Blague

I love this language, but I’m not myself in it. Not only cause of the foreign fluidity of vowels and consonants spilling into each other, but it’s really hard to do my favorite thing, play with language. The French just think the American has made another error. On the other side, I don’t always get jokes. (Perhaps why I like those casse-pieds, casse-dents carambar candies. I’m so pleased to get blagues tordants aimed at kids.) Last night my host family took me to the theater. We went to the opening of this little comedy where afterwards they served blue champagne and I studied female French fashion. The piece was well played, funny, but parts were pretty incomprehensible. The play concerned the uselessness of words, breakdowns in communication highlighted by word games, les jeux des mots. Sometimes they spoke only in idioms, sometimes only in monologues, and sometimes substituted one word for another creating droll nonsense. Context could not help me comprendre. Strange to be swimming daily through this language when I only know one stroke, the dog paddle. But I get by, je me debrouille.