I've been spending quite a bit of time with a certain male friend of mine watching the Olympics the past two weeks. Because France sucked most of the time my male friend spent a lot of time saying "oh putain" and as a result I've picked up the habit.
So I'm at work today and it's approaching 6:30PM and I want to wrap things up and head home but I can't because another colleague is working on a document that I need to update before heading home. So as the minutes pass I get more and more frustrated. It's gets to a point where I let out an "oh putain". I thought my sigh was inaudible but my colleague sitting across from me heard my exclamation and was obviously shocked. Shocked in part because I never speak French at work and probably even more shocked by my first forary into speaking French in the office. I tried in vain to prevent colleague #1 from sharing my comment with colleague #2 to no avail. Next thing you know the three of us are all laughing in our corner of the office. And that concludes lesson #1 on How to Endear Yourself to French Colleagues.
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Endearing Myself to My Colleagues
at 8:54 PM
Labels: languaging, working
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1 comment:
I think it's great 'cuz this seems to be such a fav. expression among men French!! You probably definitely caught them off-guard when you said it out loud!! hehehe... Alex says this one word more than any other swear word... It's when we would say, "Oh shit!" I feel that with French "gros mots," unless you are directly calling someone that particular bad word, it's perfectly natural to say a bad word out loud, as if it just serves to put a big exclamation point at the end of a sentence... Good for you... Hope it got things done quicker, too!! : )
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