Franglais

I’m sure many of us have reverted to Franglais, that mix of English and French which is spoken to amuse rather than as a serious attempt to converse in French… I have my own version of a cross between English and Gaelic, Gaelish which is really as a result of my lack of success at learning Irish!

My favourite political columnist in the Daily Telegraph, Michael Deacon, had great fun over the recent news from France of M. Hollande’s relationships… here is an excerpt:

One of the most striking things about the François Hollande story is the difference in attitude between the French media and the British. The British are gripped, as we always are, by sex scandals. Yet most French journalists seem to find it unremarkable: at Hollande’s two‑hour press conference this week, they scarcely asked about it. But this is typical of their attitude to the sex lives of the powerful. A few years ago, a colleague met a French journalist.

“So, your Gordon Brown,” said the French journalist casually, “he has the affairs?”

When my colleague had finished spluttering, she replied that he most certainly did not. The French journalist was dumbstruck. She couldn’t have looked more bemused if my colleague had said Mr Brown spent his evenings bathing in trifle or dressing the Queen. She found it perverse that a leading statesman did not sleep around.

Imagine the gossip in Paris when the French journalist got home.

“Mon ami! Vous will jamais believe le rumour j’ai heard au Royaume-Uni!”

“Quoi, quoi?”

“Leur prime minister ne cheat pas sur sa femme!”

“Non! Ce ne peut pas be vrai! Pourquoi would il behave in cette bizarre way?”

“Well, le mot sur le grapevine est qu’il aime sa femme.”

“Incroyable! Je n’ai jamais heard such a chose!”

“Non, moi neither. Instead of enjoying le slap et tickle avec une mistress, il spends tout son spare temps avec Mrs Brown.”

“La pauvre woman! Ce must be awful pour elle!”

“Dites-moi about it. Et j’ai heard quelque chose even weirder.”

“Il y a quelque chose even weirder? Quoi peut it be?”

“Apparently, il owns plus que une pair de shoes.”

Le wit of Miles Kington

Franglais — the uneasy melding of French and English familiar to long-suffering waiters, bar staff and souvenir-sellers across France — was the stock-in-trade of Miles Kington, who died six years ago this month. He used to write whole columns in it, and very funny they were. He once managed to tell a Franglais version of The Metamorphosis by Kafka in 75 words. “First thing au matin, quand K s’éveilla, il trouva qu’il avait été transformé en un giant cockroach,” it began, ending rather abruptly with the purchase by K’s family of “un giant economy pack de cockroach poison”.

Although it’s for his Franglais that he’s most fondly remembered, Kington was just as amusing in plain anglais. He once wrote a version of “Jabberwocky” in the style of Raymond Chandler, which is sublime. Here’s a sample.

“ ’Twas brillig. It had been that way all day, and it wasn’t getting any cooler. I had loosened my neck-tie so many times that the knot had worked its way down to my navel. Outside in the street, the first lights had come on and the slithy toves were doing whatever they do in the wabe. Some days they gyre, some days they gimble. It’s no skin off my nose, but I wish they’d make their minds up, then we could all rest easy.”