Cross-cultural communication （95）　

95) Big monkey, little monkey
In French, the word for hall is 'salle'. It is pronounced 'sal'. Not only halls, but also small rooms are sometimes called ‘salle'. For example, 'salle a manger' is a dining room, and 'salle de bain' is a bathroom, and the word is also used for small rooms.

This is a story from my time in Paris, where I spent two and a half years from 1995. In the evening after finishing work, I was going to go to the cinema with a friend. This friend was a Japanese returnee from France and was almost bilingual in Japanese and French. Of course, when she was with me, she would use Japanese because of my poor French, but sometimes she would unconsciously mix in French. We had arranged to meet at a cinema on the Champs-Elysees. My friend called me at work that afternoon. “There are two salles at the cinema there, a small salle and a big salle, so don't make a mistake and go to the big salle.” My friend was talking about it as if it was completely natural, but I was struggling to hold back my laughter. There was a big monkey and a small monkey at the cinema, and even the big one? Monkey is pronounced as salle in Japanese. Well, I had been living in Paris for a year by that time, so I knew what she meant, but my left brain still received the word “salle” as “monkey” instead. Of course, I was able to meet up with my friend at the “big monkey” cinema that day without any problems. When I told her how I felt about the salle, she understood the humor of the situation, and at first we just giggled, but after a while we started laughing hysterically with a giggle that reminded us of the situation.

After this monkey incident, I tried to think of a similar Japanese-French word play myself. Here's one example. The most common French greeting is “ca va?” (How are you?). When someone says “ca va?” to you, you usually reply “ca va.” (I'm fine). So, when someone says “ca va?, same pronunciation as mackerel in Japanese” to you, you reply “Tai” (sea bream in Japanese). Of course, this only works with someone who understands both Japanese and French. I tried this out with a French-Japanese woman who was working as an interpreter at the American Hospital where I was working. When I met her first thing in the morning, she said “ca va?”. When I replied “tai”, she looked a little confused, but after two seconds she burst out laughing and said “Doctor Kido, you're full of jokes!”.

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