Creative Use of English Language in France

In the 2004 novel “A Year in the Merde”, an Eng­lish­man is sent to Paris to set up a chain of tea rooms in France. At the begin­ning of the book, the British guy tries to explain his French team that “My Tea Is Rich” is not a good name for a chain of Eng­lish tea rooms.

Broken English

I don’t feel as self-conscious about my Eng­lish as I used to be, prob­a­bly because I’m flu­ent now. Besides, I spend my days edit­ing, review­ing, writ­ing and trans­lat­ing doc­u­ments in both offi­cial lan­guages. Obvi­ously, my Eng­lish is good enough for that.
That said, there are mis­takes I keep on mak­ing, no mat­ter how many times I catch myself and cor­rect them.

Why Do People Choose to Move Abroad? [Sponsored Post]

Mov­ing to a coun­try where they speak a dif­fer­ent lan­guage is one of the most excit­ing yet nerve rack­ing things that any­one can do in their life. If you have never been in this posi­tion, then it is impos­si­ble to imag­ine the ner­vous­ness and the fears going through the new migrant’s head.

American and Canadian English 101

Lan­guage is highly cul­tural. Gram­mar and spelling can be taught at school but some vocab­u­lary can only be learned in the street or even—gasp!—watching T.V.
In my first few years in Canada, immersed in the cul­ture, I learned a lot of words and expres­sions I wouldn’t have found in gram­mar books.

Whoui Spik Inglish

The other day, we went to see Kiss & Kill, a U.S movie. You may have heard of it: the Eng­lish title is “Killers”. Why did the French bother chang­ing the orig­i­nal Eng­lish title to another Eng­lish title? No idea. Sim­i­larly, “The Spy Next Door” is “Kung Fu Nanny” here. Go figure!

You... Or You

Every day I thank the lan­guage Gods for the inven­tion of the pro­noun “you” in Eng­lish. No mat­ter who you talk to, whether it’s your boss, your in-laws, a close friend or a per­fect stranger, it’s a no-brainer: just say “you”.
It’s not a given, you know. A lot of lan­guages have two ways of say­ing “you”: French has “tu” and “vous”, much like Span­ish has “tú” and “usted”, Por­tuguese has “tu” and “você” and Chi­nese has “你” and “您”.

French, English and Montréal

It’s only when I showed up at Star­bucks that I real­ized I had no idea how to order in French. And order­ing my cof­fee in Eng­lish in Mon­treal would look back, wouldn’t it. But I needed cof­fee: this is a work­ing week­end for me and I haven’t had much sleep the last few days.

Lost In Franglais

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?

Do You Speak Canadian...Eh?

Just like every­thing in Canada, it started with a long harsh win­ter. I was watch­ing T.V when I sud­denly real­ized that my weather vocab­u­lary had expanded quite a lot

Learning French Or English In Canada (6/10)

As most of you know, Canada has two offi­cial lan­guages: French and English.

Now, most of the immi­grants who are cho­sen under the skilled worker pro­gram will have to show lan­guage pro­fi­ciency in either lan­guage. But it’s not always that easy.