I occa­sion­ally miss not speak­ing Eng­lish flu­ently. Trust me, life was a lot of fun when I could only under­stand half of what peo­ple were say­ing. My mind was work­ing fast, per­pet­u­ally try­ing to make sense of things. Could that be that?

I had a lot of mis­con­cep­tions back then. I already men­tioned a few times that I had stayed away from “beaver­tails” for a cou­ple of years. I was pic­tur­ing meat and furry pieces of the cute ani­mal being served with maple syrup to a bunch of hun­gry Cana­di­ans, instead of just fried dough and maple syrup (or other sweet top­pings). Well, how was I sup­posed to know? “Beaver­tails” sounds bar­baric, doesn’t it?

I remem­ber when I first started look­ing for jobs. Feng had bought the Sat­ur­day news­pa­pers, and I was read­ing all the ads in the career sec­tion, cir­cling with a red pen the ones that looked inter­est­ing. Sud­denly, I saw “book­keep­ers wanted”. The salary was awe­some, the loca­tion very con­ve­nient and there were quite a few vacancy. Full of hope, I cir­cled the ad and started to work on my resume in order to apply as soon as pos­si­ble. I hadn’t fin­ished yet when Feng came back from work and saw the ad I cir­cled. He burst out laugh­ing, say­ing book­keep­ing was maybe not the best career choice for me. “Why not?” I asked, slightly hurt. “Well, for a start you hate math. And you prob­a­bly need a book­keep­ing cer­tifi­cate for that job any­way, which you don’t have”.

I was totally puz­zled. What had maths to do with book­keep­ing? Wasn’t the job about keep­ing books, like a book­seller? I loved read­ing, I loved books, and I had already pic­tures myself sit­ting in a big room full of best­sellers, keep­ing an eye on them at all time, since I would be an offi­cial book keeper. What could seri­ously go wrong with that?

Turned out that a book­keeper was like an accoun­tant. Hence the joke about my maths skills. Oh well… how was I sup­posed to know?

But then, I was very eas­ily con­fused in my first few years in Canada, lost in a French-English (franglais) world. At the restau­rants, with “entrées”, for instance. In French, an “entrée” is a starter, not the main course. I learned that after being served steak and fries as an “entrée”, and try­ing to men­tally fig­ure out how was I sup­posed to eat the main course after that. Luck­ily, that was my main course.

In all the fast foods, I had also noticed a weird sign: “no loi­ter­ing”. “Who does that?”, I thought. “I mean, there are huge garbage bins every­where, doesn’t every­body throw away any waste left away after eat­ing?”. Turned out the sign wasn’t about “lit­ter­ing”, as I had read, but about “loi­ter­ing”. Since I had never seen that word before, my mind some­how linked this unknown word with another one I knew. It took me many many vis­its to the local food court before I actu­ally remem­bered to check “loi­ter­ing” in a dic­tio­nary. And I still found the sign strange, since loi­ter­ing is not a crime nor an offense in France (good thing I guess, since I spend half of my high school time “loi­ter­ing” for hours in cafés with my friends).

At least, I was lucky, I thought. French and Eng­lish have a lot of words in com­mon. Plus, French do use a lot of Eng­lish words.

Except this didn’t work either. The first time I stopped an inno­cent soul in the street to ask direc­tions to the near­est “press­ing”, he was totally clue­less. How was I sup­posed to know it wasn’t real Eng­lish, but French Eng­lish for “dry-cleaner”? I was con­fused. “Camping-cars” turned out to be “recre­ational vehi­cles”, a “smok­ing” was a “tuxedo”, “drive-ins” were “drive-through”, “bas­kets” were “sneak­ers” or “run­ning shoes”… even “sham­poo­ing” was “sham­poo”!

And I had thought, like mil­lions of French, that I was speak­ing English…!

Even though not speak­ing Eng­lish flu­ently was frus­trat­ing at times, a lot of things I didn’t under­stand were left to my imag­i­na­tion, and I love the way my brain worked faster to inter­pret my sur­round­ings cor­rectly (or not). Same as when we were in Brazil, this win­ter, and I had to adapt to Por­tuguese.

Now don’t get me wrong: I’m glad I finally speak and write good Eng­lish. Yet, franglais was fun too…

Related arti­cles:

1. Lost In Translation
2. Bro­ken English
3. Two Soli­tudes And One Loneliness
4. Whoui Spik Inglish
5. How I Gained (and Lost) Weight in Canada