bout de papier, Vol. 28, No. 3 (2014) — Winter 2014–15 // Hiver 2014-2015, p. 30
One of the great things about Canada is its bilingual character. That’s not only because having a second language is another window on the world, but it also allows for fairly odd and funny moments — almost always inadvertent — that we otherwise would miss. A bilingual product of the Lycée (at least for a time), I have a tendency to mix and match parts of the languages, or perhaps more accurately, mix and mash. Back at the Embassy after a great weekend, and speaking in English, I asked a colleague if he had “passed” a good weekend? Thinking himself something of a wit he, of course, replied: “Tt was a gas”.
“Bilingual” jokes have an honoured place here. Apparently Prime Minister John Diefenbaker, whose French was truly notorious, once defended himself with all mock gravitas, jowls swinging and jiggling (as only his could), and announced that he spoke perfectly good French, “…there isn’t an English-speaking Canadian who doesn’t understand me when I use it”! They work both ways. My brother certainly understood the drift of the Dean of the University of Ottawa Medical School when he first addressed the new students some years ago: “You arrive full of rough hedges, but you will leave smooth as ball-bearing!” Unmistakable translation: if you mean to graduate, fasten your seat belts!
One of my favourite “bilingualisms” was thanks to a good friend who enjoyed a petit chateau an hour or so north of New York. He wanted us to go the garden to collect fresh veggies for a salad…quintessentially bourgeois from somewhere near the Loire, and obviously thinking in French — voulant des to mates bien rouges — he asked us very seriously to only pick “well-read tomatoes”. I am not sure he expected guffaws all round, but we made quite a show of checking the literacy of our bright red friends.
My very favourite “mash” of languages goes even farther back to when I served as a “placier” (or huissier for continental types) at the National Arts Centre. My chum and I were barely 19 (the only two Anglophones among the placiers). Our supervisor might have been on the far side of 20, fresh from somewhere in northern Ontario like Smooth Rock Falls — not exactly a hotbed of Shakespearian studies. We were all thoroughly obnoxious, though as 19-year-olds we claimed first prize. An enormously nice guy, his name was Claude Paul — perfectly good name, but which we always pronounced “clodpole”, mostly because he had no idea how awful we really were.
Well, one evening a very elegant woman drifted by the Studio, the kind who somehow glides across the floor. He looked at her with obvious longing, turned to us and said in all seriousness: “Aaaah, nature calls”. Of course — to his horror — we exploded into laughter…Perhaps to our collective good fortune she had entered the Studio oblivious of just what kind of compliment she had been paid. As Canadians we should always admire Shakespeare and Moliére, but meanwhile a few of us will have some fun with our great cultural patrimoine and maybe make some fun of ourselves into the bargain — et pourquoi pas?
Stuart Hughes is a retired Foreign Service Officer and Editor of bout de papier. (Have a favourite vignette? Send it!)
Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 28, No. 3 (2014) — Winter 2014–15 // Hiver 2014-2015, p. 30. Read the rest of this issue →
