Sentir

v. – to feel or to smell

Someone I recently met suggested I blog about this French word because of its dual meanings. I realized though that in English, the verbs for smell and feel can also be interchangeable. Allow me to back track for a moment in order to give an example.

A few weeks ago while walking my dog in the Champs de Mars, I met a lovely woman walking her own. She happens to be a writer and her latest book is called Consequential Strangers http://www.consequentialstrangers.com. To borrow a quote from her own blog on the topic, consequential strangers are “people who bring novelty and information into our lives, allow us to exercise different parts of ourselves, and open us up to new opportunities.” And this is what we immediately became.

Not long after our encounter, we ran into each other again and since she was about to leave Paris for a while, she invited us to a going away party at her place. It was here that I met the person who suggested blogging about sentir. So now I will get to my example about that verb since it’s all intertwined.

Even though I didn’t know my new stranger/friend for very long, her absence is marked. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that it coincided with the nasty turn in weather and as a result a feeling of emptiness in the park. Where as a few weeks ago, the park was filled with sunlight and golden leaves, now it’s grey and grim and the center where all the dogs congregate looks barren and cold. The French call it grisaille and it's just as it sounds, grey and drizzly or grizzly as I like to call it.

Today as Felix and I approached that center where he used to love to run and play, we came upon a man, his child, one dog off leash and one dog on. Something about the dog on the leash didn’t “smell” right and I slowed my approach. Sure enough the man warned me that the dog wasn’t nice. In fact, he looked downright vicious with one eye missing surely from a fight. I managed to grab my little pup in time to avoid harm, but as another woman passing by pointed out, if the dog is vicious it should be muzzled, not just leashed.

Perhaps the reason we use this word to mean both smell and feel comes from the fact that a dog’s sense of smell is so strong that he can actually learn many things from it. Today, unfortunately, Felix and I both learned to smell danger. And today I met an INconsequential stranger I hope never to see again.

Prononciation

n. – pronunciation
While my French may not be perfect, I do take great pride in my accent. Recently an old friend and former colleague of mine who was coming to France for work asked if I knew anyone who could accompany him during his assignment and translate for him. My husband suggested I volunteer so I did.

Once he arrived in Paris, we travelled to Burgundy where the story he was reporting on took place. On the way, we stopped in Fontainebleau and had lunch just near the magnificent chateau. The name came from a fresh water spring or “Beautiful Water Fountain” if you break down the name Fontaine-Belle-Eau.

When we arrived at our final destination in the small town of Nuits Saint Georges, we were greeted by the owner of the Chambres d’Hôtes where we were staying. Literally translated this means, hosted rooms or bed and breakfast would be the way I would describe it. In this case it was a hôtel particulier, which is another way of describing a single family home. While not as grand on the scale of the Hôtel Lambert on Ile Saint Louis which was recently sold for somewhere around 80 million euros, it was still a large multi-roomed mansion of sorts and expensive to keep up, which is why the woman and her mother had decided to turn it into a guest house.

I cheerily told her about our visit to Fontainebleau, but she cocked her head indicating she didn’t understand. I repeated Fontainebleau. Again, she cocked her head and looked confused. Fontainebleau, I kept saying, surprised that she hadn’t heard of it since it’s so famous. Finally, she said “ah, Fontainebleau.” It was not a good start to a translating effort if I couldn’t even make her understand one of the most famous French cities within an hour’s drive from where she lived.

However, my friend and I had a giggle about it because neither one of us could figure out what I had done wrong. I explained the story to my husband when I got home and he spotted the error right away. I was pronouncing the end more like the color blue is pronounced in French. Instead, I should have pronounced the end to sound more like blow. It’s a subtle difference I can assure you!

I run into the same situation with my dog’s name, which is Felix. People ask me what he’s called and I answer, Felix. They ask me to repeat it and then they say “ah, Félix.” I guess it’s because I don’t use the accent when I speak. I’m getting used to it because I’m not changing the way I pronounce it, which is more like Feelix than Fehlix. Someone I know who is from Peru pronounces it Feliz, which is cute so sometimes my husband and I call him Feliz Navidad. I like the fact that Felix comes from the Latin word for happy. I do get tired of people telling me that Felix is a cat, though.

My friend and I had more language giggles during our excursion, mostly at his expense because he doesn’t speak a word of French. As such, his pronunciation or lack thereof, make it hard for even me to understand what he’s trying to say. He did make some valid points though, like why put an “s” in the middle of a word if you’re not going to use it. In Vosne Romanée, a region in Burgundy, the first word is pronounced Vone, not Voznee as he liked to say.

With the arrival of the accent circumflex in the French language around the 16^th century, many an “s” before a consonant disappeared. For example in the word hôtes seen above, the accent over the “o” has eliminated the need for an “s” which surely used to be there as we see in the English word, host. It’s the same with hôtel or hôpital. In English, while we also use the word hotel, we still use hostel to describe lodging of a more practical manner. Gîtes, which is another word for inn, also has an accent circumflex, this time over the “i” replacing an “s” that must have been there preceding the “t.”

But my favorite language faux pas or false step, literally translated, was when my friend said bonjour at the end of a conversation. I explained it’s not like aloha or ciao. Bonjour is always hello and never goodbye. We had a good giggle over that one.

Bonjour!

Supermarché

n. – supermarket
Marcher
v. – walk
Faire les courses
v. – go (or literally make) grocery shopping
Cours
n. – class or course
Court
adj. – short
Faire les magasins
v. – go (or literally make) shopping (for anything other than groceries)

Magasin
n. – store (that sells anything other than groceries)
Magazine
n. – magazine
Carte
n. menu or card
Caddie
n. – caddy or cart
Online food delivery exists here although I have yet to use it. I did, however, break down and buy what I call the “granny trolley” to do my grocery shopping and how I do love that! I simply wheel the trolley along the tiny sidewalk to the supermarket, throw everything in it as I wheel it up and down the aisles and then throw everything back in it once the delightful check out clerk has rung everything up, ready to pay as soon as she’s finished and be on my way. It sure beats the pressure of begging for and then un-sticking the plastic bags while the line mounts up behind you. I used to refuse to pay until everything was packed because once you do, the clerks just start moving the next person’s things along piling up on top of yours. I know I’ve written about this before, but I’m still waiting for someone to explain why oh why can’t they simply help!

The culture of real grocery shopping in Paris or most European cities for that matter is different from many American cities in that you run your errands at several shops all located nearby. The butcher, baker, cheese shop, fishmonger, greengrocer, etc. are all separate entities. Pharmacies are also separate stores and here are more like old-fashioned chemists than drugstores like we’re used to. I don’t usually take my granny trolley when I shop like this, but rather only when I’m cheating and going to the market where I can get almost everything in one place.

It’s not the same of course because there you don’t strike up a conversation with the butcher who is so fond of our puppy that he’ll let him lick his hands across the counter. Of course in the States, you would never see a dog in a butcher shop much less the supermarket. Here they are tolerated and left tied up near the check out awaiting their masters if not actually condoned running wild through the store.

The thing I like about the supermarket is that it’s open all day. Most of the other little specialty stores shut down for lunch and by lunch I mean from 1-4. There is a great store for dogs, but they don’t even open until 2 and there’s another little repair store that never seems to be open. It's called “Je repare tout” or “I repair everything,” but I've added to that, “Mais je ne suis jamais la,” “But I’m never here.” In fairness I did go in once with a broken alarm clock, but he couldn’t fix it. Maybe a simple amendment to “Je repair presque tout quand je suis la” would be better, “I repair almost everything when I’m here.”

So like everything in France, errand running is an art. Timing, patience and the art of conversation are all part of the equation to ensure success. And if I did choose to do all my shopping online, I would have nothing to blog about!

Avoir du temps à tuer

Exp. – killing time
Entrepreneur
n. - from the words "entre" or under and "prendre" to take

Nearly four months after our kitchen ceiling collapsed, I’m sitting here waiting for the entrepreneur or as we would call him, handyman, to come and finish repairing the hole. He began on Friday, today is Monday and as long as he continues to show up, it should be fixed by the end of the week.

Nothing happens quickly in France – nothing. People don’t rush here because there’s no point. We had brunch yesterday with friends, leaving the apartment at noon to return at 5pm. Getting back to the kitchen ceiling, it took six weeks just to get our insurance expert to come and take a look at it. Of course it was during August when everyone is on vacation. The process then had to be repeated two months later since there was some dispute over how much the repairs would cost.

Disputes or discussions are a way of life here. And both take time. The unions are still disputing and discussing the retirement reform. To explain it simply, the reform would raise the retirement age by two years in order to keep the pension coffers from running out. I think it’s already been passed into law, but that doesn’t stop the unions from holding their manifestations or protests. Even the lyceens or high school students got into the act, protesting in a show of solidarity while their representatives made the talk show rounds to discuss the topic even further. It’s difficult sometimes to understand anyone’s points of view though since another French habit is talking over one another.

When I was on the bus the other day I started up a conversation with a lovely French woman. A young lyceen got on the bus without paying. Apparently he didn’t have his metro card for some reason, but he did have a healthy sense of entitlement. He and the bus driver started to dispute and the woman rolled her eyes and said “ah we French love to discuss things – you see how much they discuss this and all it’s doing is wasting time.”

Time here is not a luxury, but a right. People deserve their time and they will take it and yours. This is why vacation time is not a privilege, but an expectation. When discussing the strikes one day with a Nigerian taxi driver, he said, “In my country, we work to get ahead, to buy a home, to make our lives. In France, people work to get to their vacation.” That’s why adding another two years to the retirement age feels like a life sentence.

The French have a reputation for being tardy, which while not true for all of them, does play into their relationship with time. Even television timing can be off as we have witnessed when trying to tape French shows. For some reason and especially with films, we have to remember to build in some extra time in order to risk missing the end since they don’t seem to start when the guide says they will.

An hour and a half after expected, the handyman has shown up. When it comes to repairs, I’m happy for him to take his time and in fairness, he does a very good job. Traffic and bad weather got in the way of punctuality this morning and because I had nothing else planned, “ca me derange pas,” it doesn’t bother me. He tells me he still has another three days of work to do – further patching tomorrow followed by first and second coats of paint the following two days. But we just realized in talking that Thursday is a holiday, Friday a “pont” or bridge for those who can take it allowing for a nice long four-day weekend. So the job will actually finish next week, which is a good thing too because he tells me that after that he will be on vacation.

Poubelle

n. – trash can

Upon leaving my apartment, I have six doors to open and two buttons to push just to get outside. This doesn’t include the door to the trash and recycling room in case I need to drop anything off on my way out. And it also doesn’t include the various light switches that I need to push in times of darkness.

I was spoiled living in New York where I barely had to use my hands until it was time to unlock the door to my apartment. With 24/7 doormen and electronic elevator doors, I could keep my hands safely in my pockets if I wanted until I reached my final destination. Locking and unlocking my apartment door was also much less complicated there. The lock to our Paris apartment is spring loaded, which actually requires both hands to operate.

I mention all of this only because if it was troublesome before, it’s only more so with a little ball of fur underfoot that needs precision timing in order to successfully coordinate his disposal needs at street level.

Last night at around 11pm, after suspecting the timing may be right, I proceeded along my ritual of door opening, closing, locking and button pushing giving myself the additional challenge of disposing of the trash and paper/plastic items. Here bottles fall into a third category and since they make such a loud crash in their receptacle, I don’t take them down between the hours of 10pm and 10am.

Lo and behold, no trash or recycle cans to be found since they had already been put out in the street. I thought Monday night was trash pick up, but with only one can for a seven story building, it makes sense that this is a two or maybe even three time a week event. Maybe it occurs every night and I just don’t notice unless I have anything to take down with me after hours.

Trash and recycle disposal in New York was so much easier – there was a room at the end of the hall on every floor with a chute for the garbage and all other items, glass, paper and plastic could simply be left next to said chute. Oh how spoiled we Americans are with all of our space and conveniences. Adapting to a new day-to-day life or “vie quotidienne” has been challenging at times, but there’s always a light at the end of the tunnel. Here all you have to do is remember to turn it on.