France part Dinkum: Professor, what's another name for pirate treasure?

[robotnik2004]

"Professor, what's another name for pirate treasure?"
"Well, I think it's booty... booty... booty... That's what it is!"

My Ontario high school French held up tolerably well in France. I was able to ask for directions, order in restaurants, and politely inform one stupid American woman in the airport that "19.08" was not the price of the sandwich she wanted to buy ("Nineteen DOLLARS for a SANDWICH? Is that REAL dollars or FRENCH dollars?") but the day's date. (The real price was clearly marked in LARGE BLOCK LETTERS.) Oh, and when Pitou ruined the picnic by stealing Mama's poulet, I was all set.

I was thrown a curve, however, by our little Lonely Planet phrase book. Like any English to French phrase book, it listed words and phrases in English, in French, and then in a phonetic approximation of the French pronunciation. Simple enough, right? But any time we used the book we were met with uncomprehending stares.

It was bouteille, the French word for "bottle," that finally tipped us off. I knew thought it was pronounced "boo-tye," the second syllable sounding like "Thai" or "tie," with a little bit of an "ayee" at the end if you're feeling frisky. But Lonely Planet gave the pronunciation as "boo-tay." I felt just a little funny calling for bootay in a fancy restaurant.

[Edit: Note wordwolf schooling me on French pronunciation below. Grumble grumble big shot Manitobans think they're so great...]

What I'd forgotten when I bought the book was that Lonely Planet is an Australian company. The phonetics were written for Aussie accents. "Boo-tay," rhymes with "g'day," actually is a pretty good approximation of bouteille. Once we'd cracked that Rosetta Stone (and when I say "we", I mean "Lisa"), we could see that the whole phrasebook was like that: 'ay' for 'aye' and 'r's on the end of everything except the few places they belonged: "ler" for le, "der" for de, "zher per" for je peux. So the book wasn't worthless to us, but we did have to channel Crocodile Dundee while reading it, a tricky bit of cognitive processing that led me to walk into more than a few lamp posts and open manholes.

Comments

Re: Oops !

[robotnik.livejournal.com]

That's what I figured. No correction is necessary. Your English is far better than my French (but I expect that's true for virtually all Quebecois).

What I am curious about, though, is how you happened upon my LiveJournal post in the first place. Were you Googling for Marc Favreau?

Re: Oops !

[horatio-hex.livejournal.com]

First, thanks on my written english.

How did I saw your LJ account ? Simple : I read the LiveJournal posts of Kenneth Hite from time to time, and I stumbled upon your post and Favreau's picture in his Friends section. It was a nice suprise to see this picture.