Mat Twassel: Blog

I received more than twenty responses to the question I posed in my blog of the other day: "What is the French word for fuck?" Thanks very much. As I may not have made clear, the question largely had to do with what the duck, Rosa, uttered again and again in the crime novels of Louise Penny. The setting for these adventures is a small town in Quebec, just north of the Vermont border, and the residents speak French (although Penny writes the dialogue in English). Rose the duck says "Fuck" but was that a French fuck or an English fuck?

By coincidence, in this morning's New York Times is an article "A Language Bill Deepens a Culture Clash in Quebec" which touches on this subject.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/09/world/canada/quebec-french-language-laws.html

Apparently there is a new law pending in Quebec that will, among other things, require people to speak French. My understanding of French is pretty much limited to "merde" and "fuck," though I rarely say either word out loud. So if I were to visit Quebec, I'd have to remain silent or risk breaking the law. I wonder how Penny gets by writing books in English?

I'm all for freedom of speech and I'm all against censorship, so maybe I won't be visiting Canada any time soon. And I guess, depending on whether it's an English fuck or a French fuck, Rosa the duck may be in big trouble.

I do like the sound of French. And I know it's the language of love. When crying out in orgasm, do French lovers use French to express their ecstasy? What might be the punishment for slipping into some other language mid climax?

On a slightly different note, yesterday my SOL download count topped 2.5 million. Thanks to SOL and to you for taking a look at my stories.

I received four responses to the question I posed in my blog post yesterday about the best way to represent texting in fiction. All four responses indicated I should just write the txting in plain English. I like that; I feel comfortable now not changing anything.

It would have been a bit silly to try to represent the txt in that story ("Anais' Almost Bare Naked Ass") in txt speak because Anais and her friend Louis are French and would have been texting in French. I wouldn't have a clue how to do that; I couldn't even get the real French right, and anyway I don't think non-English stories are permitted in SOL.

In the last year or two I've read all the Louise Penny novels. These are set mostly in a small town in Quebec just north of the Vermont border. I think it's a fair assumption that most of the characters most of the time converse in French. But the author writes in English, except for a few phrases-"Oui" for example. And when the characters do speak English, we're informed of that. But in some of the novels there is no occasion in which any of the characters speak any English, so it's possible, perhaps even likely, that some readers think they are speaking English.

One of the characters in these novels, Rosa, is a duck, and she speaks but one word, Fuck, although she repeats it, Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, for example, as the occasion warrants. My question is: Is Rosa's "fuck" in French or English? In other words, what's the French word for "Fuck"?

My story today (Anais's Almost Bare Naked Ass) is meant to be a txt correspondence between Anais and her boyfriend Louis. I thought about rendering it in txtese, but in the end I put it into plain English. Do you think it would have been better to do it in txt speak? Part of the problem is that, not being proficient in txt speak, I do what texting I do in real English. In real life it would take me more time to figure out how to do the txt than to type the English words. Opinions?

I'm back from vacation with a ten day old mustache, grown at a suggestion from my sister-in-law, whose husband as well as all my other brothers have and have (it seems) always had a mustache. I've worn a mustache before. Twice. One lasted almost six months. This new one, I think, impaired my golf game. At least that's my excuse. No doubt I'll do a story about it.

So far I've posted eight stories to SOL with at least one mention of a mustache. One of them, quite autobiographical, is called Shaving Cream.

Mice

I've found that (among those who vote), my stories with mice in them are among the least popular. Maybe if there were a story code for mice (or vermin), readers with aversions to rodents could steer clear-not that story codes seem to have that kind of effect. I think most of my rodent stories are cute. Not that in real life I especially like mice. A few years ago some of them nested in the air filter compartment of my car, and rather than pay a lot to get them cleaned out, I traded the car in. I also set a bunch of traps in the garage and caught seven mice. Poor little things. They are cute! A friend suggested mothballs instead of traps. I tried that. I'm not sure if it worked, but I didn't like the smell of mothballs in the garage, so I'm just hoping that the automakers have designed mouse inaccessible air filter compartments.

Anyway, I've posted another mouse story today. "When the Cat's Away."