Language

Newsflash! I have just discovered that Yehuda Moon’s Van Sweringen city bike is actually a Beloved Cycles Morton .

Seriously (or maybe not so) the Yehuda Moon cartoon is well worth reading, and apparently the folks at Beloved Cycles are quite serious in offering some very expensive semi-custom frames.  I mean a $4200.00 fixie porteur?  By the way, “portuer” would be “porter” in English, as in somebody who carries stuff around.  Just as “derailleur” is French for “gear changing thingy.”

Incidentally, I usually spell that last thingy “derailler,” and pronounce it Dee-rail-ehr. There’s a reason for that.

Back in the early ‘60s a French car company coat–tailed the VW, and introduced a little bug they called the Renault Dauphine, which they pronounced Ren-alt Doe-feen.  A bit later they start getting toney, and changed the pronunciation of the company to Rey-noah.  I was actually dickering for a car at the time, and I was looking at one of their R-10s.  But I quit looking when the sales weasel corrected my pronunciation.  I figure, I speak American.  This is America.  And if you want to sell it here, you’ll use the language correctly.  (Incidentally, I never even thought about looking at one of those French Pig-ots.)

Some years ago, a man walked into the bike shop, leaned on the repair counter, and started chatting away at us wrenches.  He had all the earmarks of a first rate poser.  (Or poseur.)  But he kept referring to his zhee-ahn bicycle.  My coworker, Kevin and I kept trading “I haven’t the foggiest” glances.

The penny dropped for both of us at the same time.  The guy was talking about a Giant!  (This was years before we became a Giant dealer.)  Kevin fled into the back, and left me to try and keep a straight face.  All the while, I could hear Kevin snorting and choking back there with laughter.

Incidentally, among the bikes in my current stable is a Giant bicycle (the brand name, is Giant, the bike really isn’t that big) that does not have a gear changer thingy.  It’s a fixed gear bike, named (appropriately) Bowrey.  I might add, no one corrected my pronunciation when I was buying it.