Month: December 2014

In general, private time is valued more than work time here, much differently from in the United States.  People are generally not willing to give up their personal time in exchange for a small amount of extra money, so the vast majority of Parisian businesses close quite early, by American standards–by 7 PM, or 8 PM at the latest.  This means that if you work at all past 6 PM and you have a significant commute home, you’re going to have trouble doing any normal shopping.  Additionally, most businesses are closed on Sunday.  So, Saturday is a day when many stores are crowded with people buying all of the stuff that they weren’t able to pick up during the week.

By noon today, I had done two loads of laundry and had been to the fromagerie (cheese shop), the fruit marchand (stall keeper, shop keeper, merchant), the boulangerie (bread bakery, as opposed to a patisserie, or pasty bakery), and the fleuriste (florist), with a final stop at the supermarché (supermarket–actually a very small one, rather than the Monoprix, which, as you may remember from previous posts, is a horrid experience) for the stuff that I couldn’t find anywhere else.  Along the way, I popped into a Middle Eastern restaurant for a quick lamb tongue sandwich–yum.  This leaves me time for a long Saturday afternoon of grading corpus linguistics papers–yay!

• le/la fleuriste: florist.

As you might recall from previous posts, I climb a serious hill on my way to work every morning.  The other day, I’m working my way up the hill when an elderly gentleman pokes his head out the window and says:

Elderly Gentleman: ça va?  (How are you?)

Me: ça va bien.  (I’m fine.)

EG: ça va bien?  (You’re fine?)

Me: oui, ça va bien.  (Yes, I’m fine.)

EG: bon courage!  (No exact translation–you say this to encourage someone who’s taking on a difficult task.)

Where do people come up with the idea that the French just aren’t friendly?

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The steepest part of the hill that I have to negotiate going to and from work is so steep that it’s even hard to get down.  The other day, I’m working my down it after work.  As I gingerly pick my way downhill, I hear a clop-clop-clop-clop coming down the hill behind me, and a woman passes me, running down the hill in heels.  Only in France.  Well, maybe also in Romania or Albania.  But, mostly just in France.

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Useful words:

• chaussures à talons hauts: high-heeled shoes.
• escarpins (m. n.): also high-heeled shoes.
• Bon courage: said to encourage someone who’s taking on a difficult task.

The front-page story on the free newspaper that someone handed me as I got on the Métro was about a court case that just started.  Two families of twenty-year-old girls are filing suit because their daughters were switched at birth.  With such an unlikely occurrence, why wouldn’t Zipf’s Law strike over and over?

• le procès: trial, lawsuit, (divorce) proceedings
• intervertir: to switch, invert, exchange
• la maternité: maternity hospital; motherhood, maternity; pregnancy
• épuisant: exhausting
• afficher: put up; post; display; exhibit; reveal
• le sourire: smile
• le sien: his, hers, its
• les siens: one’s loved ones
• accoucher: to have a baby, to be in labor
• accoucher de: to struggle to produce
• accoucher d’un garçon: to give birth to/to have a boy
• une enquête: investigation; inquiry; (sondage d’opinion) survey
• la jaunisse: jaundice
• la couveuse: incubator

I’m getting settled into the office after having been gone all fall, which means paperwork.  Here are some words that came up in the course of my work day:

• la formation permanente: in-service training.
• une attestation: certificate, certification, proof.  I have to bring an attestation of employment to the cafeteria in order to get my meal card renewed.
• un exemplaire: among other things, a copy.  I need an exemplaire of my contract to bring to the bank.
• se tromper de + nom: to get the wrong [noun].

I took the day off of work today to open a French bank account, which for various reasons turns out to be crucial to my ability to function here, even for just a few weeks at a time.  I walked into the bank and learned that you don’t just walk into a bank and open an account–you walk into a bank and make an appointment to open an account.  This actually isn’t as crazy as it sounds, since it gives the bank a chance to prepare the paperwork ahead of time (e.g., I have to fill out an American W-9 to open an account in a French bank, believe it or not), and it lets you find out what kind of documentation you will need to provide, not all of which would have occurred to me (e.g., I have to bring a copy of my employment contract).

Zipf’s Law struck, of course.  It came in the form of the word justificatif, which is written proof or written evidence.  I have to provide a justificatif d’addresse–written proof of address.  For some reason, I have enormous amounts of trouble pronouncing this word, which the bank clerk was very kind to say slowly for me when I stumbled over it repeatedly–ju-sti-fi-ca-tif.  When I left, she said that my French is great, to which I responded that I wish it were, but it isn’t, to which she responded: “Well…for an American.”  Smiles all around.