DouceLifeAt50.com

Bilingualism:  1. the ability to speak two languages  2. The frequent use of two languages

Bilingual:  using or able to use two languages especially with equal fluency (talk about pressure)

Faux pas:   blunder

I  love the exemple in this one:  Long, hot soaks in winter are a classic faux pas, since exposure to extreme heat after having been in the cold can cause small visible blood vessels to appear at the skin’s surface.

From the Urban dictionary: French for “False Step.” A severe social blunder or major breach in etiquette. If the faux pas in question was unintentional it oftens leads to a very awkward and uncomfortable moment.

Méli-mélo: French word: a collection of miscellany; mishmash, hodgepodge. : chaos; muddle .  I chose this word because it represent the chaos in my brain when I am writing in either language; I often automatically write the English word instead of the French or vice versa, example:  confidence instead of confiance or juste instead of just.

Franglais: noun. mass noun. A blend of French and English, either French speech that makes excessive use of English expressions, or unidiomatic French spoken by an English person.  Fran = français (French), glais = anglais (English), isn’t it a pretty combination of two words?

My definitions of franglais:  While speaking French together we will sometimes create our own word meshing English and French in order to be able to finish our sentence when the word we are looking for is at the tip of our tongue and won’t come out.  Quel méli-mélo!

I just love that there are so many French words in the English vocabulary,  the only problem is that often they are spelled the same way but don’t mean the same thing and the pronunciation is nothing like ours.  It is very hard at first for a native French speaker to not sound like a snob when we actually pronounce a word like faux pas.  Quel faux pas!

Just like in the movies: an expression often exclaimed by my nephews and my niece when my daughters share with them their experiences of highs school.  Example: the senior prom.

You might be wondering why I am bringing up this subject.  The trouble with bilingualism has been on my mind since I began writing my blog in both languages.  I have been living in the US longer then I did in Switzerland. English has become my main language, it is easier than French as I speak it, read it and write it daily.  My vocabulary feels so much more extensive as I have access to more books and media because of my physical location. I dream in English, although when I wrote this essay in French this time first, I dreamed in French the night before.  You do dream your worries or concerns. After writing several essays in English one of my brothers and my sister who are bilingual too started to ask me to translate them in French so that my mom and my youngest brother could read them. When I started my blog, my plan was always to also write/translate it in French.  I was putting it off because I felt very unprepared and was lacking confidence in my ability to do it in my mother tongue. So here I find myself in this dual world often reaching for the dictionary to look up how to spell a word I usually know only because my fingers are typing the word in French when I need it in English and vice versa or just “franglais-ing” it.  I could almost get a headache.

It was not easy to let go of the fear of not being up to the challenge, what helped me get over that hump was the thought that I was writing from the heart and that my goal was to make someone smile or give someone a positive thought.  I also reminded myself that since only some of my Facebook family and friends would read it they would not mind my blunders in both languages. At the beginning, my French essays were straight translations from the English version, as I kept writing and got more comfortable with it, I started to rewrite the sentences.  If you read both blogs you have probably noticed a different flow from my first essays to the latest ones. In one of my previous blogs I wrote about persona, I seem to have two different personas. There are differences on how I feel in each language thus my expression changes from one to the other, I write them differently.  One persona speaks, feels and acts American-English, the other Swiss-French, I have one foot in Europe and one in the US. My daughters are comfortable in both worlds, we have effortlessly incorporated and shared the different things we enjoy from both sides of the Atlantic with our families. One tradition that I loved as a child was the celebration of Saint Nicholas on December 6th, I have always had a special bag of treats ready for them on that day.

I love being bilingual, it gives me the freedom to move around two different worlds.  I have realized that in order to become more fluent in both languages I will need to learn more words as often as I can.  Armed with two dictionaries, one English the other French and Google Translate I feel I am up to that challenge and looking forward to it.  

Thank you for reading my blog, I appreciate it immensely.  I wish you a great week full of fun méli-mélo!