Fin De Semaine Poem by gershon hepner

Mannequin vedette means supermodel,
and grignotage denotes a snack.
I’m always ready for a bottle
of Burgundy, and though I lack
the French for many words, I spend
each fin de semaine with my best wench,
translated every wet weekend
by her linguistically-free French.

She has an English accent that
transforms us both in loverspeak,
and frolic in a French format
while we’re both dancing cheek to cheek.
So long as fin de semaine goes on
we share our grignotage and nibble
each other with a French frisson
in ways that don’t make Frenchmen quibble.

The French believe that rigor
cannot be compromised, but I
have found my wench will let me dig her
more deeply when we Frenchify
without the rules that pedants make
in English no less than they do
in French. There’s no word for mistake
when you have made a lover’s coup.

Max Colchester writes about the changing French language (“The French Get Lost in the Clouds Over a New Term in the Internet Age, ” WSJ, October14,2009) :
Keeping the French language relevant isn't easy in the Internet age. For years, French bureaucrats have worked hard to keep French up to date by diligently coming up with equivalents for English terms. Though most French people say 'le week-end' and 'un surfer, ' the correct translations of the terms are 'fin de semaine' ('end of the week') and 'aquaplanchiste' ('water boarder') . A 'start-up' company is referred to as 'jeune pousse, ' or 'young shoot' (the term pousse is used for vegetable sprouts) , while the World Wide Web is translated as 'toile d'araignée mondiale' (literally, global spider web) .But technological advancements mean new Anglicisms are spreading over the Internet at warp speed, leaving the French scratching their heads. Before a word such as 'cloud computing' or 'podcasting' ('diffusion pour baladeur') receives a certified French equivalent, it needs to be approved by three organizations and get a government minister's seal of approval, according to rules laid out by the state's General Delegation for the French Language and the Languages of France. The process can be a linguistic odyssey taking years. 'Rigor cannot be compromised, ' said Xavier North, the 57-year-old civil servant who heads the General Delegation.

10/14/09