best friend in Paris; she and her husband P are both American, and they have a beautiful 10 month-old baby boy. P also has two charming sons from his first marriage here in France.

I've always been very interested in linguistics and language acquisition, so it's a source of endless fascination to me to spend time with bi-cultural and ex-pat families and observe how they help their children deal with foreign language issues. P's two older boys have dual French-American nationality and are bi-lingual, but since they attend French school and live with their French mother most of the time, French is their dominant language, and they do make some little mistakes when they speak English. P and A do a great job of gently correcting them--it's obviously important for them to speak both their native languages well, but constant criticism isn't good, either.

Over dinner last Saturday, I was chatting (in English) with the 14 year-old. He told me that he had developed a sun allergy, so I asked what happens when he goes out into the sun. He pulled up his sleeve to show me his arm and said, "I get these red buttons all over my arms, and . . . ." I thought about correcting him but decided not to interrupt the discussion, so the conversation flowed on. No big deal.

The next morning, however, this little scene replayed itself in my head, and I suddenly realized the irony of the complete thought I'd had about how to "correct" him: "Should I stop him to tell him that the correct word in English is 'hives' or 'rash', and that we only say 'button' when the blemish is on your face?"

Right.

Does anyone know of a good ESL program I can sign up for in the Twin Cities?


*****
Petite explication pour mes lecteurs français qui n'auraient peut-être pas compris cette anecdote : en anglais, le mot "button" [bouton] n'a qu'un seul sens. C'est la pièce servant à la fermeture d'un vêtement. Un bouton d'acné sur le visage s'appelle un "pimple." Quand ce petit Franco-Américain m'a parlé des "buttons" sur ses bras (le mot juste pour des boutons allérgiques serait "hives" ou "rash"), c'était donc un peu ironique que je voulais "corriger" son anglais en lui disant qu'on utilisait "button" seulement pour les boutons sur le visage, car c'est faux !

Ready for Syndication

Well, not really. There is some option about syndication in the blog settings, but since (unlike the comment page configuration :-)) I had no idea what it meant, I just left it on whatever the default setting was.

I have, however, been toying with different themes that I may (or may not) use on Native Observation, so I thought I'd give you a little preview of topic threads that may come up, along with their oh-so-clever abbreviations and acronyms:

• BNT. I confess: "Native Observation" was not actually my first choice for the title of this blog (but just because my baby was unplanned doesn't mean I love it any less!). For better or worse, many of my early ideas were already taken, in some cases by bloggers who, at least at first glance, do not seem Worthy of using my brilliantly conceived URLs. Because I think it's interesting to consider the road not taken (or in this case, the Blog Not Titled), I may tell you about the other titles we might have had. I suppose this theme could also offer the opportunity for guest bloggers who had their own title suggestions to tell us about them, but it's hard to imagine when I might be ready to relinquish that kind of artistic control. I can be a bit Particular at times.
• HYS. Life in a foreign country offers many opportunities for linguistic glitches, and I will be sharing anecdotes of words and thoughts lost in translation, and all the times I have to ask How You Say?
• MPAS. I have strong opinions on many, many things, and this blog is the ideal forum for sharing them. But sometimes, I may have to warn you that My Politics Are Showing (the correct pronunciation of this blog theme is to be "im-pass").
• TIMM. The question I hear most often when I tell people I'm moving away is, "What are you going to miss about France?" It occurs to me that telling about the Things I'll Miss the Most could be a nice way of sharing some of the loveliness of my adopted home.

OK, this is clearly far too cheesy for syndication, but now that the concept is all spelled out in pixels, I guess I'll stick with it.

UPDATE: One more blog theme I'd thought of but forgot to list: OBG (don't worry, Scott, I'm not going to have an entire topic thread dedicated to gynecological issues!). Way back when, in the dark ages before I started this blog, I sometimes sent out mass e-mails with stories about life in France to selected friends. I may recycle some of these Oldies But Goodies for use on this blog. Partly because, in my far-from-humble opinion, some of the messages were funny and deserve a broader audience, and partly because I'm lazy but can claim that reusing old material makes me Green.