Open Journal Montreal

for the Duck and Herring Summer Pocket Field Guide. Atlanta.
By Risa Dickens, from Montreal.

Once, in Cuba, we found that ‘onion’ there is ‘cebolla’ like the Yiddish ‘cibolle,’ although Elran is unsure about the English spelling of the Yiddish. He repeated it quietly for a while and you could hear the old people cooking in the back room of his memory. It sounds like ce- bole- eh, but quicker. We were surprised because usually French and Spanish (Latin-mates) are the same with a different rolling of the tongue, but there’s some other history here, because in this case en francais is like the English: it’s ‘oignon.’
Whatever happened in the language lineage of the root, when chopping it up the results are still the same, even with all their different names.

On sait jamais: the English equivalent of this would be ‘you never know’ but, (mais,) the French ‘on’ includes me, the speaker, along with you and all the others who are surprised and never know.

Tu me manquais: the English version would be ‘I missed you’ but grammatically it’s something closer to ‘you from me were missing.’ As though you were a piece of me, as though our selves were tangled up in some complicated way and when you were gone you made me miss. This is the past imperfect tense -manquais-as it was imperfect without you, but now you have returned. If you are still gone and I am still left missing then: ‘tu me manques,’ or ‘vous me manquez.’

Vouvoyer: I don’t think there is an English equivalent of this French verb which means addressing someone with the politest pronoun.

Je vouvoie Nous vouvoyons
Tu vouvoies Vous vouvoyez
Il/on vouvoie Ils/on vouvoient.

It turns out that to address someone with a formal politeness it is necessary to view them as plural. They carry the weight of the many and so become more then the friendly ‘tu.’ In this way vouvoyer is like the royal ‘we,’ except the place of power is flipped. In French it is you who can be high class and plural, and in English it’s me. And in both languages this many-ness can be made, in modern times, to slip lovingly beyond the old briar patch of aristocrats to try and brush the face of unseen strangers. Chere, on espere que vous lisez ca quelquepart ensoleiler et sur. We hope, dear, that you are reading this somewhere sunlit and safe. Mais on sait jamais.