Joseph A. Hayden (![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} bearlawnyc) wrote,@ 2004-09-10 22:25:00 |
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Lost in French translation
Even though my mother’s long-time boyfriend and she never got married (he is Italian but has lived in Paris his entire adult life), I refer to his son as my step-brother because my mother and Antonio have been together on and off for almost 14 years as of this writing. I find chatting with men in other languages very helpful as it is interactive and interesting to me, even though I could theoretically (and sometimes do) pull up the foreign language newspapers every day on the web and read them there.
I always encourage guys I chat with to practice languages with in Spanish, French and Italian to correct my grammar, and even English if I am making a faux pas, although I fear some of them think I'll find them pretentious if they correct me. I’ve never had a lesson in French, only had two years of elementary Spanish in high school and only spoke Italian as a little boy and then again in adulthood thanks to Antonio, as un-fluent or fluent as I may be (that is up for debate as my mother never seems to be pleased with my Italian fluency). Basically I can say anything I need to say and understand everything in Italian, especially if it is not "business Italian".
A good example is that I've been writing "bonjour mon nouveau ami" when all this time I should have been writing "mon nouvel ami" in French. Only one bear after about TWENTY who spoke French bothered to correct me! I guess the others just figured that this lowly Americain homme was just butchering his way through the language and that I might be offended if they corrected me. Another example was I was calling my step-brother in Paris to countless frenchmen my "demi-frere" which means HALF-brother! The correct term was "bon-frere". That itself would not be so embarrassing, but because I thought "demi" (which I should have known meant "half" in Latin) was "step", I called Antonio my "demi-pere" (which literally means HALF-FATHER)! Of course the correct term for my step-brother is "bon-frere" although he's not technically that either.
Even though my mother’s long-time boyfriend and she never got married (he is Italian but has lived in Paris his entire adult life), I refer to his son as my step-brother because my mother and Antonio have been together on and off for almost 14 years as of this writing. I find chatting with men in other languages very helpful as it is interactive and interesting to me, even though I could theoretically (and sometimes do) pull up the foreign language newspapers every day on the web and read them there.
I always encourage guys I chat with to practice languages with in Spanish, French and Italian to correct my grammar, and even English if I am making a faux pas, although I fear some of them think I'll find them pretentious if they correct me. I’ve never had a lesson in French, only had two years of elementary Spanish in high school and only spoke Italian as a little boy and then again in adulthood thanks to Antonio, as un-fluent or fluent as I may be (that is up for debate as my mother never seems to be pleased with my Italian fluency). Basically I can say anything I need to say and understand everything in Italian, especially if it is not "business Italian".
A good example is that I've been writing "bonjour mon nouveau ami" when all this time I should have been writing "mon nouvel ami" in French. Only one bear after about TWENTY who spoke French bothered to correct me! I guess the others just figured that this lowly Americain homme was just butchering his way through the language and that I might be offended if they corrected me. Another example was I was calling my step-brother in Paris to countless frenchmen my "demi-frere" which means HALF-brother! The correct term was "bon-frere". That itself would not be so embarrassing, but because I thought "demi" (which I should have known meant "half" in Latin) was "step", I called Antonio my "demi-pere" (which literally means HALF-FATHER)! Of course the correct term for my step-brother is "bon-frere" although he's not technically that either.
