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Le Bumper Book of Franglais


Renaud

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I asked for and was given this book for Christmas. I have long found the late Miles Kington one of the most original British humorists.

I have given-up reading it as it has played havoc with my footling attempts to learn French. It is subversive in that Kington exactly predicts and reinforces my thought process when attempting to communicate.

Strangely the French have no idea of what I am trying to say when I mangle the two languages together.

The question occurs - why don't the French understand Franglais?

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I speak Franglais to English friends who are accomplished French speakers and French friends who are accomplished Englis speakers, its not a conscious thing it just always seems to default to Franglais.

That reminds me I lent my book "Lets parler Franglais" to someone and I cant recall who, needless to say it hasnt been returned [:(]

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I don't know that Franglais itself is much spoken here but I did try an experiment with my physio once when I spoke English to her in a "French" (well, my version of it anyway) accent and she understood far, far more than when I spoke it properly.

Idun reminded me of MK a few months ago and I got a 2nd hand copy of le Bumper Livre from Amazon.  Wonderful stuff.  My father used to cut his articles out of the paper and send them to me. Must be a quarter of a century ago now at least.

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I never use an accent when I speak franglais. The frenchness comes out as per usual with as much of an accent as I can ever muster and for those with the gift, the french sounds sound  like proper french in amoungst it. And my english with my northern english accent. It is a very natural thing, very natural, I never ever did it deliberately, it just came out, but only as Chancer says, with people who can, wouldn't work with anyone else. And I sort of expect the people on here to franglais, whether they can or not. I could certainly franglais whilst my french was IMO inadequate. Some words just seem to fit in beautifully.

Why cannot french people who don't speak english understand it, the clue is in the name, franglais, if they cannot 'anglais' they'll not get it, like people who cannot 'fran' cannot get it either.

I have never tried to speak to english in a french accent to a  french speaker.

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Le Bumper Book of Franglais is something I hadn't seen for years; can't find my old copy, but I see it's available on Kindle. That could liven up the hospital waiting room! I haven't spoken it much myself, but it's a really funny book. Miles Kington had a wonderful talent, and I also used to enjoy listening to him on R4. I hadn't come across 'Sky, My husband', which sounds good from the reviews.
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