Etymology of Tidbit - split from Nationality and Borders Bill

[IvanV]

I checked with the OED and both spellings are acceptable.

That's because it records the way people write sh.t, rather than what's right & what's acceptable to Susie Dent isn't necessarily acceptable to the rest of us.

Clearly the dictionary moves on, and the data for that is what is in usage. At some point a new spelling has to enter the dictionary, and at some point a disused spelling has to be marked as obsolete. There is clearly a matter of judgement, or judgment even, over these things. I think they are in general quite reluctant to admit something as no longer an error, even when people pronounce it as they misspell it.

I think 4 levels (at least) of variant spelling can be distinguished, and are distinguished by dictionaries.

-Variant spellings that are considered a matter of taste, such as judgment vs judgement as cited above.
-Variant spellings that have come into sufficiently widespread use, for example commonly seen in publications, signage and documents, that they are recorded in the dictionary, but with an indication that it is a deprecated or irregular form. An example is "focussed".
-Variant spellings that are sufficiently widely seen to be mentioned in the dictionary, but with a note that they are considered errors. In some cases, the variant spelling indicates a different pronunciation, or pronounciation, that is actually in use. Such variants are generally not found in official documents, etc. Examples include pronounciation and mischievious. In the case of mischievious, it has been going on for about 500 years.
-Variant spellings that are commonly seen, but not mentioned at all becasue they are acknowledged as errors. Examples include definate, intergrate, becasue, concensus, etc.

Focussed/focusses/focussing is an interesting boundary case. The OED (when parts of it were still free to view online) said of these that they are "irregular spellings". What it means is that it breaks the spelling rules on when to double the final consonant before an ending like -ed. But it is in sufficiently common use that it is treated as a variant. My suspicion would be that at some point the Word spell-checker decided to "allow" it for UK English, which is doubtless a considerable influence on its propagation. It is now widely seen in official documents. I suspect its march cannot be resisted.

Why did focussed get through, when pronounciation and mischievious remain so strongly resisted, despite such widespread common use? I can only suspect that the use of a focus as a verb is recent, that its commonly used compounds with the double s came with it. I had a friend at university who became a lexicographer with the OED. The last time I saw him was in the mid-90s, and "focus" being a suddenly frequently used verb at that point, I asked him whether he thought the s should be doubled. He admitted that he worked only words beginning with C and D, and not F. He then spoke the word "focused" as though it rhymed with "accused", thus indicating to me he thought it should be a double s. Of course, I caught him off-guard, and he spoke without thought. Nevertheless, thinking I had as close to an official opinion as I could have, I wrote it with a double s myself for a few years. Then finally I thought about it and realised the rule I learned at primary school - which I checked to make sure I had all the details - implied a single s. And then I later the OED wrote as I described above. I will also note that I have found inconsistencies in the OED - different rulings on essentially similar issues in different words.

I once had a bit of a spelling issue in a study for one of the many extinct financial regulators, that I participated in the mid-90s. It was about the Sumitomo copper affair. We had much discussion with the numerous people we had to interview over comingled funds or co-mingled funds, whatever the word was. At least that was the word as everyone we met said it and wrote it in their written submissions to our study also. So, which of those should we use? I looked in the dictionary and discovered it was commingled. My boss at the time refused to accept the dictionary spelling. She decided that it was kind of a new word, not the one in the dictionary. So we wrote it as co-mingled, but did mention the problem to the client. The client chose commingled. And actually started saying it that way too. And that seemed to be enough to inform the trade that was the proper word, and they all started using it after that.

[Tessa K]

Sometimes it's mishearing, sometimes changes to words happened in olden days when fewer people were literate. Titbit could have changed just because it rhymes.

There's also a shift that happens when people change words to be like ones they already know. We see this when children get endings wrong - eg I comed instead of I came because they know -ed is a past tense ending. These can become permanent if enough people do them. And there's ellision where a napron became an apron, also nadder/adder.

There's a crossover between B and V too as they're formed in the same place in the mouth.

Rambling now, sorry.

[raven]

Rambling is good.

Ah, yes. In the same part of the mouth, that's what I was reaching for with d/t.

I forgot b/v. Youngest went through a phase of saying hab for have when he was a toddler, which struck me as odd at the time as I hadn't heard many kids confuse those two.

[Bird on a Fire]

I don't wish to alarm you, but your youngest kid may be Spanish.

[Millennie Al]

Ah, yes. In the same part of the mouth, that's what I was reaching for with d/t.

The difference between them is that d is voiced and t is voiceless. This difference is easier to demonstrate with a different pair as t and d are plosives, so don't make a continuous sound. Taking s instead, you can make the sound sssssss and then contrast it with zzzzzzzz. When you say zzzzz if you put your hand to your throat you can feel that you're making a sound there, but not for ssssss. Similarly for a whole bunch of other consonants such as f vs v (ffffffffffferry vs vvvvvvvery).

[IvanV]

Ah, yes. In the same part of the mouth, that's what I was reaching for with d/t.

The difference between them is that d is voiced and t is voiceless. This difference is easier to demonstrate with a different pair as t and d are plosives, so don't make a continuous sound. Taking s instead, you can make the sound sssssss and then contrast it with zzzzzzzz. When you say zzzzz if you put your hand to your throat you can feel that you're making a sound there, but not for ssssss. Similarly for a whole bunch of other consonants such as f vs v (ffffffffffferry vs vvvvvvvery).

Many languages have a pronunciation rule that all the consonants in a consonontal cluster must be pronounced with the same voice, regardless of the spelling. This can also apply across word boundaries. It arises because it makes words easier to pronounce. You don't have to change articulation - or one aspect of it - when moving through the cluster.

So, for example, in Russian, the preposition for in or at is в. (Slavic languages generally have several single-letter words which are a consonant. They usually add no syllables to a sentence, but rather stick on the front of the next word.) It is pronounced v before a word beginning with a voiced consonant, or anything where voicing is irrelevant, but f when it preceeds a word beginning with an unvoiced consonant. So в Москве pron vmoskvye (in Moscow) but в Киеве pron fkiyevye (in Kiev). There is a similar effect with the word с meaning with, which is pronounced s or z according to location. For example с грибами pron zgribami, with mushrooms.

Speakers of such languages find words like titbit quite hard work to say, as their inclination is to say tidbit. That's how a Russian would pronounce it if it was a Russian word.

[individualmember]

I just want to share the observation that I wouldn’t be able to spell it from the spoken sound, I grew up hearing it (and therefore this is how I say it) with a glottal stop between the first and second syllable. The third letter is unpronounced so you can write it any way you please.


ETA, I guess this is regional pronunciation, but as I was born on London to Scouse/Lancs parents I’m not exactly sure which one I get it from.

[IvanV]

I just want to share the observation that I wouldn’t be able to spell it from the spoken sound, I grew up hearing it (and therefore this is how I say it) with a glottal stop between the first and second syllable. The third letter is unpronounced so you can write it any way you please.

It is very common in regional English accents for t's in certain locations to be pronounced as glottals. It's less common with d's. So the words mottle and model are prounced the same in standard English, aside from the t/d distinction. But only in mottle is the t reduced to a glottal in certain regional accents, whereas in model it is still a clear d in those accents. (And in some regional accents, the L in each is reduced to a kind of W sound in those words.) We can produce several other parallel examples. In standard English what and wad differ only in the t and d, but only the first gets reduced to a glottal in some accents. Similarly we can compare Batman vs badmouth.

Though in tidbit, the t/d precedes a b. Does this make a difference? I think it does. It seems that the d can get reduced in words like bedbug, goodbye, etc.

But does that mean that you can't distinguish -db- from -tb- in such accents? There are cases where homophones in one accent are not homophones in other accents, the indistinguishable pronunciation of marry, Mary and merry in certain US accents being the most famous example

So can you do a little experiment for me? When you say these words, in comparison to the invented comparator, can you tell the difference:
bedbug vs betbug
goodbye vs gootbye
handball vs hantball
woodbine vs wootbine
roadblock vs roatblock
deadbeat vs detbeat

Similarly, can you tell the difference between:
outback vs oudback
meatball vs meadball
flatbed vs fladbet
cutback vs cudback
dirtbag vs dirdbag
paintball vs painedball

In my case, when I speak casually, and reduce the t and d, I find there is still a voiced/unvoiced distinction, even though I am producing a glottal-like sound rather than a BBC t or d. But that might be different for you.

So, if in fact you can tell these distinctions, you can workout whether you are saying titbit or tidbit.

[raven]

Do you really mean a glottal stop? Or just erosion (if that's the right term) of the consonant?

I tried, but for the life of me I can't put a glottal stop in the middle of titbit. It just comes out like tit bit, two separate words. I got quite used to pronouncing glottal stops in Hawaiian words, so I think I'm doing it right. It doesn't feel the same if I try to do it in titbit.

Although now I think about it, I think the stop is always between vowels in Hawaiian. Maybe that makes a difference, 'cos you really are shutting off the sound with your glottis then, like you do in oh-oh.

[raven]

I don't wish to alarm you, but your youngest kid may be Spanish.

Who knows, MrRaven may have some Spanish genes amongst the various Dutch/Irish/British/Russian/French branches of his ancestry.

[IvanV]

Do you really mean a glottal stop? Or just erosion (if that's the right term) of the consonant?

I tried, but for the life of me I can't put a glottal stop in the middle of titbit. It just comes out like tit bit, two separate words. I got quite used to pronouncing glottal stops in Hawaiian words, so I think I'm doing it right. It doesn't feel the same if I try to do it in titbit.

Although now I think about it, I think the stop is always between vowels in Hawaiian. Maybe that makes a difference, 'cos you really are shutting off the sound with your glottis then, like you do in oh-oh.

Yes, I really mean a glottal. An estuarian Londoner uses a glottal for the interior t both when saying glottal, and when saying titbit. Yes, it does make it sound exactly like saying the two separate words tit bit. And that's the point of my divergences into how a Russian says titbit if that was a Russian word - by unifying the voice of all consonants in a consontal cluster, they stick it together. But compare with your pronunciation of tibbit, where there is nothing at all there, and it can't possibly be mistaken as 2 words.

Now, think about the location of your tongue as you go through this process of producing the tb in the middle of the word. If your tongue momentarily touches the back of your teeth, or the palate just behind your teeth (this location is called the alveolar ridge), as you go through that tb, then you did in fact articulate a t. It was probably a non-plosive t, so you might detect it as a different sound from the t at the start of tit. English actually has two different t sounds, the plosive and non-plosive, which are used in different locations, so we don't need to distinguish them in spelling. You have to do exaxtly put your tongue momentarily in exactly the same place to articulate a d.

But if there remained a gap between the tip of your tongue and those locations throughout the tb, and so the point of articulation of the stop that meant it was tb and not bb, was necessarily further back in your mouth, then that was a glottal. You, personally, may well have articulated a very fast and light non-plosive t rather than a glottal. Some of us do. But I'm quite sure many people replace that with a glottal. I can quite easily do it and it seems perfect estuary English.

[raven]

I was definitely articulating the t, but I think I now understand what you mean by glottal - you're kind of moving through the tb faster and not touching that aveolar ridge. I want to call that sloppier articulation.

It still doesn't feel the same as a glottal stop to me, which is a more distinctly back-of-the-throat sensation.

(It's funny that I can, if I concentrate, work out how I'm physically making sounds. But I'm not sure I could distinguish between a plosive & non-plosive t by ear...)

[dyqik]

(It's funny that I can, if I concentrate, work out how I'm physically making sounds. But I'm not sure I could distinguish between a plosive & non-plosive t by ear...)

When I do that, I'm never sure if I'm saying it the same way as I would naturally.

[Tessa K]

As a Londoner I have no problem with the glottal in titbit. In fact a London accent does one on the second T too.

I tried it with a West Country accent (where I was born) and that's an easy glottal too.

The D in tidbit is softer than it would be at the start of the word.

[IvanV]

But I'm not sure I could distinguish between a plosive & non-plosive t by ear...)

It does take a little practice to do that if you are an English speaker. Because we don't need to be able to tell the difference when listening to English. It just sounds like someone is speaking with a foreign accent if they use the wrong one at the wrong moment, not like they were saying a different word. And, helpfully, in England we are very used to people speaking the language with all sorts of accents. In countries where they are not used to hearing their language spoken badly, they can have considerable difficulty understanding your attempts if you are using the wrong variety of consonants.

One way to try and hear it is to compare the words top and stop. The t in top is plosive, the t in stop is non-plosive. To try and hear how the t in stop is different, try saying a very long s, waiting a very slight fraction, and then saying the rest of the word stop. Try to hear how that would be different from saying the word top. It took me quite a while to get used to this.

When you are speaking nearly every continental foreign language, they don't make much or any use of plosive t's. So when trying to produce Spanish, Italian, French, etc, words, if you ever do that, use only non-plosive t's (and p's and d's and b's and c/k's and g's) and you will have a much less outrageous English accent from their perspective. You can make non-plosive t's if you want to, because you do it every time you say stop. You just have to get used to saying it in a place where your instinct is to use the plosive one, which is the more common one in English.

I recall a friend going into a Spanish shop of the old kind, some decades ago, where you had to ask for things at the counter. It was a work town, not a tourist town. She wanted a pack of printer paper. She just could not get the shopkeeper to understand "papel", as she was saying it, because she was using the wrong kind of Ps. She did know she should be saying something like pah-PEL, and not something totally English like saying papal. But it makes a big difference to being understood if you use the right consonants, which are substantially different from English consonants in most continental languages most of the time.

[Tessa K]

@IvanV The Parisians will of course pretend not to understand however good your accent if they suspect you are English.

The French for titbit is friandise which can also be translated as a 'dainty', a noun we don't use any more, which is a shame.

[tom p]

@IvanV The Parisians will of course pretend not to understand however good your accent if they suspect you are English.

The French for titbit is friandise which can also be translated as a 'dainty', a noun we don't use any more, which is a shame.

It's an amusing stereotype, but not actually true of all Parisians at all. In my experience of living there & working there in bars and going out lots, it wasn't true of anyone and my English friend Howard, who spoke perfect French with a broad (and somewhat exaggerated in French compared to his English) yorkshire accent and had lived there a decade and never complained of anyone being like that; although i don't doubt there must be some racist a..eholes who would be like that 'cos there are everywhere.

[Tessa K]

@IvanV The Parisians will of course pretend not to understand however good your accent if they suspect you are English.

The French for titbit is friandise which can also be translated as a 'dainty', a noun we don't use any more, which is a shame.

It's an amusing stereotype, but not actually true of all Parisians at all. In my experience of living there & working there in bars and going out lots, it wasn't true of anyone and my English friend Howard, who spoke perfect French with a broad (and somewhat exaggerated in French compared to his English) yorkshire accent and had lived there a decade and never complained of anyone being like that; although i don't doubt there must be some racist a..eholes who would be like that 'cos there are everywhere.

No, not all of them. I lived there for a year as a student (of French) so I was pretty fluent and found them generally not very welcoming, unlike people in other parts of France.

It wasn't racism though; the French are not a race apart even if some would like to think they are.

My Spanish and German are basic but I found Spaniards, Germans and Mexicans much more willing to try and understand.

Back to glottals: I've heard (from Danes) that Danish speakers use them a lot.

[Brightonian]

@IvanV The Parisians will of course pretend not to understand however good your accent if they suspect you are English.

The French for titbit is friandise which can also be translated as a 'dainty', a noun we don't use any more, which is a shame.

It's an amusing stereotype, but not actually true of all Parisians at all. In my experience of living there & working there in bars and going out lots, it wasn't true of anyone and my English friend Howard, who spoke perfect French with a broad (and somewhat exaggerated in French compared to his English) yorkshire accent and had lived there a decade and never complained of anyone being like that; although i don't doubt there must be some racist a..eholes who would be like that 'cos there are everywhere.

No, not all of them. I lived there for a year as a student (of French) so I was pretty fluent and found them generally not very welcoming, unlike people in other parts of France.

It wasn't racism though; the French are not a race apart even if some would like to think they are.

My Spanish and German are basic but I found Spaniards, Germans and Mexicans much more willing to try and understand.

Back to glottals: I've heard (from Danes) that Danish speakers use them a lot.

Re bolded, that's my experience too. I've more often found Parisians (not all ) not really wanting to help, or (occasionally!) completely refusing to engage, when they detect my English accent.* Oddly, some (not all!) Parisians assume that everyone with an English accent requires to be dealt with in English even if spoken to in French. OK, my accent is pretty bad, plus I'm not at all fluent (I just need the extra 5-10 seconds to find the right words). This (sometimes) results in very frustrating conversations with someone whose English is worse than my French, and who then can't think of the words and starts using hand gestures. However, in La France Profonde, I find things a lot easier, where they're (usually!) willing to just hear me out, even though they genuinely don't know English beyond "yes" or "no".

*Edit: In a shop in Paris we couldn't find something so I asked one of the staff in French whehether they had [x]. He turned his head away and asked a Spanish couple whether they could speak English. As it happened, they did, and it was pretty good English. Okayyy... anyway I simply told the Spanish people I was looking for [x] and they rephrased the question in French. And this was more fluent French than mine, so I just let it be, having this absurdly long three way conversation. But the kicker was that at the end of it all the woman in the Spansih couple glared at me sharply, implying that I SHOULD NOT ADDRESS PEOPLE IN ENGLISH. So they'd simply assumed I had addressed the staff member in English.

Edit 2: of course, my esprit d'escalier should have been to address the Spanish woman "merci madame, veuillez dire a ce monsieur que [x] est pres de [whatevs]" in French.

[raven]

And, helpfully, in England we are very used to people speaking the language with all sorts of accents.

Yes, I sometimes think my difficulty keeping vowel sounds straight might have something to do with my parents having different accents.

I recall a friend going into a Spanish shop of the old kind, some decades ago, where you had to ask for things at the counter. It was a work town, not a tourist town. She wanted a pack of printer paper. She just could not get the shopkeeper to understand "papel", as she was saying it, because she was using the wrong kind of Ps. She did know she should be saying something like pah-PEL, and not something totally English like saying papal. But it makes a big difference to being understood if you use the right consonants, which are substantially different from English consonants in most continental languages most of the time.

This reminds me of a conversation I once had with someone about the differences between, iirc, Portuguese and Brazilian, and how that revolved around how many different types of r there were. Which was many more than the 3 I imagined were possible.

[Bird on a Fire]

It's an amusing stereotype, but not actually true of all Parisians at all. In my experience of living there & working there in bars and going out lots, it wasn't true of anyone and my English friend Howard, who spoke perfect French with a broad (and somewhat exaggerated in French compared to his English) yorkshire accent and had lived there a decade and never complained of anyone being like that; although i don't doubt there must be some racist a..eholes who would be like that 'cos there are everywhere.

No, not all of them. I lived there for a year as a student (of French) so I was pretty fluent and found them generally not very welcoming, unlike people in other parts of France.

It wasn't racism though; the French are not a race apart even if some would like to think they are.

My Spanish and German are basic but I found Spaniards, Germans and Mexicans much more willing to try and understand.

Back to glottals: I've heard (from Danes) that Danish speakers use them a lot.

Re bolded, that's my experience too. I've more often found Parisians (not all ) not really wanting to help, or (occasionally!) completely refusing to engage, when they detect my English accent.* Oddly, some (not all!) Parisians assume that everyone with an English accent requires to be dealt with in English even if spoken to in French. OK, my accent is pretty bad, plus I'm not at all fluent (I just need the extra 5-10 seconds to find the right words). This (sometimes) results in very frustrating conversations with someone whose English is worse than my French, and who then can't think of the words and starts using hand gestures. However, in La France Profonde, I find things a lot easier, where they're (usually!) willing to just hear me out, even though they genuinely don't know English beyond "yes" or "no".

*Edit: In a shop in Paris we couldn't find something so I asked one of the staff in French whehether they had [x]. He turned his head away and asked a Spanish couple whether they could speak English. As it happened, they did, and it was pretty good English. Okayyy... anyway I simply told the Spanish people I was looking for [x] and they rephrased the question in French. And this was more fluent French than mine, so I just let it be, having this absurdly long three way conversation. But the kicker was that at the end of it all the woman in the Spansih couple glared at me sharply, implying that I SHOULD NOT ADDRESS PEOPLE IN ENGLISH. So they'd simply assumed I had addressed the staff member in English.

Edit 2: of course, my esprit d'escalier should have been to address the Spanish woman "merci madame, veuillez dire a ce monsieur que [x] est pres de [whatevs]" in French.

The Paris problem has two parts - French people, and capital cities.

In my experience, people who live in capital cities have a higher tendency to be self-regarding a..eholes who won't give you the time of day because they're so important and busy.

Where I lived in France I felt that people really weren't used to hearing the language being butchered. So while they'd totally ignore people who couldn't speak French, those of us who could bumble through un petit pois would be received with anything from warmth and encouragement through bafflement to outright disdain, depending on the individual. But I'd say on average folk were a bit less helpful than in other places where I speaky de lingo even wurst.

Best moment: "Un anglais que parle français?!"
Worst moment: spending 10 minutes trying to buy a pack of filters for cigarettes in a small tobacconist. Like, ok, maybe my pronunciation of "filtre" was a bit off, as the sequence of l, non-plosive t and french r is hard for my tongue, so perhaps I was unintelligible saying that word. I then described what a filter is - rien. Showed the filters I already had - rien de rien. Pointed to the identical one right behind them - quoi? Gave up and went to the one up the road, where they were lovely.

[bagpuss]

It's an amusing stereotype, but not actually true of all Parisians at all. In my experience of living there & working there in bars and going out lots, it wasn't true of anyone and my English friend Howard, who spoke perfect French with a broad (and somewhat exaggerated in French compared to his English) yorkshire accent and had lived there a decade and never complained of anyone being like that; although i don't doubt there must be some racist a..eholes who would be like that 'cos there are everywhere.

No, not all of them. I lived there for a year as a student (of French) so I was pretty fluent and found them generally not very welcoming, unlike people in other parts of France.

It wasn't racism though; the French are not a race apart even if some would like to think they are.

My Spanish and German are basic but I found Spaniards, Germans and Mexicans much more willing to try and understand.

Back to glottals: I've heard (from Danes) that Danish speakers use them a lot.

Re bolded, that's my experience too. I've more often found Parisians (not all ) not really wanting to help, or (occasionally!) completely refusing to engage, when they detect my English accent.* Oddly, some (not all!) Parisians assume that everyone with an English accent requires to be dealt with in English even if spoken to in French. OK, my accent is pretty bad, plus I'm not at all fluent (I just need the extra 5-10 seconds to find the right words). This (sometimes) results in very frustrating conversations with someone whose English is worse than my French, and who then can't think of the words and starts using hand gestures. However, in La France Profonde, I find things a lot easier, where they're (usually!) willing to just hear me out, even though they genuinely don't know English beyond "yes" or "no".

*Edit: In a shop in Paris we couldn't find something so I asked one of the staff in French whehether they had [x]. He turned his head away and asked a Spanish couple whether they could speak English. As it happened, they did, and it was pretty good English. Okayyy... anyway I simply told the Spanish people I was looking for [x] and they rephrased the question in French. And this was more fluent French than mine, so I just let it be, having this absurdly long three way conversation. But the kicker was that at the end of it all the woman in the Spansih couple glared at me sharply, implying that I SHOULD NOT ADDRESS PEOPLE IN ENGLISH. So they'd simply assumed I had addressed the staff member in English.

Edit 2: of course, my esprit d'escalier should have been to address the Spanish woman "merci madame, veuillez dire a ce monsieur que [x] est pres de [whatevs]" in French.

I spent a year in France too - in Nantes. The Nantais apparently pride themselves (at least, so I was told then, by some Nantais) on being second only to Parisians in their snootiness. I actually found that they were mostly lovely but I was meeting mostly students, their families, and people in customer service roles who were possibly not among the fully snooted. On visits to Paris, I did find that people I encountered there were more inclined to speak English to me, despite my speaking French to them, than the Nantais were but their English was generally better too and I also found that if I carried on speaking French, they would usually drop back into French - they were just trying to be helpful, I think. The worst culprit of all for that was a Nantais student whose English wasn't very good and that, combined with his appalling English accent, meant I had no idea what he was trying to say most of the time. But he point blank refused to speak French to me, despite my repeatedly pointing out that I was there to learn French. Mind you, he also told me not to wear my favourite hat in Paris as they would laugh at me. Funnily enough, they didn't (although it was very late 80s/early 90s British student style and decidedly out of place anywhere in France but so what? ). He was just a dick.

[Bird on a Fire]

Yeah the Lisboetas often respond in English to my Portuguese, even though my Portuguese is fine in every other town. I do think it's because of tourists and trying to be nice, though I didn't see the same in Porto.

[bagpuss]

And since we're sharing language-based anecdotes of English people in France, my absolute favourite was when Mr Bagpuss and I were on holiday in Chamonix with some friends. He was skiing but I was having a year off skiing as I'd had a really crap time the previous year thanks to struggling to find boots that fit, being unfit myself and having hit a bit of a plateau in my skiing as well, so I was just having a lovely holiday, doing touristy stuff and taking lots of photographs - I like mooching with a camera by myself and there's plenty to do for non-skiers in and around Chamonix.

I booked a 1 day bus trip to Geneva and when I turned up the tour guide spoke to me in French - they'd put me down as a French speaker when I booked the ticket in the Tourist Office as I spoke French to them. We had an entertaining couple of minutes of confusion until she realised I was English, despite all evidence to the contrary (ie, I spoke fluent French). Anyway, there were a few French people on the tour and the rest were American. She did all the commentary twice - once in French, once in English. And she very deliberately said slightly different things in the two languages. I caught her eye at one bit where she'd said something different in English from what she'd just said in French and she gave me a knowing look - I realised then that apart from her, I was the only person on the bus who understood both languages and I very much enjoyed sharing the private joke as she gave a subtly different slant to what she said in the two different languages. I can't remember the details now but it was all very good-humoured and gentle but piss-taking of Americans nonetheless.

[Opti]

[q
Worst moment: spending 10 minutes trying to buy a pack of filters for cigarettes in a small tobacconist. Like, ok, maybe my pronunciation of "filtre" was a bit off, as the sequence of l, non-plosive t and french r is hard for my tongue, so perhaps I was unintelligible saying that word. I then described what a filter is - rien. Showed the filters I already had - rien de rien. Pointed to the identical one right behind them - quoi? Gave up and went to the one up the road, where they were lovely.

Paris tabacs are in their own league of surliness, a hint of an english accent ... well, you described it well.