Saturday, April 23, 2011

"My Blonde"

In Quebecois French, the word "blonde" can mean "a girlfriend", irrespective of the woman's hair color. Once, when my sister had first started dating her boyfriend and her colloquial French of Quebec was still not good, she heard him talking on the phone. He was telling his friend about this blonde that he was dating and how amazing she was. My sister, whose hair is black, is no shrinking violet. As she listened to the conversation, she started getting enraged and began to imagine all kinds of horrors she was going to visit on the guy. It's a good thing he managed to explain this curious linguistic reality to her fast enough.

3 comments:

Tim said...

You make it sound as if the women in your family are a particular vicious bunch, do you know that ? :)

Clarissa said...

It's not the family, my friend, it's the culture. We are, indeed, a culture of powerful, aggressive, intransigent, bossy women. All of my friends tell me that when they first met me they were terrified of me. :-)

Z said...

"Blonde" means that in LA and FR, too.