> I recall that what we refer to as a "gold fish", the French call "le
> passion rougue" ("the red fish"), and that's about it.

That's "le poisson rouge". Unless you mean red passion, but then it's
"*la* passion rouge" :-)

> Benny likes to drink some kind of coffee. I'm not sure exactly what
> it is. The waitress comes over and he says "reversay". And she looks
> at him like "dude, WTF?" Anyway, it turns out the correct way to
> pronounce this word is actually a cross between saying "reversay" and
> trying to cough up a gold watch: hhhhhhhhrrreversay. Otherwise they
> literally have no idea what you're saying.
> 
> I still have no idea what this word actually means... Any guesses?
> 


"poured again" or something like that. I don't know much about coffee in
general, though... But yes, the "r" is certainly rougher in French, and
this is especially notable at the beginning of words.

> Because, you know what? To speak French, you have to actually speak
> in a French accent, or nobody knows what you're saying. Which
> actually makes sense, really...

I would expect this to be true in many languages indeed. Try Chinese
some day, it's even worse :-)

> Similarly, it's not "mer-see". It appears to involve a completely 
> different set of vowles, more closely approximating "meial-si". Danm,
> I can't even *type* it, much less say it out loud.

Perhaps if you say "mayor see" very quick in English it sounds a bit
like the French "merci" ? Except for the "r"...

> French words seem to have such a complicated structure. And yet these
>  kids toss it around as if it's *easy*. Which, when you're a French 
> person, it probably is.

As a matter of fact, I get the same feeling when I watch TV and find a
Polish station :-) I don't think the structure is more complicated, it's
just the chaining of the sounds that feels unusual.

> You know, it's probably a *good* thing that I don't know how to say
> "you have a really nice arse" in French. Because that waitress would
> have probably slapped me for it.

OK so I won't translate that :-D

-- 
Vincent

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