Author: Ken Ganga

“Oops” in English (as in “Oops! I did it again…”) is spelled “Oups“, with a ‘u’, in French.

I was in Boston last week and saw this shop at Logan airport. Someone should tell ’em that they screwed up the accent…

I got a quaint reminder of the 19th century this morning. I needed to renew my work card (titre de sejour — sort of my greencard).

It cost 269 euros now!

But I’m not allowed to just pay for it. Non… I first had to go to another line so that I could use my credit card to buy two €90 revenue stamps, two €30 stamps, two €10 stamps, an €8 stamp and a €1 stamp. Then I went to another line and gave them to the lady as payment for my work card. She dumped them into an envelope and moved on.

What possible use can this quaint custom be these days?

 

I have to admit that I was scandalized when I saw the poster in this shop window. Would this even be legal in the US? It would certainly be de-funded and have a wall built around it. Or get made into a cable series.

This one has bugged me for a while…

If you hear someone in France talking about the “vay-say”, which you would probably write as “VC”, it’s not the Viet Cong or the Victoria Cross or Venture Capital, or something like this.

It’s actually not even VC. It’s supposed to be “WC”, but apparently the “double” is too difficult to say. So instead of “dooble-vay say”, it becomes “vay say”. So it means WC. Which is actually English for Water Closet.

So, in France, via tortured evolution, one way to say toilet in French is “vay-say”.

 

The sad thing is, I’m sure I sound worse than this when I speak French… French Politicians Speaking English

 

Can I admit that I’m surprised by how well France was ranked by Americans in this article?