It’s All Maya!

This has nothing to do with the French, but rather with Anglophones who write about France.

I started reading a book recently and after the first few pages I had to stop and get myself another book to read!  I won’t even mention the name of the book, or the author, because it annoys me, well more precisely, it irks me to no end when writers sprinkle words of French in their book for no apparent reason other than to show that they know a bit of the language! The same goes for bloggers writing on their blog.  I don’t know what it is, but for some reason this phenomenon seems to be prevalent mostly with the French language.

I can’t for the life of me understand why people think it’s necessary to show others how much (or how little) French they know!  I really haven’t found this phenomenon used so extensively with any other language. Do people actually think it’s so chic, or that others will be so impressed, when they place French words into their blog, their newspaper or magazine article, or their autobiography? Probably so! Otherwise, I see no other logical reason for them to do it!

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for artistic expression and sometimes it’s imperative in a novel, song, or poem, but I see no value in placing a French word in every third sentence just for the hell of it, or for the reasons I’ve stated above! They don’t seem to take into consideration that if I’m annoyed and I speak French, how annoyed would people be who do not speak the language and miss the meaning of the sentence because of that one crucial word!

I find so many books and blogs about France constantly doing this that I’ve stopped reading them! A pity really, since some of them may have interesting things to say; but I’ll never know because it’s too damn tedious and boring to read on until the end!!!

Maya Muses:  So, you ask, why then do I have my tagline written in French?  Well it’s not just a useless word placed here or there for no reason; it’s for some of my French friends who have asked me what does my tagline mean in French.

Photo Credits:  Flickr