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Parlez-Moi, with Sol

"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 [livejournal.com profile] 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.
From: [identity profile] mgrasso.livejournal.com
Wow. Just... wow. I might just need to marry you for this one. Like strange fish crawling from the mud-caked riber bottom of my memory... so are the kids of the Herbertville Chronicle.

And then there was the "Tomorrow People" on Nickelodeon back in, oh, '82? '83? Cheesy special effects and weird sci-fi stories: I think these shows made me the man I am today.

Date: 2004-09-03 06:03 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] head58.livejournal.com
Tomorrow People SO rocked! I still like to call teleporting "jaunting" and developing mental powers "breaking out."

Okay, who do I need to talk to in order to get the rights to do a Tomorrow People d20 Modern book?

Date: 2004-09-03 06:04 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] mgrasso.livejournal.com
Thames Television I think? While you're at it you can work on the Benny Hill license.

Date: 2004-09-03 08:00 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] peaseblossom.livejournal.com
Holy crap! Jaunting! I (very vaguely) remember that show.

Colors. (not Ice-T)

Date: 2004-09-03 09:11 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] mgrasso.livejournal.com
The episode that just sticks. in. my. head. is the one where the TP are "undercover" at a school where people are handing out these square badges, some blue and some green. And they seem to psychically cause gang warfare to break out, depending on what color you are. (I wonder if JMS stold this for Babylon 5? Anyway.) It was so creepy to watch the hero TP get sucked into this psychic gang warfare manipulation, I guess it just stayed with me.

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