French people love nicknames. Not in our American way of shortening regular names; no, they will never reduce Robert to Bob, or Jacqueline-Inès to Jacki. But funny, descriptive nicknames they like, sometimes ones you don't say to the person concerned.
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So a while ago I was chatting with our administrative assistant over coffee, who asked me to describe the position of my 2nd-year Master student, Alex. And, for some reason I have no memory of, I said he was a sort of embryonic doctoral student.
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And now the whole lab knows him as L'embryon.
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Which he kind of likes.
Glad I could contribute.
Final
5 months ago
5 comments:
It could have been worse. Much worse!
I didn't know about french nicknames. I love this.
Brilliant of you. What's your nickname?
If I have one in the lab, it's one of those you don't say to the person's face. Farther afield I'm known as The American.
French Canadian families do this too. In conversation they keep switching from their real names to their nicknames which makes it fun trying to keep up with the cast of characters!
Figured what it meant. Went to Google to translate, anyway.
Had a lot of students that would apply to, not as a compliment.
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