It was about eight in the morning on Friday. I got into the lift in the hotel, on my way to the office. A man already in the lift greeted me.
"Bonjour," he said. This confused me a bit. Firstly I am in Singapore. And secondly, how did he know that I have two languages: English and foreign, and that my "foreign" happens to be French?
"Bonjour," I said, or to be authentic, je dis.
"Comment ça va?" he asked me.
"Erm, ça va bien, merci," I said, dragging my early-morning, little-serviced French to the front of my mind. I followed this up with, "Et toi?" Oh no! Mistake! Using the "tu" (informal) with a stranger! Even this early in the morning, in the wrong language I was aware of my faux pas. "Desolée," I said. "Vous. Vous. Desolée."
And so I spent a slightly awkward lift ride having behaved slightly inappropriately towards a total stranger. Just like being back in London.
1 comment:
you big ponce,
you should have said 'what? huh? was that french? no one speaks that...English isn't called the lingua franca for nothing you fool'
or something like that
BJ
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