Entries tagged with "montreal"

Adventures in francophonie

posted by srah on May 24, 2006 6:31 PM

Tags: french, language, montreal, travel

Montreal is awesome. I am doing better than expected with speaking French - instead of avoiding French altogether I string together these mangled franglais thoughts in my mind and occasionally spew them out to whoever my victim is. Example: Shuttle driver with French-Canadian accent: Which hotel are you going to? Me: Le Fairmont Reine Elizabeth¹. SDWFCA: Fairmont Reine Elizabeth, Queen Elizabeth? Me: Oui. Yes. SDWFCA: Vous parlez français? You speak English? Me: (stammers) Oui. Yes. Les deux. Both. Je parle... I speak, yeah. So yeah, that was clear. And efficient. Let's speak both languages at once! And translate for ourselves!...

Parlez-vous quebecois?

posted by srah on May 20, 2006 12:24 PM

Tags: french, language, montreal, quebec, travel

No, not so much. I am off to the Great White North on Tuesday for a conference followed by some Staying Around and Sightseeing. Youpi! So far I have made all of my Montreal hotel reservations in English. I am a-feared of the Quebecois French. I'm afraid of all their funny ways of saying things and their different accent and their reputation for looking down on French-from-France and for speaking perfect accentless English to people who try to speak French to them. I was telling someone at dinner that I might just chicken out and try to pass myself off...