Eiffel Tower

C’est comme ça

Posted on by MELewis

Peintres tour eiffel

I know better than to expect service with a smile in France. Around here, we are happy to be served, period. But lately a few particularly awful customer service experiences have me ranting once again.

First there was the painter who was supposed to redo the south-facing façade of our house. It started out well enough. He showed up when promised, twice, sent me a quote for the work, cashed the 40% deposit and began the job in May. Things quickly went downhill. He began by painting over the chrome bolts that are a design feature of our modern house, and dripping paint on several glass panels around the deck. I explained that he needed to protect the area, so he taped down plastic and used a bit of tape. He got half-way through the job when the skies clouded over and spat down a few drops of rain. Then he disappeared for two weeks, leaving us with a half-painted house, plastic bits on the deck and vague promises to come back soon. August, he swore. We are still waiting.

Then there’s the postman. Not only does he never ring twice, often he never rings at all. I find the slip of paper in my letter box, down by the road, saying that he attempted to deliver a parcel while I was out. Des mensonges, Monsieur! I was there. Deaf I may be but I can still hear the door bell. The funny thing about that slip of paper is that, to look at it, you would think it should be easy to get your parcel (assuming you read French; otherwise, bonne chance in decoding this baby!).

Avis de passageTwo options, it says. Choose a new delivery date online or go pick up your parcel at the local post office, anytime from 3 pm the following day. “Mais non,” says the woman who works at our local post office as she explains it to me with a vague school-marmish air. It doesn’t work like that around here. By the time the postman reaches her small post office, at least two working days will have passed (not counting the weekly Wednesday closure). When I express frustration, not only at the poor service but at the erroneous message on the official piece of paper, I get nothing more than a Gallic shrug.

Et oui, c’est comme ça!

Online shopping saves me from having to deal with such characters. Most of the time. As much as I love Amazon, regardless of their tax issues, I shop some French websites for specialty items like pet supplies. Our two Frenchies are excitable types on walks and it takes some good quality leashes to rein them in. After spending a good while researching just the leash I needed (short, strong, flexible grip), I was ready to place my order on a site called Polytrans (the French are not big on sexy brand names).

The site claimed to offer free delivery on orders over 49 euros, so I calculated my order to include an additional item, bringing the total to just over 50 euros. But when it came time to place my order, lo and behold, the site offered me a so-called ‘loyalty discount’ based on a previous order, deducting three euros off the total and adding in 7.50 for delivery. Gah!

I called the number listed on the website for support, politely explaining my case and expecting that they would simply remove the ‘discount’ and let me get on with it. No such luck. All I had to do, the woman explained in a voice that suggested she regularly dealt with dummies, was order some small item to make up the difference and get free delivery. When I told her that I’d already done this, and frankly, their loyalty points were having the opposite effect, she dropped the mask of customer service and said that there was no way she could change the order anyway. Imagine if they had to do that for everyone?

Needless to say, I hung up and took my business elsewhere.

When the French complain about ‘unfair’ competition from the Amazons of this world, I will point out that little example of customer ‘service’. It is just one among so many others. When they moan about the loss of local jobs and soaring unemployment, I will think about my half-painted façade, along with the handful of other jobs (electrical, roof, cleaning) we’d be happy to pay for if only we could find someone willing to do them.

Et oui. C’est comme ça.

Have you had a memorable customer experience lately, in France or elsewhere?

Pronunciation Tips

Posted on by MELewis

By USFWS Mountain-Prairie (Barn Owl) [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Or how to avoid ‘la cata’

A friend of mine was moaning the other day about the fact that the French never understand her efforts to speak the lingo. An American who’s lived in French-speaking parts for several years, she’s done her darndest to learn the language. But try as she might, she finds herself frequently misunderstood en français.

You know immediately when that happens. The French facial expression goes from neutral to vaguely pained, then contorted, as if suffering a bout of indigestion. If no understanding dawns, in a few short seconds this will resolve into a blank of incomprehension, possibly accompanied by the Gallic shrug and what’s popularly called the face fart.

I can sympathize with my American friend, even though my own experience was a little different. I have a fair accent and initially had less trouble making myself understood (at least as far as the language went – meaning was something else…) But it also meant they assumed I understood them – for me the bigger problem. This unleashed a stream of garble that left me blushing and stammering to decipher.

Learning a language, it seems you always do one thing better than the other at first. Understand or be understood.

As far as speaking goes, sometimes it’s a small thing that makes the difference. A nuance of pronunciation can foil your best effort to go native. In my friend’s case, she has a problem with emphasis. I think this is probably a question of ear. I have a good ear for music as I used to sing, a great many moons ago. So I hear the music of the language. And am able to parrot sounds back.

Here are my top 3 pronunciation tips for fledgling French speakers:

1. Become a slave to the rhythm
Forget the words for a moment. Just listen to the music of spoken French – in a film, on the radio, in conversation on the street. Wrap your ear around it. People’s voices go up and down, although not in the same ways as they do in English. It will sound different in staccato Parisian than in sing-song Provençal accents, but if you get that basic beat of the language, you’re half way to speaking French like a native.

2. Move your vowels
Don’t worry about the consonants. No one will be confused if you don’t growl the French r-r-r right in the back of your throat. But get your vowels right. Especially ou vs u. Try practicing in front of a mirror. To do the French ‘oo’ you really need to shape your mouth like you imagine an owl hooting (I’m not sure they really do this!). Whereas you hardly open your lips at all to do the ‘u’ – just stick your tongue behind your teeth.

3. Don’t put the emPHAsis on the wrong syllABle.
When I first met my husband in Toronto, he tried to tell me about going to see one of our most famous landmarks. So famous that he couldn’t understand how I’d never heard of it.  But have you ever heard a French person try to pronounce Niagara Falls? (It came out sounding like some remote place in Africa.) But it’s a tricky one. Not only do you have to get the vowel sounds right, you have to hit the syllables: Ny-AG-ra.

The trick in French is that there’s almost always an emphasis on the last syllable. This is very different from English. Take the Eiffel Tower. We say: EYE-ful TOW-er. But in French, it’s Tour eh-FELL.

(On a recent trip back to Canada I was teased by my brother for pronouncing our former President’s name as Sarko-zee! It seems they were all saying Sar-Cozy, making him sound like a teddy bear.)

Hence, my friend’s attempts to say “C’est une cata” (a quirky short form for ‘It’s a catastrophe’ — something that happens a lot here) went over people’s heads. She was saying CAT-a instead of cat-AH!

Let me conclude with a plea to the French: the one thing, la seule petite chose, you can do to help a non-native speaker is to slow it down a tad. Try not to run the words together quite so much. Give us a moment for the hard drive to register the words, and perhaps a few seconds to capture the sense of the phrase.

Actually that plea probably applies to native speakers of any language.

How about you? What’s your favorite tale of being (mis)understood in another language?