Pet Peeve
Let me vent here a little, afterall what good is having a blog if you can’t vent, right?! I have this pet peeve that drives me crazy! I’m an avid reader and I love not only books, but also reading newspapers, magazines, other blogs, etc. but I can’t for the life of me understand why people think it’s necessary to show others how much (or how little) French they know!
I really haven’t found this phenomenon used so extensively with any other language than French. Do people actually think it’s so chic, or that others will be so impressed, when they sprinkle in a word of French into their blog, their newspaper article, or their autobiography? Probably so! Otherwise, I see no other logical reason for them to do it!
Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for artistic expression and sometimes it’s imperative in a novel, song, or poem, but I see no value in placing a French word in every third sentence just for the hell of it, or for the reasons I’ve stated above! They don’t seem to take into consideration that if I’m annoyed and I speak French, how annoyed would people be who do not!
I had another blog at one point (which is on hiatus), but I wrote either my entire post in French or in English. I didn’t smatter a word of English here or there in my French articles, or vice-versa! It just drives me up a wall when people do that! I’m convinced (until proven otherwise) that the majority of people who are guilty of this ridiculous habit are people who actually do not have command of the language, but want others to believe they do.
If you go through my posts, you will find that the few times I’ve used a French word or expression, I have put the English translation in parenthesis, or else the French word is a word that you can find in an English dictionary, such as arrondissement, charcuterie, vis-à-vis, etc. I find so many anglophone blogs about France in violation of this crime that I’ve stopped reading them! (Lol, yes I can be dramatic at times!) A pity really, since some of them have interesting things to say; but they have a tendency of doing this constantly that it becomes too damn tedious and annoying to read!!!
When I was in Québec, I was very impressed with the fact that everything is written in French without so much as a smidgen of English cropping up here or there. If only these English speaking people who are guilty of this ridiculous habit could take the Québécois as an example, they may find that they would get a lot more readership!!!
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Tags: b5media, blogs, books, English-language, france, French, French-language, Lost-in-Translation, magazines, newspapers, novels, paris, Paris-Traveler, Québécois, Quebec, the paris traveler, TinTinRelated Stories
POSTED IN: Miscellaneous, Uncategorized
4 opinions for Pet Peeve
Clara
Aug 15, 2007 at 2:48 pm
LOL Lynn, this is something I’ve always been thinking about! Sometimes the French words are even in italic and when there isn’t any offering of translation, being a non-French speaker, I try to guess the meaning but well…sometimes I still have no idea unless I reach out for a translation software. :-)
Lynn
Aug 15, 2007 at 4:12 pm
Thank you Clara! My point exactly! Rather than the reader saying, “Wow! Look at all the French that person knows!” Instead, you’re trying to decipher what they wrote when they could very easily have written it in English!!!
French Word A Day
Sep 17, 2007 at 4:12 pm
[…] What I like about her blog, however, is she teaches her readers French as opposed to my “Pet Peeve” where so many bloggers in the blogosphere just add French words into their posts for no […]
You Want Rants?! Okay, I’ll Give You Rants!
Sep 19, 2007 at 2:24 am
[…] going on right now and I’ll tell you how I got there! About a month ago I wrote a post called Pet Peeve and it was perfect for this Theme Day, but could I use it?! No! “Why not?” you ask. […]
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