This evening my friend in Paris said that I should make the reservation for our dinner at a nearby French restaurant, and she was quite insistent that I do this in french (because it would be good for me).<\/p>\n
I called up the restaurant and made a reservation for 8pm (actually for “vingt heures”, which means 20 hours, if you do it in french, because they are on a 24 hour clock). I stumbled a bit here and there, but I thought I was doing pretty well, until the pleasant sounding guy on the other end switched into english.<\/p>\n
Please understand that for an American, speaking to French people in french and having them reply in english is a total fail. They probably think they are being polite (or, that is, I hope<\/i> they do), but to us it’s like being punched in the stomach, the cultural equivalent of “you clueless American, how could a boob like you ever think you could speak to us in our own language and not be found out?”<\/p>\n
If you know what I mean.<\/p>\n
But then my friend realized it would be better to change the reservation for 7:30pm, and she told me to call the restaurant back. This time, I was resolved to go for the win.<\/p>\n
When that same man got on the line, I plunged forward, speaking in french with a firm resolve, and a renewed assurance borne from my fear of failure. I was commanding, yet I was polite. I gave a clear and unambiguous account of myself and of the situation. I was very french.<\/p>\n
And I was rewarded. This time, the man never broke into english, but rather continued the entire conversation to its conclusion in french.<\/p>\n
Success! My life was validated. My entire reason for existing on this planet suddenly held meaning, flavor, resonance. I realized that from this moment forth in my life, there would be nothing I could not do, nothing I could not accomplish with my vast, almost God-like powers.<\/p>\n
For I had ordered a reservation dans la belle langue fran\u00e7ais<\/i>†<\/sup>. And had been given a response — oh my foes and oh my friends — in french.<\/p>\n Yes!<\/i> One for the win. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n † It’s funnier if you read the comments<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This evening my friend in Paris said that I should make the reservation for our dinner at a nearby French restaurant, and she was quite insistent that I do this in french (because it would be good for me). I called up the restaurant and made a reservation for 8pm (actually for “vingt heures”, which … Continue reading “Ordering in french”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6632"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6632"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6632\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6639,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6632\/revisions\/6639"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}