France-tastic

I read a quote a while back from someone else having lived in Paris for a while: "I am semi-bilingual- that is, I now speak two languages badly."

After a year and a bit here, and now speaking french pretty much all day most of the time, I now understand perfectly what that person was talking about. More and more franglais is creeping into my english, which luckily Alex usually points out, or I don't even notice it. I don't mean just using a french word instead of an english one, but accidentally getting caught the wrong way over a false friend. False friends ("faux amis") are words that are very similar in the two languages, but actually don't mean the same thing. The classic example, which I threw out over lunch a few months ago, is "preservative." What I wanted to say: "this tastes like preservatives." What I actually said: "this tastes lke condoms." Preservative sounds very much like preservatif, wouldn't you agree? Unfortunately preservatif means CONDOM!

Anyway, these sorts of mistakes are to be expected at least, considering that my french is still improving (what a euphimistic way to say that I sound like a 5 year old most of the time).

But I think it is wierd, and rather worrying, when I make similar mistakes in english! Yet recent examples include discussing how many "chains" we have on the TV, "branching" an appliance, being "deranged" by too many "reunions", searching for a "box" of tomatoes...