TRAVEL with pat and lew

Archive for the ‘speaking French’ Category

* “Wed-nes-day”

Posted by Lew Weinstein on August 4, 2007

 Tuesday, July 3, 2007

Since we have company “from the new world” coming tomorrow, we go down to the village to make a reservation for dinner. I try my best to use only French, but don’t quite make it. Je voudrais faire un reservation pour quatre personnes pour se sois …..?

I don’t know the word for Wednesday. Pat points to the word in French (Mercredi ) and asks the waiter who is making the reservation, “How do you pronounce this word?”  He immediately answers … “Wed-nes-day.”

Posted in ... 2007, speaking French | Leave a Comment »

* our inability to speak French

Posted by Lew Weinstein on February 22, 2007

Of course not everything goes as planned.

Two of the most frustrating experiences in our first summer abroad concerned our telephone/internet connections (France Telecom and Wanadoo) and our new sofa (IKEA).

A big part of the problems, in both cases, was our inability to speak French. If we had been able to communicate fully, I think we would have overcome what appears to be an underlying French aversion to customer service.

Posted in ... 2006, problems, speaking French | 2 Comments »