Cosmic Prose

Natasha Regehr

Tag: France

Lest We Forget: Pass it On

July 6, 2024 / / 4 Comments

I did not wear a poppy last year on Remembrance Day.  It wasn’t a statement: I simply forgot.

But as I learned today on the shores of Dieppe, forgetting is a statement.

Yesterday I visited the famed Flanders Fields of John McCrae’s poem.  Rows of crosses, row on row.  Thousands and thousands of them.  Each representing a boy-child, son, husband, father, lost on the Ypres Salient in World War I, gaining a mere eight kilometres for the Allies through the many months of brutal attacks.  Stones marked “A soldier of the Great War, known unto God” because their bodies could not be identified in the carnage.  Men lost to the first crippling gas attacks, in the days before gas masks.  Men whose body parts could not be sorted from the others and reassembled for a proper burial.  Men who died, and died, and died again, not knowing the outcome of the war that was supposed to end all wars.

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DELF Unpacked: Don’t Ever Lose Faith

September 2, 2018 / / 5 Comments

Natasha here, reporting in on the aftermath of the infamous DELF B2.

I was worried.  Let’s find some better descriptors, now that I’m functioning in my mother tongue.  Words like chagrined, nausea-ridden, paralyzed.  I dreaded that exam.  My entire body was stiff with tension for eight solid weeks, from the moment I walked into my first class to the day after the inquisition.  My long-awaited summer in France turned out to be, in many ways, a summer of travail and trepidation.

And then, just like that, I passed.  Not just by the skin of my teeth.  Not just with a satisfactory margin of breathing room. Not quite with the flying colours I secretly dreamed of.  But almost.  Almost.

At one point, I re-coined the DELF acronym (“Diplome d’Etudes en Langue Française”) as “Dumb, Enigmatic Lists of Faults.”  I still kind of think that.  The test-makers are simply méchants, in my well-studied opinion.  They rub their hands in delight as they formulate one trick question after another, in a sinister attempt to separate the dumb from the dumber.  I know.  I met one of them.  And she was mean.

But do you know what it was that bumped my score down two points from the 80% I’d hoped for?  Continue reading

Venez!

August 28, 2018 / / 4 Comments

A few weeks ago, I posted my very first French blog.  I am re-posting it today, with two critical changes:

  1. For those of you who asked for an English version of the original story, scroll down to the end to find a rather crude translation.
  2. For those of you who are curious to hear my weird Canadian-Moroccan-American-French accent, I have added an audio recording of the story as well.  It will make you laugh, even if it’s not supposed to.  Which it is.

Audio Version:

(with many thanks to my good friend in Vichy, for teaching me how to say “hockey” in French, and for letting me teach her a few Canadianisms as well)  

For those of you who didn’t read the original story and have no idea what I’m talking about, here’s where it all began…

Original Story:

This summer I got to do a little creative writing in my French class! We were asked to write a funny story that exaggerates the stereotypes that foreigners have of our home countries.  My Spanish, Mexican, Brazilian, Korean, American, and Basque classmates shared their stories, and then I offered up this little piece of Canadiana, inspired in part by our beloved Bob and Doug McKenzie.

Warning: This is my very first blog-worthy French composition.  There might be errors.  You might be offended.  Be gentle with me.

Venez! Venez! Venez au Canada! On vous accueille, comme on accueille tout le monde, tout le temps! Venez!

Dès que vous arriverez, on vous mènera à votre igloo, où vous dormirez en tout confort, en portant votre anorak et votre toque!

Le lendemain matin, vous prendrez votre déjeuner (au Canada, nos repas sont tous mélangées): un bonne portion de poutine avec une bonne portion de bière (Molson Canadian, bien sûr).  On vous donnera vos patins pour votre premier match de hockey.

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La magie des mots

August 10, 2018 / / 2 Comments

Something has happened to my French, and it’s because I’ve made a friend.

She is a retired doctor.  She’s travelled the world.  She has a tiny little dog called Charmeur.  And she loves words.  Words thrill her, as they do me.  I read her paragraphs from books that stir me, and she recites poetry with all the animation of a master story-teller, and we delight together in this magical, magical space called language.

It’s a space that we inhabit together while seated at the Grand Casino Cafe, so named for its proximity to what used to be a casino, but is now something else.  It’s a space that we inhabit together over tea, coffee, kir, water, chocolate.  It’s a space we inhabit through the careful completion of grammar exercises, the meticulous correction of essays, and the endless parroting of phonetics.  It’s a space we inhabit from 12:15 – 1:45 every day, and it is changing me. Continue reading

Faux French, Riviera Style

July 11, 2018 / / 2 Comments

Have you been wondering how I’ve been faring since I bade farewell to les vaches?

I am slowly adjusting to life on the French Riviera.

Slowly.

My drive here was uneventful, except for that time my GPS became my enemy and led me in circles for two hours in downtown Nice during the height of tourist season.  Navigation systems don’t do well with pedestrian-only streets.  That’s all I’ll say about that.

And now I am perched on a hill overlooking the uppity town of Villefranche-sur-mer, with its uppity yachts, BMWs, and fake hedges. Why anyone would need a fake hedge in this lotus land is beyond me, but there it is.  Why water a real hedge when you can buy a fake one?

No, to be honest, I’m missing the friendly, down-to-earth charm of my village in the Alps.  Well, okay, the cows were not so friendly.  But there was an endearing honesty to that place, a sense that life had substance, and that everything else was somehow false.

Not so with the French Riviera.  Everything here feels half-empty, like the soul of the place just drained out into the Mediterranean when the people all arrived. I’m sure at one time it was quaint and delightful and historically significant; but right now, it feels to me like a toy neighbourhood, constructed out of blocks and toothpicks and dotted with plastic accessories.  Doll houses, all, papered in Euros…

But I, too, am a falsehood, here on the French Riviera.

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Holy Cows, Batman

July 3, 2018 / / 0 Comments

I dearly wish that I had had the wherewithal to prendre un photo of the cows that ran me down, but alas, stampedes do not lend themselves to portraiture.

Fortunately, I have words.

Do you remember the days before the touchless car-wash? Do you remember its predecessor? The one with the big, sudsy brushes that advance on you and engulf you, while you sit helplessly in the car and wait for it all to be over?

Wait, let’s back up a bit.  And by “back up,” I mean, reculer, in case you didn’t know.  But of course you did.

My day started with to-die-for jam (peaches and spice) and conversation around the breakfast table at a farm in the Southern French Alps.  I learned that the French drink tea out of rather big bowls, and that parapente is the French word for paragliding.  More on that later.

Scene Two: I am in my rental car, fiddling with the GPS, and then setting off ever-so-slowly down the winding mountain road to my first activity for the day.  I am leaving early, so I have plenty of time to get lost or have some other disaster befall me, both of which, of course, happened.

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Maybe!

June 18, 2018 / / 0 Comments

I have been stressing out about French. Have you noticed? Likely not, because you think I’m still obsessing about the Royal Wedding.  Forget that.  I’m over it.

No, French is my ongoing obsession, more than ever now, as the stakes creep higher in equal proportion to my rising self-doubt.

What if I can’t do it? What if, no matter how much I study and how long I persist, I never pass beyond the blundering idiot phase of language learning? Oh, sure, I’m less of a blundering idiot than I was three years ago, when I couldn’t say, “I want to walk up the hill.” But the subjunctive has its own mode of blunder induction (did you catch that, French-speakers? Its own mode?).  The more I learn, the more I blunder.

Now, these rising stakes of which I speak so melodramatically.  What are they? Well, you know.  Employment. That about sums it up.  You see, I miss Canada. Continue reading

Nice Lines, Lady

April 21, 2016 / / 0 Comments

“Qu’est-ce que vous voulez faire aujourd’hui?” asked the Artist. What do you want to do?

The two dignified women beside me knew exactly what they wanted to “faire.” Silhouettes. Watercolours. Realistic paintings of realistic people. Crap like that.

“Et vous?” she asked again.

Gulp.

“I’m not a trained artist,” I stammered, “mais j’aime jouer avec les coleurs.”

The three real artists in the room smiled condescendingly, and a little amusedly. Jouer? Play? What nonsense was this?

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A Canadian in Paris, Part 2: Market Value

April 3, 2016 / / 2 Comments

Screen Shot 2016-04-03 at 8.35.55 PMI woke up later than I’d planned. I’d best get moving if I want to experience artistic ecstasy at the Louvre, and still have time to lose myself in the ultimate flea market, all before 6pm. No time for dawdling. Where’s that market? Oh dang, I accidentally closed that tab. Google search… markets in Paris… oh, here it is. Marché St. Denis. Quick. Find it on the map. Find the Louvre. Find a route between the two. Hmmm. No simple route presents itself. That’s okay. I will ask the informative people at the Louvre. They are designed to be helpful. So one would assume.

And off I went. Metro. Louvre. Artistic ecstasy. Check.

“Excusez-moi? Quelle est la meilleur route au Marché St. Denis?” I asked, pointing to the place I’d circled on my map.

“I speak English,” replied the girl behind the tourist desk. Like I’d asked.

“What’s the best way to get to this market?” I asked again.

“I went there once,” she said, coolly. “I didn’t like it.”

Did I ask what language you speak? Did I ask if you like flea markets? Of course you don’t. You’re a snooty, polished Parisian who works behind the information desk at the snootiest, most aristocratic cultural destination on the planet. Just tell me how to get there, already.

She told me. I went. I was beside myself with anticipation. Continue reading

A Canadian in Paris, Part 1: Under the Eiffel, Eh?

April 1, 2016 / / 0 Comments

IMG_5936“Let’s meet under the Eiffel Tower at 10am.”

How’s that for a statement you don’t hear every day? Particularly from your pals in humble Peterborough, 6,000 km from anything remotely Parisian?

It was March, 2016, and I was living in Morocco. I had some medical concerns that I felt weren’t being adequately addressed in Casablanca, and had planned a last-minute consultation with a specialist at the American Hospital in Paris. I was desperate for a conclusive diagnosis and action plan for my increasingly distressing health situation; but what I ended up with was so very much more enlightening than the coveted doctor’s report.

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