All us ex-pats will cheerfully acknowledge that it has not been easy to acquire our level of French language, however modest. You can imagine, then, my amusement this morning to see some native speakers in difficulty with their own language.
I was watching TéléMatin on French TV this morning as I drank my first coffee of the day having first fed my menagerie of cats, dogs, sheep and tropical fish. This is a daily morning programme of news and snippets of interest presided over by William, a genial host of a `certain age` as the French say. Incidentally, this is a good way to improve your French and your knowledge of our adopted country. A young lady contributer was explaining how a fashion house had devised a way of re-cycling des baches publicitaires, those large plastic sheets or tarpaulins, printed with huge publicity photos, that you see lashed to, or breaking loose from buildings. They were cutting them up for fashionable shopping bags, she explained. William seemed amazed at this revelation, as well he might be, as it turned out that he had misheard the raw material as vaches publicitaires! He must have had in mind those lovely cows depicted producing creamy milk for cheese or yoghurt, or even the purple cow in the Milka chocolate ad, though this is, I am sure, a computer construct. His hesitant and slightly shocked suggestion of Biftec haché, or mince, alerted the contributer to a crossed line, and she corrected him crossly, Non,non, pas vaches, baches avec un `B` comme en biberon! I do hope his air of bonhommie is not assumed or I am sure she would have been taken to task after the cameras had moved elsewhere! Funny, though...
Bye for now, going to walk the dogs.
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