Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Vous Etes Triste

It’s been a while since I’ve shared an embarrassing language experience. I think this is a pretty good one as my friends here were in tears from laughing so hard.
The other morning when I was outside with Millie I saw a woman who lives in our neighborhood. I don’t know this woman by name but I know from a previous conversation (consisting of her talking in French and me nodding and shaking my head whenever she did) that her dog had recently passed away. She adores Millie and tells me every time what a beautiful dog she is, etc. Why is it that I can understand everything people say to my dog but I can’t understand what they say to me?

That morning she again started talking about her dog and was getting pretty emotional about it. She had tears in her eyes and I could hear the pain in her voice. I had to say something. I wanted to say how difficult it must be to lose a pet or that it must be lonely without him. Instead, this is what came out of my mouth: “Vous… ĂȘtes…triste” which means “You…are…sad.” I put dots in between the words so you get an idea of how slowly I formulated this sentence. It was like Tarzan speech. My stupid French sentence kind of made her stop and look at me. She was probably thinking, “Gee, thanks for labeling that feeling for me. That was a tricky one. ”

I can’t even blame it on being early in the morning. I probably would have said the same thing no matter what time of day I had this conversation. Ahh, I try.