Things French Say, Kinda

This time it's not what the real French say, but rather what my American, yet French speaking, daughter and son say.

Like instead of what day is it? They'll say, 'what day are we?'
This is because in French you say 'nous sommes' whatever day of the year. It's weird. We are the day we are on.Weird, but also philosophical and deep. Think about it.

It's at cross purposes with the acquirement of age, though. You 'have' your number of years of living on this earth. 'J'ai quarante ans.' They're mine, I own them rather than being them. I've got 'em, hard-earned.

Yet, you are the day, can make of it what you want. And when it's done and you're that one day older, you've had it. It's yours to add to your towering stack of days, weeks, months and years that pile up to make you however old you 'are'.

Then there's the Franglish. Both languages mixed up together to make funny sounding sentences. Like this one: 'Today I was mort de rire and everyone else was just sitting there, not thinking it was funny at all.'
Or this: 'I told him to souhaite her happy birthday.'

And my favorites, adding 'ing' to French verbs. Like this: 'We're fairing the pont.' or 'Stop saulting!'.
Then there's the randomly tossed 'regard!' when there's something you want someone to look at, 'arrete!' when they really must stop and when you've really just had enough, 'pfffffft!' or 'ça suffit!'. And I mean it.

The French also have clever ways of disguising a bad word by turning it into something else. We parents of small children know how to do this well, regardless of nationality.

Take for instance, sh*t. My curse word of choice. As a parent of small children, **it comes out as 'shoes!', 'shugar!' or the more nautical, 'shiver me timbers!'. Yes, I have and do say all of these things regularly.

The French are no different. For merde, which doesn't sound dirty to me at all and whose 'm' isn't nearly as much fun to say as the 'sh', they substitute 'mense!' drawing to mind the genius list that Sharon Stone is on (why do I keep these random bits of shugar! in my head?) or the best day of the week, 'mercredi!'. And for the big, bad guy that starts with a 'P' and ends with an 'ain', they love to sub in 'puree'. Ma Fille even does this but hers has become a mouthful of 'puree des carrotes@!@!' instead. Kids say these words on the playground. You can hear them and their shouts of 'ah, mense-(uh)! as they play.

Which leads me to another thing. Down here in the south, just as in any southern spot of a country, they have an accent. This accent has a thing about saying every. single. syllable. of the word and ending with a definitive 'uh'. For example, when the Littlest speaks French there's a lot of phlegm clearing 'r' sounds thrown in with the 'uh', like this: 'ah-rhhhhettt-uh!' He has even started ending some of his more exasperated English words this way, 'Momm-eee-uh!'.

And did you know that Ma Fille talks in her sleep? She does. And in French. Ça suffit-uh!