French Titles

Browsing the local Fnac for some Xmas gift ideas last week, I was struck by how the French feel the need to elaborate on American TV show titles. Some examples:

24 is called "24 Heures Chrono"

House is called "Docteur House"

Lost is called "Lost: Les Disparus"


Alas, the need to elaborate on the title is not limited to TV shows, as a few minutes of browsing on the DVD aisles revealed:

Brokeback Mountain is "Les Secrets de Brokeback Mountain"

The Crucible is "La Chasse aux Sorcieres" (the Witch Hunt)

Flatliners is "L'Experience Interdite" (Forbidden Experiment)


Curiously, Trainspotting was left to be Trainspotting. So not sure if the title changes are purely due to untranslatable idioms or undecipherable (to the French) symbolisms or what.


Of course, there is also the pressing need to change titles altogether. Examples are plentiful in the DVD aisles:

G-Force became "Mission G"

Terms of Endearment became "Tendres Passions" (not sure if that was an appropriate change)

Kiss the Girls became "The Collectionneur"

Steel Magnolia became "Potins de Femmes"

Mean Girls became "Lolita Malgre Moi"


My all time favorite is how the French translated the movie title "Home Alone" (yes, the one featuring Macaulay Caulkin - where is he these days??) - the title here for that is:

"Maman, J'ai Rate l'Avion!"

Literal translation: "Mom, I missed the plane!"

Don't you love it!?

French Spaces

When we were a long-distance couple, I used to find PeeWee's emails exceedingly cute. No capital letters whatsoever and quirky placements of spaces that left me with the impression that he was totally unaccustomed to typing. For example, he would write:

i had great fun hanging out with my friends ,you know them ,at bars tonight. we were so drunk ! you remember jean ?

It was all I could do to suppress all urges to print out the emails and whip out my red pen for correcting his use of spaces around punctuations. I often had the same urge when I got emails from French friends, who, similarly, seemed not to be schooled in this topic.

So imagine the astonishment I felt when Hana came home with a corrected test - she had been tested on writing on keyboards. Her teacher stressed in red that there must be a space before a question mark. I told Hana that this must be wrong. Her standard response to me when I say that these days is "google it, maman"

So I did, and this is what I found.

"Pour les points d'interrogation, d'exclamation et le point-virgule [typographie européenne] : une espace avant et une espace après." - meaning, for question marks, exclamation points and semi-colons, a space before and a space after.

Whoa! Whaddayaknow!? But why???? Do other languagues have different punctuation/space rules too? I know the Spanish put an inverted question mark before the questioning sentence; the French also use commas instead periods for decimals. However I had no idea about the use of spaces; all this time I was attributing that to carelessness or sloppiness. I've been corrected once again!

Where the Bad Weather Reigns

Anyone wondering why on earth we are thinking of up and moving yet again, take a look:

It's the ever unchanging weather forecast for Rennes.

If it's a sport in England for the English to complain good-naturedly about the bad weather, Bretons are downright stoic and even proud of their awful weather. "It's not raining, it's just a little drizzle" they would be saying, in face of rain that I would characterize as "cats and dogs". "It's so that we can better appreciate the sunny days", they would be saying during an extended dreary spell. Many of our friends have bought summer homes in North Brittany - folly of all follies in my opinion.

So here we are, contemplating sunnier warmer climes...

French Fillers

Fillers, as in, you know, ah, what people say when, uh, they don't really know where, like, they want to go with what they want to say, you know? Or, like, they need, well, more time to gather their thoughts?

Of course the French have their own fillers and they drive me CRAZY sometimes.

Hana has gotten into saying "eh bah" quite a bit, quite often. So if I ask her, "what did you learn in Science today?", she would start with, "Eh bah, we learned, bah, stuff like bones and the, eh bah, the reproductive systems" (yes, as a side, she is at that stage of learning already. Sigh)

She now seems not to be able to speak in French without the aid of "eh bahs". Whenever I tell her, "pls repeat without the eh bahs", her eyes start rolling and I know any day now she will start to ignore me when I say that. Thankfully she doesn't carry this into English. She doesn't actually use any fillers in English - maybe because much of the English she hears comes from scripted TV shows?

That said, Hana does not YET use another French filler that I personally find annoying, if only because I think I would never say it because it doesn't sound right coming from me, a foreigner. And that is "quoi" - that people add at the end of an affirmative or declarative sentence. For example, "c'est completement dingue, qoui" - "it's totally crazy or what" (I guess). Or "Je suis rentre vers 13 heures, quoi" - "I got home around 1pm, right?" - People add "quoi" at the end of sentences so often and this confused me first. I kinda felt like they were challenging me to dispute them, "quoi" being "what", as in "what, do you not believe what I'm saying?" or other similarly hostile end to a sentence.

I'll know I am speaking French like a native when I feel comfortable using these fillers myself!

Saint Martin/ Sint Maarten: Impressions

I had written about our trip but I decided not to post it because it just went on and on about what we did and ultimately I did not find it very interesting. I will, though, tell you about things that stayed with me as we ponder our possible future there.

1. The island comes across as a dump in a lot of areas. I'm really surprised at this. I know all Caribbean islands have the tourist areas and the local, much poorer areas, but St Maarten seemed even more out there, and even more so than how I found the island five years ago. We saw this on both the French and Dutch sides, but it can be a toss-up which one is dumpier. The Dumpiest of all, the Mullet Bay area on the Dutch side, is a disgrace. If someone ever put pics of that area in a travel magazine, it would def serve as a wake-up call to the Dutch Antillean government.

2. The French and the Dutch sides are completely different. Even though there are no "borders", you can immediately tell the difference, in the landscape and the road conditions. French roads are, for the most part, unbelievably smooth - a welcome relief to the car from all the potholes on the Dutch side. There have been no over-building on the French side, so it is more rustic and charming, I found. Marigot (the French capital) is still busy and appears disorganized, but not on the same scale as Philipsburg (the Dutch capital).

3. The Dutch side is American for all intents and purposes. Some areas are gaudy, loud, neony, like mini Las Vegas. The positive is that you can use the dollar and find most familiar things in the supermarket - this should not be discounted for me, I found it very exciting to be looking at Nilla Wafers and Dr Pepper cans in the shelves!

4. The illegal immigration population is apparently HUGE. From Haiti, Domican Republic, Jamaica, etc. Locals believe that this is responsible for a lot of the rising crime levels. It's a shame for an island that relies so heavily on tourism.

5. The Sunset Beach Bar & Grill was still a lot of fun! A definite must-do - it sounds cheesy but it really is impressive to watch the planes land and funny to watch the people struggle as they try to withstand the jetstreams of the departing planes. The constant chatter of the watch tower radio adds to the ambience. See pic below - taken by PeeWee:


6. The best pina colada of the week was at Taloulah Mango's in Philipsburg!

Miss Remiss

I've been neglecting writing for a month... I read somewhere something that befits me perfectly: "I don't do much and it takes me all day"

Of course, that is not entirely true because I have been busy busy and busy. Sick, coughing kids; preparing for the trip to NY/ St Maarten; the trip itself and the messy aftermath.

Where to begin?

The trip back stateside was fun, as always, but too short (as always!). The girls had a great time, of course, and were happy to be able to celebrate Halloween there again. It did rain on Halloween and that dampened everyone's enthusiasm somewhat, but overall it was fun. After taking advantage of other people's tax money in Summit, NJ (the town and the Y there puts on a Halloween shindig every year) we tried a new area for trick-or-treating and the deco on the houses and the lawns were fantastic. Some pics:




One other reason for our visit this year: my grandma celebrated her 100th birthday on November 1st - I think she looks better than she did last year. Good to know that we have good genes (PeeWee's grandma lived to 96!)


Will post notes from St Maarten separately.

Back to the grind of "not much"!

Hana's So-Called-Life

Found this in Hana's English class notebook - they are learning to make timelines and the assignment in class was to create one marking the major events in their lives thus far (click to enlarge):

That Atlantis trip sure must have been sweet!