Wednesday, February 18, 2009

French Trees

This makes no sense, I'm well aware, but sometimes I confuse Chinese and French. It's as if my brain knows I can't speak my native language, so it automatically switches to my next most fluent tongue--le francais. Usually, this stays internal and I avoid actually speaking French to Chinese people. Until yesterday.

I had a Cantonese lesson yesterday, and I arrived about 20 minutes early. As the entire office chaotically bustled about trying to find my teacher, stressed at my early arrival, I attempted to calm them by saying in Chinese, "It's okay, I'm very early today."
Problem was, instead of saying the Chinese word for early, "jo"--I said the French word for early, "toe".
If only 'toe' meant nothing in Chinese...
As everyone was stressfully milling about, I kept saying, "It's okay, I'm a forest! I'm very much a forest today."

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Being a forest is so much better than being just a timber or a single tree. I hope it is not rude to be a French forest.

The,
Dad

Anonymous said...

bonsai anyone? oops, wrong country

Anonymous said...

love it.
-kristi