nawl

This is the level of stuff I can get in French:

Quel est le seul animal qui croonde ?
La fourmi car on dit "La fourmi croonde".

Saviez vous que c'est un chat qui a tue Jésus ?
Car Jésus est descendu parmi nous

I miss delicate wordplay and subtle shifts of meaning. I miss being able to hold conversations with excessive prolonged sexual metaphors. I miss listening to Tom Lehrer with friends who know the lyrics because, well, when I get the desire to hear "Poisoning the Pigeons in the Park" I have to explain to people around me why it's funny.

On the other hand, French provides its own amusements. For one, the (to me) excessive formalism common in all business communications. English has long ago dropped the distinction of formal and informal "you," as well as many of the differences that used to exist between levels of society and formal conversations.

I have before me letters from an American and a French bank, both advertising new services. Let's compare the last sentences: "We thank you for your business" vs "In thanking you for your trust, I pray you accept, dear mademoiselle, the assurance of my best sentiments."

In case you should think that perhaps it's only the banks who display some upper-crust tendencies, the same sentence adorns almost every form letter I've recieved here, from the electricity company threatening to cut off my power if I don't pay, to the manager of my student residence telling us kids to keep it down at night or they'll put the smack down. I'm sure it's something that is pasted in without a second thought, but my casual american ears are jarred.

I find it interesting to watch dubbed American films and note which pronoun characters use, because it provides a concrete distinction that doesn't exist to us, and wasn't in the film to start with. For example, in Shrek, Shrek and the princess "vous" each other right through the end of the film, which to me seemed odd, but perfectly natural to the French people around me. In Episode II, however, Padme "tu"s Anakin all the way through, while he's obliged to "vous" her because of her rank. When he starts with the "tu" it really is the point at which they become equals.