The Great Change: Turning Cathy into a Lawyer

Sometime last year, as part of my networking activities, I went into San Francisco to meet a lawyer for lunch. There's this pedestrian area near the financial district with lots of restaurants, including a purportedly French one. We dined there, but I was caught off guard by the accents of the waiters. They all had these supposedly French accents - but there was something wrong with them. They seemed to not be the accents of actual French-speaking people trying to speak English, but rather people using the accents that Americans expect a francophone to have when speaking English.

These accents are not the same. A native French speaker naturally will change vowels, emphasis, and some consonants in a way that reflects how they are normally attuned to using their voices. But it's not what the American ear expects a French person to sound like. Our concept of a French accent puts those vowels, consonants, and emphases in completely different places - places which might be impossible (if not also incredibly unlikely) - for a native French-speaker to achieve.

Having lived in France and known quite a few English-speaking French people, I have some idea of how they normally sound. And they don't sound like these waiters. I thought it was sort of amusing, and told my companion, that the waiters somehow felt they needed to use such a contrived affectation in order to shmooze with the clientele.

But that was last year, and I'd forgotten about it until yesterday when I met a friend for lunch and we went there. (He speaks French himself, although he is not a native speaker.) We had a different waiter than I'd had the last time, but he had the exact same ridiculous accent. I would never, of course, make fun of anyone's actual accent, but affectations deserve skewering. Especially one designed to con us into buying into the authenticity of the restaurant.

I mean, as I told my friend, if he were really French, why would he have had that confused look on his face when I asked for butter on my ham sandwich? The French eat jambon et beurre (ham and butter) sandwiches all the time.

We didn't have much contact with our waiter, which was fine because I was really there to catch up with an old friend and not so much to taunt the waitstaff. But when the waiter returned with the credit card receipt and forgot to leave a pen, I told my friend he should ask for un stylo, just to see what would happen.

Apparently, however, my friend was even less up for taunting the waitstaff than I was, and so didn't.

But if I ever go back, next time I think I'm going to order entirely in French.