les québécois
Writing my last post got me thinking about my time at Melaleuca. I worked on the French team, speaking to the Québécois customers. Like I said, I was thrown for a pretty good loop when I first sat down and tried listening in on the French calls; I only recognized a few words interspersed with what sounded like a whole lot of gibberish.
The first thing that I remember is that the callers almost always had a hard time with my name. I’d say, “Merci d’appeler Melaleuca, la companie de mieux-être. Je m’appele Taylor. Comment puis je vous aider?” (Literally: “Thank you for calling Melaleuca, the company of better-being. My name is Taylor. How may I help you?”). And almost every time, they’d say “Quoi? Comment vous appelez-vous?” (What? What is your name?) Then I’d have to try to explain my name. Early on, after spelling it out for a woman, she thought about it for a second and exclaimed, “Oh, Taylor! Comme madame Elizabeth!” (“Oh, Taylor! Like Ms. Elizabeth!”) Though it felt kind of silly, every time one of the customers had a hard time with my name, I’d tell them, “You know, like Ms. Elizabeth.” That seemed to work. When I was in high school, our French teacher had us pick “French” names to use in class, so we’d get used to using the right accent and inflections (instead of constantly “breaking character” to say an English name). I was François. I always thought it was funny that I had both the French-est first name and the English-est last name possible. Maybe I should have just called myself François on the phone.
The second thing that I remember is that I was constantly being mistook for a woman. Apparently speaking French on the telephone makes me sound like a Québécois woman; many, many, many conversations would end with the caller saying, “Merci madame!” I did have one occasion when a woman corrected me because I accidentally referred to my self as a woman. She asked me what I did, how I learned to speak French. I told I was a student (“Je suis une étudiante”). She then said, “I think you mean un étudiant. You don’t sound like a woman…” So, maybe, folks were calling me a woman, ‘cause I was, accidentally, from time to time. I was pretty careful about that from then on.
French pronunciation is kind of slippery. Generally speaking, you don’t pronounce the last letter or two of a word. So, for instance, you would say “Je suis” (“I am”) like: Zhuh swee. So, the only way to tell the difference between masculine and feminine is often the pronunciation or the consonant at the end of the word: “un étudiant” (a male student) is: uh nay-too-dee-ah(n) (you kind of swallow the “n”. “Une étudiante” (a female student) is: oo nay-too-dee-ahnt. Another tricky thing is that if the next word begins with a vowel, then you do pronounce the last syllable of the word: “Je suis ici” (“I am here”) is: Zhuh sweez eecee. “Je suis la” (“I am there”) would be: Zhuh swee lah. You have to be really careful with those subtle differences in pronunciation, ‘cause sometimes being sloppy with it will mean you say something that you didn’t mean to say (like “I am a female student”).
A third thing I remember was the Québécois’ funny ways of saying some things. They have a kind of distinct accent. The word bien sounds almost like “bang.” Kind of like Mexican-Americans, the French Canadians of speak in a mixture of English and French. Once this lady was explaining that there was a little sticker on the box, “Il y a un petit sticker sur la boite.” We were selling these little lampshades for candles, and we’d hear “Je veux le petit lampshade” all the time. In France, a hotdog is simply called “un hotdog.” In Québec, they say “un chien chaud” (a literal translation of the word “hotdog”). The French don’t really have a word for “fun,” the closest thing they have is “amusing.” The Québécois just say “C’est fun!” (“That’s fun!”). My favorite ‘cois-ism was the word tabernacle. Tabernacle, in the correct context, is considered pretty profane. Why? I have no idea, though a lot of the French cuss words are connected to Catholicism somehow…one time, I had a pretty irate customer on the phone and he said, “Taber-freakin’-nacle!” That was totally awesome!