The great push to C2 (Extra French Edition)

[overscore]

I've been listening to a lot of high-falutin' intellectual analysis lately, and that won't help much when I forget the word for "mop". I'll let you know how it goes... only a few more weeks!

Sounds like France alright! The word for 'mop' here up north is . . une moppe!

[Ogrim]

I've been listening to a lot of high-falutin' intellectual analysis lately, and that won't help much when I forget the word for "mop". I'll let you know how it goes... only a few more weeks!

Sounds like France alright! The word for 'mop' here up north is . . une moppe!

Nice mop in that video!

A mop can have many names - although in standard French it is called serpillière, according to Wikipedia it can have a number of other names as well:

La serpillière est :

le torchon ou la loque à reloqueter des francophones de Belgique ;
le torchon de plancher des Lorrains ;
la bâche des Champenois ;
la since des Charentais et des poitevins ;
la gueille en bordeluche ;
le duel ou la wazing (prononcer [ouassingue]) des Dunkerquois ;
la toile à pavés des Normands ;
la loque à loqueter en rouchi valenciennois ;
la panosse de Suisse romande, de Savoie et de certains Jurassiens et Lyonnais ;
la vadrouille ou la moppe (de l'anglais mop) des Québécois et des Acadiens ;
le faubert ou la vadrouille dans la marine ;
la pièce des Provençaux ;
la peille des Sétois et de tout pays occitan ;
la frégone ou fregona des habitants du Sud-Ouest ;
la charpillère en Verduno-Chalonnais ;
et globalement, la wassingue dans le Nord de la France.

[whatiftheblog]

La serpillière est :

le torchon ou la loque à reloqueter des francophones de Belgique ;
le torchon de plancher des Lorrains ;
la bâche des Champenois ;
la since des Charentais et des poitevins ;
la gueille en bordeluche ;
le duel ou la wazing (prononcer [ouassingue]) des Dunkerquois ;
la toile à pavés des Normands ;
la loque à loqueter en rouchi valenciennois ;
la panosse de Suisse romande, de Savoie et de certains Jurassiens et Lyonnais ;
la vadrouille ou la moppe (de l'anglais mop) des Québécois et des Acadiens ;
le faubert ou la vadrouille dans la marine ;
la pièce des Provençaux ;
la peille des Sétois et de tout pays occitan ;
la frégone ou fregona des habitants du Sud-Ouest ;
la charpillère en Verduno-Chalonnais ;
et globalement, la wassingue dans le Nord de la France.

Hah, thanks! This reminds me of the whole reason I used "mop" as an example - I had a project at work where I had to do some research in Spanish, and normally this isn't a problem (if I'm confused, I'll ask Chrome to translate it into French), but I got stuck on the word "lavamopa", which seemed essential to the task and which Google didn't know. I suspected it had something to do with washing, but I didn't want to submit an inaccurate report, so I sought confirmation. I should note that I worked in an office teeming with native, college-and-beyond-educated Spanish speakers from every corner of Latin America/the world - Argentina, Costa Rica, Uruguay, Ecuador, and Spain were all stumped. Finally, my lovely Venezuelan colleague down the hall saved the day - "... it's a mop. Lava. Mopa. Mop." Duh!

In other news, I'm in France! YAY! I haven't yet had any embarrassing French slip-ups, so that's nice, though I do realize that I'm not quite as graceful in everyday situations as I wish I were, so that will require some additional work. School starts in a week and a half, and I'm fairly certain I'm the only foreigner in the program, so hopefully that'll go smoothly as well. My main concerns thus far have been administrative/logistical - I'm going to try to open a French bank account tomorrow, which I'll need to a) pay for school! and b) convert my pay-as-you-go SIM card to an actual plan. I solved the purgatorial issue of being unable to rent a place without a bank account and being unable to open a bank account without an address by going through Airbnb, which has been great thus far, but the place is actually being rented through an agency whose advice was "just use the owner's last name as your own", which... uh... won't work for formal French government mail. I'll need to attach my name to the corresponding mailbox in order to get my OFII / immigration notices and other administrative stuff, and I just noticed that someone's been taking self-affixed nameplates off the mailboxes, but hopefully mine will stay - I have actually considered typing up a little note, prayerfully begging whoever's in charge to leave it up or else I get deported, but I'm still not quite sure. My OFII paperwork has been sent off, and the people at the post office were exceedingly lovely, so I'm hoping they can handle delivering my envelope to a building literally 5 city blocks away. The change of attitude I've noticed in myself is interesting - whereas anything administrative I had to do in the US was usually accompanied by deep sighs, clenched fists and outbursts of "my tax dollars at work!!!", here I'm just like, "Please love me. Please accept me. I will do anything you ask. I will fill out all of the forms. I wish for nothing but to please you."

On the language front, I did have an interesting experience today - I don't have very much to do at the moment, so I watch a lot of French TV. I figured my everyday French would be helped by reality TV, which isn't the type of content I would normally consume. Five minutes in, I had to switch back to (very dry) parliamentary debates - half of the reality TV content was incomprehensible, the rest seemed to be the same seven phrases over and over again. I know I'll get there eventually, but I'm beginning to wonder if this is what English-language reality TV sounds like to foreigners? That said, I found a cool lineup of true crime documentaries that run on RMC Découverte in the mornings, and though I understand it's "chewing gum for your brain", as my mom would say, it's a guilty pleasure that serves a real purpose, so I'm filing it under "legitimate language study".

Finally, I gotta say that while my heart will forever belong to the PACA region, Alsace is *stunning*. If you have the chance to drive around here, it's absolutely breathtaking - majestic mountain ranges serve as dramatic backdrops for phenomenal vineyards, there are gorgeous forests in the Vosges half an hour away, every single village is an absolute fairytale setting, and every other storefront sells soft pretzels smothered in melted Emmental cheese. I am truly blessed.

[whatiftheblog]

I... am about to embark on perhaps the greatest written language output journey I've undertaken to date, and I'm counting my personal statement for school in that lineup: I'm about to write a letter to the President of France. Not joking here - I'm actually going to do it.

Let me be clear in that this isn't at all meant to be a political statement, nor is it intended as a dig at France/the French as a whole - I genuinely love this country. However, for a government that currently seems to be very interested in attracting foreigners to "contribute to the creation of national wealth", they've gotta move a little quicker on building up the attractiveness part. Foreign languages - and scripts! - came up in the most unexpected way over these past 48 hours, so I figured I'd share this story here. In short:

1. Can't rent an apartment without a French bank account.
2. Can't open a French bank account without a French address.
3. I thought I'd game the system by going through Airbnb, which isn't actually ideal at all, as it drives up rent for everyone, and affordable lodging is a major problem here, but I had no other choice.
4. I lucked out in that my Airbnb is managed by an agency, and the agency happened to have lovely people on staff, and those lovely people wrote me an "attestation de domicile". So far, so good. They also told me the bank would need to see an assurance habitation locataire as secondary confirmation of my address (this is incorrect), so I tried seven different agencies, all of which require IBANs to process your payment. US bank accounts don't have IBANs. If this is relevant for you, keep this in mind.
5. I show up at the bank anyway. Shockingly, the attestation de domicile works just fine, as does the attestation from my school indicating my enrollment. EXCEPT.
6. IF you weren't born a US citizen, your US passport will only list your country of birth, but not your city of birth (not sure if the same goes for natural-born US citizens who were born abroad).
7. Your city of birth is, for reasons unknown, somehow absolutely crucial to the process of opening a French bank account.
8. The associate tells me everything's fine, but they need a translation of my Soviet birth certificate indicating my city of birth. Disregarding the fact that said city has already been submitted to the French authorities through the French Consulate-General, and that I have a piece of paper validated by the Consulate confirming the same. With a stamp! They love stamps. And yet.
9. Realizing that it would simply be easier for me to pack up and move to China than to procure this, I offer to bring her my Russian passport. No worries, she says, that should work.
10. I get home and check. Under "place of birth", Russia wrote "Ленинград/USSR" in my Russian passport. Of course.
11. I figure I'd outsmart the system once again and get a quickie translation of it online, since they didn't specify which kind of translation they needed. DO NOT MAKE THE SAME MISTAKE. SAVE YOUR MONEY and read on.
12. I show up the next day. The translation I had done online is fine for this particular branch, but not for the bank's HQ. The branch manager happens to speak/read Russian and signs off on the validity of the translation. Still, no dice. HQ wants a traducteur assermenté to convert Ленинград into Léningrad. We're now in full-on Kafka mode.
13. A list of traducteurs assermentés can be found here: https://www.annuaire-traducteur-assermente.fr/ If you ever need to use them, and I recommend going straight to them for any and all translations, disregard their form and email them directly, attaching whatever documents you need translated. You don't even need to find a specific one in your département, just email the main office.
14. They email me back fairly quickly and quote me a very fair price. Cheaper than the weirdo online translation I got earlier. BUT! "It'll take two days." I don't have two days, since I need to initiate a transfer ASAP in order to pay for school on time (or so I thought... read on...).
15. My country of birth notwithstanding, I'm an AmeriCAN, not an AmeriCAN'T, as the meme goes, so I plead with them over email to get it via literally any available means by the following day. "I'm willing to pay double! Anything you need! Just let me know!" (Aside: the concept of throwing money at a problem to make it go away is entirely foreign to the French people.)
16. I get a response. "Well, the only thing I can offer you by tomorrow is a scanned copy over email." Ding-ding-ding! That's the only thing I need! JOY! (An official paper copy is, again, for reasons unknown, supposed to be arriving via snail mail. We have robots on Mars and you're sending me a translation by snail mail.)
17. I get a scanned copy over email. It works. Everything's great, except I'm now somehow registered with the bank as a Russian citizen with an American passport, despite having entered on a French visa in a US passport. "Oh, we don't even care about the visa." - But... but... but you care about my city of birth? However, that's still 48 hours and at least 3 full hours of a French bank employee's time that could've been saved by clear instructions for people wishing to bring you the capital you say you want to attract, France! All because of a few Cyrillic letters.
18. So now I'm all happy and I write to my school, since paying for school on time was the whole reason I drove everyone crazy for two days straight. "Hi, School! So excited to get started next week! How should I pay you?" - "Oh hey! Yeah, no worries, we can figure that out later, I'll let you know after classes start."



All of this to say, if you're planning the same (or a similar) move: 1) If your passport doesn't list your city of birth, have a clear idea of where your birth certificate is and get it translated in advance by a traducteur assermenté. You can pay them via Paypal and they only need a scan of your document to begin the translation process. 2) You'll read online that you need utility bills and rental contracts and all sorts of other nonsense to open a bank account. This is not entirely true. An attestation de domicile on official-looking letterhead will work. 3) Though everyone in France seems reluctant to accept money, showing up with foreign bank statements indicating you do, in fact, have some usually encourages them to look for creative solutions. This appears to be universal

So, uh, anyone ever written to a president before? In a foreign language? I aspire to be the change I wish to see in the world

[Ani]

This is awesome I love this. Please keep posting about your adventures in France!

(Aside: the concept of throwing money at a problem to make it go away is entirely foreign to the French people.)

Super funny although not entirely unexpected

[sfuqua]

This is an awesome log; please tell us more.

[Ogrim]

Bienvenue en France . I managed to settle in with less hassle, but maybe that is because I am a European.

I totally support your writing to the President. Please tell us if he replies to your letter.

[Adrianslont]

Your plight brought this song to mind. Well, not so much your plight - just the idea of writing to the President of France. And I enjoy sharing a good song.

Good luck.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gjndTXyk3mw

[whatiftheblog]

Thanks for the encouragement (and songs!), folks! Unfortunately, I'm actually having to deal with a non-administrative, non-banking problem right now - I have no idea where all my words have gone. My comprehension is at 100% - written, spoken, legal, banking, politics, Fort Boyard, basically everything that isn't really horrible reality TV nonsense, I'm good. However, and I've noticed (and written about) this before - it takes me at least 5-7 minutes within a conversation to find my groove, and it can't be before like, 2 pm. Writing formal emails to important people? Not a problem. Tweeting? Also okay. Speaking? I have no idea what I'm doing.

Two situations to illustrate my predicament:

1. I had a friend come visit me over the weekend. Okay, so we spent all evening Friday and all day Saturday speaking Russian, and that's on top of all the Russian I spoke with my mom while she was here a couple weeks ago, but 12 months of work shouldn't be wiped out by a few days, right? We were looking for a terrace to grab a drink yesterday afternoon, and there were two two-seater tables pushed together. We walk over to the table(s), a French couple follows us, and the guy asks if we'd been waiting for a table.

I can't even reproduce what it is that I "said" (grunted?) to him, it was some form of "um I was just looking at table think maybe separate".



I passed an interview at a grande école 3 months ago. I negotiated an entire banking portfolio for myself just this past week. What is going ON?!

2. This morning, I heard the doorbell ring. This was particularly frightening because my doorbell is only accessible via a grilled entrance to the landing on my floor, which has a double deadbolt and which is entirely mine, so no one else is supposed to have a key. I peep through the viewer and there's a lady on the steps. I open the door, she explains that she's here to clean the apartment for my move-out, we both begin to realize there's been some kind of mix-up at the agency, she asks me how long I'm here. "Ummm... jusqu'en moi de... mai ?" is what I managed to produce after like 5 excruciating seconds. She was very nice, and it turns out the agency gave her the wrong instructions/key, but this should. not. be. happening.

I have three days to get my ish together before classes start, and oh btw, they start at EIGHT am. Y u gotta be like that, School?! I've done nothing but love you. Didn't this country author the Universal Declaration of Human Rights?!

So here's the plan: I've figured out that it's a combination of anxiety and lack of practice. The former I have to work on in my head, the latter I have to actually... do... I really haven't been faux-"vlogging" or speaking to myself very much ever since I got in, because I thought I "deserved" a break and basically spent a month just watching 12 hours of Youtube a day and reading Mitterrand's love letters. Very helpful if I ever need to write love letters to someone who lives in the 1970s, otherwise maybe not quite. BIG mistake. Starting tomorrow I'm going to get on that, or otherwise I'm going to be "think maybe separate table" on Thursday morning :/

[whatiftheblog]

Welp, I've gotten through my first week of school, so time for an update!

1. My school is AMAZING. All the classes/activities we've had thus far have been wonderful, everyone in my program is super nice, the resources we're being given are incredible, and I'm having a ton of fun. It's a very different structure from what I'm used to - there's no option to select classes and all of our "modules" are mandatory, but the first one is already fantastic, so I'm sure the rest will be great as well.

2. How my French is doing: comprehension-wise, no issues at all; still a little slower than I'd like to be in terms of expression until 10 am or so. AJATT really works, guys - I'm the only non-native speaker in the program, aside from a Spanish guy who was born in France and who's been a professional interpreter for the last 15 years, and conversations are still randomly interrupted by things like "naan mais c'est dingue quand même, tu parles super bien", at which point I have to really physically focus on gluing my feet to the floor, or else I'm afraid I'd erupt into a weird happy jig, and that'd be awkward. I've now had six or seven exchanges of the "so how long have you been living in France?" - "three weeks" - variety, and that's been very nice to see/hear, but again, this isn't me, it's all AJATT (AFATT, if you wish). I do make stupid mistakes every now and then, but everyone's been very sweet about correcting me when that happens. It's also cute how everyone wants to practice their English with me, and it seems they're less obsessed with speaking perfect English than I am with speaking perfect French, so I keep telling myself that if they don't mind their stumbly English, I should be less upset over my sometimes-stumbly French. (Chrome is telling me "stumbly" isn't a word, but it is now, so take that, Chrome!)

3. I think I've written about this before, but if you're considering any type of higher ed program in French, I'd highly recommend watching some student vlogs - I've found the ones about the PACES program super helpful, as well as anything to do with legal studies, even though my program has nothing to do with either of those domains. I'm going over my class notes and structuring them in a fashion similar to what the folks in PACES suggest doing, and that should help when exam time rolls around.

4. I have discovered that I can flirt in French. Successfully and intelligently. "Pas de copain français ?" - "Pas de copain tout court", but, uh, in UNspeak, the U.S. mission takes note of the question and welcomes its slyness, bien joué