The register of babble

[Pixelated]

Customer came through my line yesterday and said "Merci beaucoup!" at the end of the transaction. I could not, for the life of me, think of how to say "You're welcome" in French ...

First thing that came to mind: "Spasibo" which is "Thank you" ... in RUSSIAN.

Closely followed by "Bitte" which is "You're welcome" ... in GERMAN.

Just waiting for somebody in authority to come and seize my birth certificate ... "You call yourself a CANADIAN?!?"

[Nunavut Pants]

"It's nothing" is the typical response. "De rien."

[SpyOne]

Back in high school, my girlfriend (who was born and raised in the USA as was I), once asked me, "Que hora es?"
"About eleven twenty."
"That wasn't English, was it?"
"Nope."
"Well, the first one I pulled up was German, and I knew THAT was wrong."

It's probably good she didn't try German: my Spanish is limited to Sesame Street levels, but my German is mostly guessing from similar sounding English words. Wie spät ist es would have flummoxed me entirely. (I mean, "ist es" is pretty clearly "is it", and it is clearly a question, but I wouldn't know "spat" if it bit me.)

Still, that doesn't have the same cultural baggage I guess. As a Canadian you were definitely taught a bit of French. And as a typical Canadian you have forgotten most of it.

[Pixelated]

At the time I was in elementary school, our "teachings" of French consisted almost entirely of memorizing how to conjugate verbs. By the end of any given year, we could chant off verb conjugations quite easily.

But conversing in the language? Conversing?? What's that?