Ver-*sigh

Deafinitely Girly is almost too embarrassed to write today’s post. Remember the post I did on being afraid to say words in case I mispronounced them? (see Words Aren't All I Have – April 08)

Now, do you also remember that I visited Versailles recently? Well ,it turns out that my way of saying Versailles is different from the whole World’s way of saying it and I never realised.

So let’s start at the beginning. I tottered off home this weekend to see the Rents with London Aunt and London Cousins. It was excellent fun – we cycled round the lake, watched a canal boat run aground and I ripped my hands to shreds on some wooden monkey bars.

I also told Ma and Pa about my weekend in France. They listened and eventually after the 20th time I said the word Versailles, Ma could clearly stand it no longer and corrected me.

Apparently the ‘lles’ are silent so you just say Ver-sigh…

WHY DID I NOT KNOW THIS? And that means that all the people inbetween visiting Versigh and seeing the Rents must have thought I was a fruit loop!

My Ma said initially that she thought I was joking when I said it as Versailles but once I had said it repeatedly to her without any hint of laughter, she realised I just hadn’t heard it right – to be fair, I hadn’t heard it at all – you see, the letters ‘L’ and ‘S’ are not only hard to lipread, they are hard to hear, too.

So, to all those people who have heard me talking about the non-existent Palace of Versaaaaiiiilllllles, sorry about that – I wasn’t taking the piss, I genuinely thought that as those letters were there, they weren’t silent.

I guess in a way it’s ironic that the word Versailles has so many useless letters – the palace itself is too big to be seen in one day, the grounds are so big, you could walk all day and not hit the boundary fence, and my embarrassment is so big, it will take a long, long time before I utter its name again.