Peach Alves

Category: Humour

Learning a second language is fraught with perils. Learning from your mistakes can also provide an endless source of entertainment for others and to yourself if you have a sense of humour. Making mistakes, and laughing about it, is also a great way to learn.

Sometimes it is as simple as putting the em-phasis on the wrong syl-lable. Sometimes it is making an assumption that you are reading a word in one language when it is in fact written in an another language. I had this happen to me many times when my command of the English language started surpassing my native French tongue.

I remember as a boy of twelve being already immersed in the English language enough to misread a bilingual sign in Hull Quebec which read: Dégel – Thaw. Dégel is French for thaw and is pronounced 'They-jell'. When I read the words I read them as if they were two different English words. I read the word Dégel as Dee-Gul and formed the phrase Degul Thaw (whatever that was supposed to mean). It was only later that the slap-to-the-forehead moment kicked in.

Later when I was 14 or 15 it occurred to me that the word ‘Halves’ as in ‘Del-Monte Peach Halves’ was not a type of peach but rather a peach cut in half. Up to that point I had found it peculiar that we always seem to eat peach halves (which I pronounced Alves -Al veez - at the time) rather than a different kind of peach.

Although my English has been fairly advanced for many years now I still get caught at times. On a trip to Quebec City, some years back, my wife and I were in a music store and I spotted a large section in the back of the store reserved for a band called Divers. I thought it odd that I had never heard of this band given the massive amount of music on display.

My forehead is still red from the slap to the forehead on that one. Seconds later, I realized that it wasn’t Divers but Divers (pronounced dee-vair) which is the French word for diverse (or various). Another proud moment.

Some 40 years ago at a cottage on Little Danford lake in the province of Quebec, we had a dog named Peewee (photo attached) who had the misfortune of snagging one of his paws in a lure that had been left at the end of a fishing line on the beach.

No sooner does the poor dog have his paw caught does he try to pull it off using his mouth. Now he’s got a front paw and his gum caught in the lure. Then, in his attempts to free himself, Peewee gets his other front paw caught in the lure. Pretty soon he’s got his back paws caught too. Peewee is now all balled up. It breaks your heart to look at him. Poor thing.

As I am recounting this sad story to my wife I said ‘Poor Peewee. He looked like a little veal.’ My wife, who knew enough French to understand what I was trying to say, bursts out laughing. Then, realizing my mistake, I start laughing too. What I had actually meant to say was ‘calf’, not ‘veal’.

In French the word for calf is veau (pronounced v’oh). In French the meat of the calf is also called veau whereas, in English the meat of a calf is called veal.

At the risk of leaving my readers with an even better impression of me I will stop here :-)
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From left to right: My brothers Michel & Denis and our dog Peewee.











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