French translation

While hanging out with my French rope gun (who would have imagined I would become friends with someone who is French, real French, not Canadian French, and worse, from southern France) I've had a few moments of confusion over his English. I've provided some translations of French English in case you decide to become friends with someone French who "speaks english".

While we were driving in the worst traffic ever on Saturday to go skiing, FRG was (oh wait, I just noticed, the abbreviation of french rope gun almost spells frog - I did NOT do that on purpose) telling me a story about getting in trouble in high school while taking some test they have to take to graduate. He didn't study for the exam, but he and his friend devised a little plan to pass the test. But, what I heard when he was telling the story, was "I was accused by my teacher of being a shit" (I can see that, he's french) and "she accused me of shitting with my friend" (okay, that sounded weird, even for french boys in boarding school). I finally figured out shitting was cheating. I have not corrected him on that word, and have encouraged him to tell that story to more people because it was so funny.

He was also telling me, after skiing that he was worried about his harm. He then went on for a few more minutes about his harm. I thought at first he might have been talking about how dangerous ski conditions were on Saturday (half the runs on the mountain were closed because of high winds, and I literally could not see more than 2 feet in front of me due to blowing snow while I was skiing). I finally realized he was talking about his arm. Which is interesting BECAUSE...

A few days previous he was showing me pictures of climbing areas in France and Washington State. In one of the pictures he said "Look, that is art lake". I thought that was a kind of stupid name for a lake, though it was very picturesque and had a nice reflection of flowers in it. So I said "Yes, I can see why someone would want to paint that, which is why it has that name I guess." He looked at me as though I was a moron (that happens a lot, especially in the gym when I am trying to learn proper footwork or how to use a gri-gri). Later, in another picture, I noticed that the lake was in the shape of a heart, and realized he had been saying "heart lake".

So I accused him of randomly leaving out or adding an H to words. He said that he doesn't like to say "arm" because "it sounds stupid, and is a stupid word". So he will add an H or extra vowels to words he doesn't like to make them "sound better". He also leaves off consonants on words. He refuses to say "th" and replaces it with either an F or an S sound. If I make fun of his pronunciation he asks me to say phrases in French. He especially likes my pronunciation of my cook ware, Le Crueset. When he says it it doesn't even sound like a word you could spell.

I guess I'm going to have to learn some French so FRG can write a blog making fun of me...