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Comment by RyanMcGreal | Hacker News Reader

> Japan is somewhat famous for churning out students who know a lot about English, but can't order a drink at Mac Donald's.

An old friend of mine had a master's degree in French literature. She used to live in Ottawa, Ontario and was fond of a pizza place just across the river in Hull, Quebec. One day she called to order a pizza, and when it came time to ask for it to be delivered she realized she didn't know how. She asked if the pizza place could put the pizza into a car and drive to her house with it.

The order taker replied, "Oui, delivery. Nous pouvons le faire."

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I guess this is also illustrates the difference between studying French at university, and studying it at Alliance française--or studying computer science at university, versus programming at a trade/vocational school.

Translation?

"Yes, delivery. We can do it."

Edit: - I should point out that the French word for delivery is livraison; but like most languages, day-to-day Quebecois French is porous enough to borrow words from other languages where expedience warrants. Hence le week-end (not le fin-de-semaine), frencher (to French kiss), etc.

As a further digression, I should point out that it seems less common (i.e. less acceptable) to drop anglicisms into informal Quebec French than in Europe, where native French speakers do not feel threatened by a dominant continental Anglo culture. I was amused on a recent trip to France to learn that the French word for wifi is "wifi" (pronounced wee-fee). Since wifi is short for "wireless fidelity", a more canonical French term would be something like fidélité sans fil.

Just a side note, in France too we say week-end... Fin-de-semaine is usually used to mean at the end of the week (for example what people would say at work if they expect the answer to come before friday evening..)

Of course, the French Academy tries to crack down on this; I remember cases like trying to push out "email" in favor of the native "courrier électronique" (literally: "electronic mail").

AFAIK in Quebec the preferred term is "courriel", which is a portmanteau of "courrier électronique" in the same manner that "email" is a portmanteau of "electronic mail". (Funny that we're talking about Anglicisms in French, given the vast number of English words of French origin - like "portmanteau".)

I remember reading that the word courriel is in fact a Quebecois invention.

"Yes, Delivery, We can do that"

Or at-least I think that is what it means.

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