French flags. Red, white and blue. From Wikipedia.
Problem
You go to a French restaurant and cannot understand the menu.
You feel disadvantaged.
You have to choose between ignoring your friends and not reading the menu.
You make a hasty choice - then find they had a dish you'd love to try - but you've missed it.
You had a wonderful dish but have no idea what's in it and would love to know and copy it at home.
Answers
Look at the restaurant menu on line and translate it.
Use google translate.
Ask a friend who speaks French.
Go to a local French speaking group (from Meetup) with the menu and ask somebody to translate.
Print out their menu with translations written in.
Record what the waiter says on your smart phone. Play it back afterwards, either to everybody at the table, or to yourself in the toilet.
Go to the toilet via the bar or reception and as for the special of the day and the ingredients.
Photograph the menu with your smart phone. Translate it later.
Look up the dishes on the internet.
Instead of eating what is suggested, find the French words for your favourite dish. Phone in advance to ask if they have it on the menu.
If you are celebrating a special occasion such as a birthday, find out the favourite dish of yourself or the birthday person. Move the date of your restaurant booking to the weekend before or the weekend after in order to be there when they are serving seasonal foods such as strawberries or shellfish, or have it on special offer.
Phone to ask if the menu is the same as on the website.
Ask on the phone for the translation of the words you do not understand on the menu (such as coq au vin or bouillabaisse).
Ask for the translation of what you want to order, such as chicken.
If the menu is not the same as the one on the website, check a menu from another French restaurant.
Be sure to know the words for anything vital, such as being allergic to shellfish, being vegetarian, wanting a dish with meat, or without meat.
Check the wine list for the red and white wine, sweet and dry wine and the prices.
Learning to Speak French
Check the pronunciation of dishes. Learn to recognize a few phrases such as, please, thank you, not at all.
Recognize some French words so you can be reminded of them when you hear them because that helps you learn.
Check the nationality of the waiters.
Story
In New York I and my family went to a French restaurant with our French au pair girl (who became a life long friend). When the French girl started speaking fluent French to the waiter we discovered that he did not speak French and was not French.
For additional translations see the next post.
Practise your French by learning a few words on Duolingo.com
Watch a French film. Find a French record to play.
BIRTHDAY CARDS
If it's a birthday, find a few French songs or make a birthday cards with happy birthday or happy anniversary in French. You might add illustrations of bottles of champagne. Or email a card with a song in French and an animated scene in French.
Get on the mailing list of a French restaurant a year in advance to practise your French and be familiar with the menu.
If you are making French food for a meal at home, copy a French menu using the French terms.
English - French
Happy Birthday - joyeux anniversaire / bon anniversaire
English - Canadian French
happy birthday - bonne fête
Tips
Typing accents
To type the French accents, hold down the keyboard key on your laptop until a set of letters with accents pops up with numbers underneath. This is what appears on my screen in pale blue in a box for the letter e:
èéêëēėę
1234567
So to type fête I hold down the key e and tap the number 3. If the accent does not appear, perhaps you tapped too fast or released the e key too fast. Try again.
If that doesn't work, copy and paste the words from this blog post. Or photograph the screen with your smart phone. Print out the words in black and white or colour.
See
www.frenchlearner.com
http://www.wikihow.com/Say-Happy-Birthday-in-French
To learn French daily on the internet for free:
www.duolingo.com
For Free Recipes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coq_au_vin
https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Cookbook:Table_of_Contents
Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.
I have several more posts on learning French and other languages. Please share links to your favourite posts.
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