Faim and Femme

French 101:

Femme--"fem": Woman

Faim--"fay": Hunger

French has this tricky rule about not pronouncing the last letter of words,

but as my roommate says,

C'est l'exception qui confirme la règle

It's the exception that proves the rule

Alors, I thought that "faim" was one of those exceptions--that maybe I should pronounce the "m"--

Alas, it is not.

Lesson learned.

I was talking with Michel, a jewelry vendor, today about my studies and when he asked what I wanted to do with my degree.

*I get this question a lot

I started talking about world "faim" and working for a non-governmental organization.

When he cocked his head to one side with a very quizzical, confused look on his face, I knew I was pronouncing something terribly wrong. I've seen the face many times before--it's part of the language learning process.

I repeated myself--saying "faim" like "fem".

Another quizzical look.

When I was in Spanish classes in highschool, my teacher taught us to circumvent around a word we didn't know and describe what we were trying to say in another manner. Extremely useful when trying to learn a new language.

So, I tried again, instead trying to say something along the lines of "someone eats because they are hungry"--insert circular motions on my stomach and other various descriptions.

After another very puzzled look, I finally wrote down this word I was so desperately trying to say,

Michel just laughed.

Completely convinced I said "someone eats because they have woman", "I have woman", and "eat woman" in approximately 6 various form before realizing my grave mistake,

I couldn't help but laugh as well.