Because Cameroon is primarily a French-speaking country, I am taking a French course this fall & winter. Actually, I take a French course just about every winter, but the upcoming trip is a good excuse to not miss a year. So, every week, language training takes over for three hours online, and three in the classroom.
Keith and I have plans to spend most of our time in English-speaking areas (formerly British Cameroon), but brushing up on la francais is not a bad idea, because I use the word “plan” pretty loosely here. We may just find ourselves in some French-speaking parts of the country.
This current French course has been very relevant as all lessons are travel-related. We started out on the road, in our car, then we were promoted to planes and trains. This week, we are working our way through the customs portion of our online lessons. Because my French is good enough to get by in a stumbly, poor-use-of grammar way, I’ve been pleased to learn relevant and grammatically correct phrasing for use during interactions with customs officials, such as:
“Pourquoi ne fouillez-vous pas les autres?” (“Why aren’t you searching other people?”)
“Ai-je l’air d’avoir quelque chose a declarer?” (“Do I seem like I have something to declare?”)
And, “Vous etes sure de ne pas vouloir inspecter mes poches?” (“Are you sure you don’t want to inspect my pockets?”)
Yes, those are some of the phrases I learned this week. Grammatically correct or not, I really can’t picture myself saying these things to a Cameroonian customs officer. When I swagger up to the customs counter, I plan to proceed directly to, “I would like to be strip-searched, please.”
I’ll ask my French teacher how to say that.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment