I’m a day late if you are reading this newspaper on its publication date, or a few days if you are reading this online, - but Vive la France! Liberte! Egalite! Fraternite! Happy Bastille Day!
Roughly the same for the French as our 4th of July national holiday, Bastille Day celebrates the storming of the Bastille Prison in Paris on July 14, 1789 and the symbolic ending of King Louis the 16th’s “Ancien Regime.” By capturing the Bastille, which only held seven political prisoners at the time, the common people (The Third Estate) signaled that the king’s power was no longer absolute.
While you often hear criticism of the French and statements to the effect that we saved their buns in two world wars (“The French will keep on fighting until the last American soldier dies;” or, “The French tri-color, red, white, and blue flag is genius; in case of war, they can just tear off the corners on each side and surrender with minimal effort,” etc.), I’ve served with them all over the world and found them to be brave and freedom loving individuals. If you doubt it, read up on the French Underground and their opposition to the Vichy government. I also once spent six months on a ship undergoing a major overhaul in their Toulon, France, Naval Shipyard, and we took our meals on the French station ship. I decided then and there that any country whose Navy serves wine with every meal, including breakfast, can’t be all bad.
There are many things I admire about France. For example, I used to run up the Eiffel Tower. Now I just walk, and I usually only make it to the café on the second level. If I go any higher, I take the elevator. Of course, the change in my ascent took place over 60 years of gradual physical decline. Other than the blow to my pride, the worst thing about taking one of the tower elevators is having to stand in the long line of smokers puffing away on those harsh French cigarettes. Statistically, only five percent more French light up than Americans, but these smokers seem to be attracted to the Eiffel Tower. It’s even worse at night.
I also own a French car – a 1978 Citroen 2CV (French: deux chevaux,” i.e., deux chevaux-vapeur,” literally “two steam horses”) that I bought in Nice, in the Prefecture des Alps-Maritimes, and shipped to Jacksonville, Florida, from Marseille. I forgot to tell my wife and had to explain how it just “showed up” on my front lawn. Designed before World War II, the French hid the plans from the Nazis and introduced this two-cylinder, air-cooled, 435 cc, front-mounted engine, front-wheel drive, four-door, and roll-up convertible top economy car at the 1948 Paris “Mondial de l’Automobile,” and over 5 million were produced through 1990. It was the French answer to the Volkswagen beetle.
The original design specifications, supposedly, called for a car that would carry two grown farmers, a dozen eggs, and 100 pounds of potatoes across a plowed field without breaking the eggs. It weighs 1,200 pounds, gets 55 mpg, has 28 horsepower, and has that unique Gallic charm peculiar to cars of its vintage. A little “off-center,” like a lot of things “French,” the gear shift comes out of the dashboard and the windows fold, not roll, up. If you happen to see me cruising around Lake Serene on a Sunday afternoon, have pity because it will only do about 30 mph downhill. You will also see why it’s known by aficionados as the “Tin Goose.”
That is now, but much earlier, when I was 18, I tried to join the French Foreign Legion. I had heard about the Legion all my short life, and I really admired their long history of brave exploits, their camaraderie, and just the “romance” of an outfit who motto is “Legio Patria Nostra” (“The Legion is our Fatherland,” or as you probably hear it: “The Legion is our Home”). Growing up, I had always felt like an outcast, an outlier, and these lines from the book, “Beau Geste,” had resonated with me:
“Soldats de la Legion,
De la Legion Etrangere,
N’ayant pas de nation,
La France est votre mere.”
The year I tried, 1960, had been a relatively quiet time for the Legion. Indochina was essentially behind them (but looming ahead for us), and what became the Algerian War of Independence was just heating up. In fact, in 1962, President Charles de Gaulle would almost disband the Legion because of its overt support of the “pied noirs” or “black feet,” as Europeans of Algerian descent were known.
Looking back, I wonder about my motivation, but I didn’t have a whole lot to return to in Lumberton, Mississippi, and perhaps I’d watched Marlene Dietrich trudge along behind Gary Cooper’s outfit, marching off into the shifting desert sands in the movie, “Morocco,” one too many times. I’d also met some legionnaires about my own age on the island of Corsica and they encouraged me.
So, one morning I rode the bus up to Marseille, presented myself to the “Sergent Chef,” not a cook but the senior sergeant in charge of the recruiting station, and volunteered. He spoke enough English and I spoke enough dockside French that we understood each other. Fortunately, he was a kindly man, and he asked me if I had really thought through the momentous decision that I was trying to make. Was I, he asked, ready to change my name, give up my American citizenship, pick a new birthday, and forever be branded as a deserter in the United States? Did I really want to go to the “hell-holes” of Sidi Bel Abbes, French Guiana, and Djibouti? He said, “I can put you on the train to the receiving station at Aubagne tonight, and you may or may not make it through the training; but what you need to do, my friend, is go back to your ship, and “sleep on” this important decision for a few days. Grudgingly, I took his advice; slept on it; decided it was a pretty lame-brained idea; and my life took an entirely different course. Instead of the French army, I spent it in our Navy and Marine Corps.
So, here’s the deal. In honor of Bastille Day and the brave French men and women, I’m going to teach you how to tell time in French. I know – you are probably wondering, why do I need to know how to tell time in French? Well, it’s like those lists of the 100 books that you need to read to be an “educated” person: Moby Dick, Huckleberry Finn, The Brothers Karamazov, etc. You just need to know. When I was stationed at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, there was a university just outside the “Wall,” St. John’s University, whose entire curriculum was centered on the so-called “Great Books,” and their medical and law school admission rates were off the charts.
Maybe you are watching a documentary about the French debacle in “Indochine Francaise” – Dien Bien Phu in 1954, for example, and the commentator says that General Vo Nguyen Giap commenced the final artillery barrage on the French Foreign Legion outpost at “minuit moins le quarte.” Wouldn’t you like to know that it was 15 minutes until midnight when around 80 years of French colonialism in Vietnam fell apart?
Or perhaps you are following the Tour de France, and some American bicyclist who is actually not doped up or on steroids wins a time trial through the mountains in “cinq heures quarte” Wouldn’t you like to know that he set the record in five hours and fifteen minutes?
You could be in Paris and all excited about touring the Louvre, just dying to see the Mona Lisa, the Venus de Milo, or the Code of Hammurabi in the famous Babylonian section, etc., so you’ve booked a guided tour that leaves the Glass Pyramid promptly at “trois heures de l’apres-midi.” You’d better be there at 3:00 p.m. or you will have to join the long queue of tourists who don’t have tickets.
You might be walking around the Gare de Lyon, one of the six large train stations in Paris, waiting for your high-speed train (TGV) to Marseille, and you hear the announcer on the public address system say that the departure time has been changed to “neuf heures moins dix.” You had better be onboard and in your seat by 8:50 a.m. or you will be left standing on the platform. Of course, they will announce the change in English, too, but what’s the fun in that?
Or even better, you could be in Cannes this week for the annual Film Festival, which wasn’t held last year because of COVID restrictions. The word on the street is that your favorite actor, Brad Pitt, is going to be signing autographs downtown at the Crazy Horse Saloon at “midi.” You would definitely need to know to secure your place in line well before noon.
So, that’s just five reasons why you need to know how to tell time in French, not to mention that you’d be joining such notables as Napoleon Bonaparte, Joan of Arc, and Rene Descartes (“I think; therefore, I am”); although the last two probably looked mostly at clocks on church steeples. However, the French inventor, Antoine Redier, was the first to patent an adjustable mechanical alarm clock in 1847; and the first wristwatch, for that matter, was made just over the Alps, in Switzerland, in 1868 by Patek Philippe as a piece of jewelry for women. Anyway, telling time in French is just knowing the numbers and a few simple terms and rules. First, the numbers:
0. zero
1. un
2. deux
3. trois
4. quatre
5. cinq
6. six
7. sept
8. huit
9. neuf
10. dix
11. onze
12. douze
13. treize
14. quatorze
15. quinze
16. seize
17. dix-sept
18. dix-huit
19. dix-neuf
20. vingt
21. vingt et un
22. vingt-deux
23. vingt-trois
24. vingt-quatre, etc.
30. trente
40. quarante, etc.
As you can see regarding the numbers, there are many cognates (words that are the same in several languages), and if you examine numbers 17-24, you can quickly figure out the system for higher numbers. Then, it’s just a matter of knowing the word for every tenth number through 100 (“cent”). Piece of cake.
Now for a few basic terms: “heure” (hour); “le matin” (morning); “l’apres-midi” (afternoon); “le soir” (night); “midi” (noon); “minuit” (midnight); “le quarte” (15 minutes before or after the hour); “demi” (30 minutes past the hour). And some easy rules: time is usually expressed on a 24-hour clock, what we might call “military” time.
In English, we separate the hour and the minute with a colon (:); in French, they are separated by “h” (for heure). For example, 3:00 p.m. is usually expressed as quinze heures or 15h00, but you can also say, “trois heures de l’apres-midi.”
So, 9:00 a.m. in French would be “neuf heures du matin” (9 hours in the morning:
09h00). 9:30 a.m. would be “neuf heures et demi.” 10:24 a.m. would be “dix heures vingt-quarte. ” Noon would be “midi” (“Il est midi’). 1:15 p.m. would be “treize heures et quatre,” or you could say “un hour et quarte.” 8:45 p.m. would be “vingt heures moins (minus) le quarte” (20h45), but 9:00 p.m. could be “neuf heures du soir.” 12:30 p.m. is “minuit et demi,” and so forth.
Somehow, those last two paragraphs remind me of General de Gaulle’s infamous statement about France: “How do you govern a country that has 246 varieties of cheese?”
Impractical information? Perhaps. But remember, it was the French (d’Iberville, 1699) who were the first Europeans to settle the Mississippi Gulf coast and, except for the twists and turns of politics and history, we might all be speaking French as our native tongue. And think about this: the next time you are walking through the French Quarter in New Orleans, or maybe attending the Crawfish Festival in Breaux Bridge, and you overhear someone say, “Quelle heure est-il, s’il vous plait?” (“What time is it, please?”), it will make your day when you tell them.
Light a candle for me.
Benny Hornsby of Oak Grove is a retired U.S. Navy captain. Visit his website, bennyhornsby.com, or email him: villefranche60@yahoo.com.
