I need my dad’s nails cut

<guest post from joel>

Kate is in town this weekend so I’m blogging today on Jessica’s behalf.  Thankfully it is easy to pinch hit here in Paris because something ridiculous and/or embarrassing has almost always just happened.

If you own a dog you will probably agree that nail trimming is a miserable task.   As we had done with my hair earlier, I attempted to trim the dogs’ nails myself.  Unlike my hair, it was an abject failure.  It became clear that their nail length was bordering on inhumane so I went to the vet to schedule a nail trim.  I wasn’t sure they did nail trims.  The groomer didn’t so I thought it was worth a try.

I all-too-often set out into new linguistic territory without having done my due diligence.  I realized as I walked into the vet that I had forgotten the word for “nails” and the word for “fingers,” “toes,” “hands,” and I never knew the word for “paws.”  I immediately had a rush of disproportionate panic.  When I panic linguistically all the words from all the languages I have studied volunteer to fill the void in the sentence I am trying to construct.   My proudest moment was incorporating Spanish, French, Mandarin, and English into a single sentence.  ”Broken French” would be a compliment.  I utter dismantled Spenchdarish.

The conversation went as follows.  All understood French has been translated to English with mispronunciation reflected.  N0t-understood French is represented as wanh wanh wanh.

Joel:  Hello.  Is it that here one can cut <gesture to end of fingers>?

Receptionist:  <Stares puzzled.  Unsure of how to respond.>  Nails?

Joel: I’m sorry.   Yes.  Nawls.  No my nowells.  My father’s*. <realizing that wasn’t the right word from the receptionist’s panicked expression.> No, No, sorry.  My dog.

Receptionist:  <Relieved> Yes.  Are they wanh wanh wanh?

Joel: <Not understanding the adjective, decides to recite as much information as he knows hoping that something will answer the question>  Um.  There are 2 of them.  <wasn’t it>  They close to here. <nope>  They are small. <no> One is Scottish Terrier.  One is Yorkshire Terrier.

Receptionist:  <Seeing that the monologue may never end cuts off the customer with pantomimes to aid comprehension, not unlike one might do a half-trained chimpanzee, to indicate that she wants to know if they are gentle.>

Joel:  Ah!  Like this, like that.

Receptionist:  <Satisfied that it is worth a try but mostly relieved that the train seems to have finished its wreck.>  When can you bring them in.

-

I still don’t know the word for nails but I remember gentile and am glad to have the little guys trimmed up.

*The word for dog in Spanish is perro.  The word for father in French is pere, which I pronounced perfectly on this occasion.