Are you contemplating the exciting yet slightly daunting prospect of attending Normandy 2014 (and if you don’t know what I’m talking about then clearly you aren’t)? If so, I have a few tips to help you prepare for your adventure.
The first thing you will need to do is learn how to correctly pronounce the name of the host city, so that when you inevitably become lost at an airport, train station or highway intersection – and if you’re a really bad navigator, all three – you will be able to articulate your destination in a comprehensible fashion to the French person you have carefully selected (by clothing and age) for assistance. Caen isn’t pronounced ANYTHING like you would expect. If you can speak a little French, just pronounce ‘Caen’ the same as you would say the French word for ‘when’. If, however, you don’t know how to pronounce ‘quand’, discard this as an option because you will probably end up pronouncing ‘Caen’ so badly that no one will have a clue what you are trying to say.
If you are a member of the non-French speaking majority in North America, here is a tip on how to pronounce ‘Caen’. Start to say the word ‘con’. Just as you get past the first two letters and begin to approach the ‘n’, imagine you are at the dentist’s and your tongue is frozen, refusing to make contact with your upper palate. The ‘n’ kind of vanishes into your throat. The only potential pitfall to using ‘con’ as your pronunciation guide is that ‘con’ is in fact a common, vulgar insult in France. Make sure to convey to your potential French guide that you are looking for a place, and not calling him a name. We all tend to raise our voices and get a bit frantic when we can’t make ourselves understood to someone who doesn’t speak our native tongue. Shouting ‘con! con! con!’ at a French person is not likely to get you a whole lot of help.
And still on the topic of French language, segueing into French culture and attitudes: even if you don’t speak more than two words of French – which in the case of most people would be ‘bonjour’ and ‘oui’, but in mine would be ‘biere’ and ‘vin’ – everyone loves it when a foreigner at least attempts to communicate in the language of their land. It shows respect and a desire to understand the culture of the place you are visiting. Even if you have only a few words, don’t be afraid to jump in. Swallow your fear of making a mistake, especially in France, for this simple reason: in all my travels and all my attempts, however feeble, to say something in French, Spanish, Portuguese, Greek, Italian, German or Czech, there is only one people who have never hesitated to correct my errors. You guessed it, it’s the French. If you ask a French person a question in his or her native tongue, and you make some small mistake of grammar or pronunciation, you can expect to receive a correction to your diction before you receive an answer to your question. Don’t be offended. Take it as a free lesson, and don’t be discouraged from trying your French again next time.
Are you contemplating the exciting yet slightly daunting prospect of attending Normandy 2014 (and if you don’t know what I’m talking about then clearly you aren’t)? If so, I have a few tips to help you prepare for your adventure.
The first thing you will need to do is learn how to correctly pronounce the name of the host city, so that when you inevitably become lost at an airport, train station or highway intersection – and if you’re a really bad navigator, all three – you will be able to articulate your destination in a comprehensible fashion to the French person you have carefully selected (by clothing and age) for assistance. Caen isn’t pronounced ANYTHING like you would expect. If you can speak a little French, just pronounce ‘Caen’ the same as you would say the French word for ‘when’. If, however, you don’t know how to pronounce ‘quand’, discard this as an option because you will probably end up pronouncing ‘Caen’ so badly that no one will have a clue what you are trying to say.
If you are a member of the non-French speaking majority in North America, here is a tip on how to pronounce ‘Caen’. Start to say the word ‘con’. Just as you get past the first two letters and begin to approach the ‘n’, imagine you are at the dentist’s and your tongue is frozen, refusing to make contact with your upper palate. The ‘n’ kind of vanishes into your throat. The only potential pitfall to using ‘con’ as your pronunciation guide is that ‘con’ is in fact a common, vulgar insult in France. Make sure to convey to your potential French guide that you are looking for a place, and not calling him a name. We all tend to raise our voices and get a bit frantic when we can’t make ourselves understood to someone who doesn’t speak our native tongue. Shouting ‘con! con! con!’ at a French person is not likely to get you a whole lot of help.
And still on the topic of French language, segueing into French culture and attitudes: even if you don’t speak more than two words of French – which in the case of most people would be ‘bonjour’ and ‘oui’, but in mine would be ‘biere’ and ‘vin’ – everyone loves it when a foreigner at least attempts to communicate in the language of their land. It shows respect and a desire to understand the culture of the place you are visiting. Even if you have only a few words, don’t be afraid to jump in. Swallow your fear of making a mistake, especially in France, for this simple reason: in all my travels and all my attempts, however feeble, to say something in French, Spanish, Portuguese, Greek, Italian, German or Czech, there is only one people who have never hesitated to correct my errors. You guessed it, it’s the French. If you ask a French person a question in his or her native tongue, and you make some small mistake of grammar or pronunciation, you can expect to receive a correction to your diction before you receive an answer to your question. Don’t be offended. Take it as a free lesson, and don’t be discouraged from trying your French again next time.
