I wonder how you say boysenberry?

Feb 29, 2008 (did you do some kind of leap today? I did.)

People have been asking me alot recently how my French is. It's a weird question to me. I'm sure I could take some kind of competency test, and respond, "My French is at a B2 level," but well...the person asking probably wouldn't know what that means. So...compared to the average American, my French is quite good. Compared to the average French person, my French is terrible. And compared to all the non-French people in France, my French is somewhere in between quite good and terrible.

I can have conversations. I can communicate my needs (unless it's getting my building manager to deal with my sink). I can give directions, tell stories, and even, every once in a while, make a joke.

All of that said, I still encounter plenty of words that I don't know. Today's word(s) were a little more fun to learn...because I didn't have a dictionary, and I wasn't talking to a friend who is patient and understanding and gracious.

The first word I learned was "avoir." (For all of you who know French, please don't freak out on me, thinking that I don't know the word for "to have." Of course I know that "avoir" is 'to have.' Hence my confusion when the saleslady said it in a way that did not, in any way, mean "to have.") I had gone to a store to return something I'd bought. When I'd purchased it, I'd asked if I could return in, and was told "of course." No details given. When I returned it today, a different saleslady explained that she would give me "avoir." We went round and round, until I said, "You cannot give me my money back, but you can give me something and I can come again later and use it to buy something then?" Yes. Okay...avoir means store credit. Got it.

The second one, however, was a bit more fun. Sue Wee and I went to the smoothie place in the mall for the first time today. I've been craving a smoothie for days, and she remembered there is a place in the mall. As we stood looking at the menu, I struggled to keep my berries straight.

Fraise--strawberry
Framboise--raspberry
Myrtille--blueberry
Mure--what?

I stared at 'myrtille' and 'mure' and knew that one of them was blueberry. So what other kind of berry is there? I asked Sue Wee if she knew what a 'mure' was, and she didn't. Finally, we asked the woman working what a 'mure' was. She went and got one and brought it over to us. Sue Wee saw it and said, (in English), "It's a raspberry!"

I shook my head. "No, raspberry is framboise." The worker woman heard the word "framboise," and shook her head, and said in French, "No. It's not a framboise."

I asked Sue Wee, "Do you think it's a blackberry?"
She said, "But it's red. Raspberries are red. Are blackberries red--like that?"

We must have amused the worker woman. Especially since I really didn't care what kind of berry it was...I like all berries, so go ahead and throw the mysterious 'mure' into my smoothie. We stared at the menu for awhile longer, because all of the "boosts" were um...not understandable. I'm not sure I'd call them French. Official chemical names, maybe. What amused me most (and for which I am also thankful), is that the NAMES of the drinks (at least the ones with boosts) were in English...which helped me guess what the boost was.

There was the WAKE ME UP--with an energy boost, is my guess.
And the PROTECT ME--with an immunity boost.
And the SUPER VITAMIN--with, well...lots of vitamins.

So some days, my language still resorts to pointing and object lessons, like today at the smoothie shop. Most days, it consists of me forgetting words I use all the time (like 'maybe,' or 'since,' or 'early,') and having to ask the person next to me to spot the vocab real quick. I'm still learning new words every day. And today--I got some store credit and a PROTECT ME smoothie with blackberries in it to boot. Now, if I could just learn some colloquial phrases like 'to boot.'