La com
Another wonderful thing about working in "la com" is that 99% of the jargon is in English. Add a French accent to almost any word and you unwittingly appear very een.
Even with this mighty linguistic crutch, my non-Frenchness blares forth energetically, sloppy consonants, swallowed vowels, diphthongs and all. While a colleague might breezily announce "ça fait trop has-been" with perfect Parisian authority, my execution of the same Anglicism feels clunky, the ping-pong match between an h aspiré and correctly pronouncing "has" cornering my mouth into an oral identity crisis.
The phonic flow between my natural American voice and my adopted French trill could use some work. I definitely can't start pronouncing English catch phrases with a French accent; pretentious-American-who-can't-come-up-with-the-French-equivalent isn't the badge I'm striving to nab. But nonchalantly tossing a Californian "game-changing" into a lovely French statement usually gets me quizzical looks and delayed comprehension.
Where is the Académie Française when you need it??
clip courtesy of Benjamin Sanial, of Lowe Paris
Comments
what is "game-changing" (the new yorker asks quizzically)?
nicole, i like your theory and i think you're spot on about the easier interchangeability with brit phonetics versus american. but i still feel stupid saying "drafter une proposition" with a French accent!
amy, I am also considering converting to pure English with a French accent - it might work, and not just for "com" speak!
maîtresse, the irony of this whole English in French com spiel is that I actually had to look up the term "game-changing!" i think it means a paradigm-disrupting technique/method/product introduced to a field/market.
b) I hear you about the prononciation difficulties
c) My boss says, "Yes" all the time with that same weird Frenchness to it, and suddenly I find myself saying one of the most common English words all funky-like. And anyway, nine times out of ten, it should be "Yeah", non?
Pops
RE: the video - I loved the video re the advertising business in Paris. There's actually one guy in the business who did his 'benevole' before he got into advertising. Look a little beneath the surface and you'll find some 'hearts of gold' in 'le com'. Do you think the blase attitude is just a cloak of armor - or does it sink down to the very marrow?
Lee Ann - yes! "good" is another one that's being bandied around a lot, too, no?
Pop - we'll always have cinque terre, or chingadere, or whatever the hell you call it when you're hiking up a hill in the rain.