This will probably be a tough one.
I recently read the graphic novel What If We Were… by Axelle Lenoir (excellent book; I recommend it).
The main characters of the story are two Canadian high school students. And one of the running jokes in the book is how one of them speaks French very poorly but refuses to acknowledge she does so.
That’s a joke that’s more topical to Canada. The country is officially bi-lingual but many Canadians outside Quebec use English as their everyday language and have only a passing familiarity with French.
But I found out that Lenoir (who is Canadien) originally wrote the book as Si on était… in French before translating it to English. So now I’m wondering how she handled this joke in the original French text.
Obviously, she couldn’t have had the character speaking bad French when she was speaking normal French throughout the rest of the book. She could have flipped the languages and had the character speak bad English but that would essentially be a different joke. Most French-speaking Canadiens speak English quite well so a Canadien who speaks English poorly is not the same as a Canadian who speaks French poorly. Or did Lenoir just use some third language, like Spanish or German, as the substitute for the language the character spoke poorly?
I realize it’s a long shot, even on this board, but has anyone read the original French version of this book and can answer my question?