Babel
You know how some things just don't translate well? The problem with having to write in French when you're basically English is that you can only 'think in French' so far. Sooner or later you're going to have to translate something that you think of in English into French, with variable results. Some French words seem to me to perfectly match their English counterparts. 'Oeuf' is just fine for 'egg'. "Vert" works for 'green'. 'Chat' practically is 'cat'. And how do you say 'appalling'? -- 'épouvantable'. Isn't that fantastic? When I was in Germany with a friend, we were flipping through the dictionary and collapsed into giggles over the word 'uberspannt', which means stressed-out, or 'overstrung'. Her German cousin later made us t-shirts with the word on them. Photo by Sebastia Giralt But sometimes the results are rather less felicitous. Angus is currently doing a speech