It was a green lemon moment.
It happened when translating citron vert for a menu I was working on.
It would be nice to say that my rendition was due to pressure of time or working late at night but no, from a French language perspective, it was a basic school day error. The translation should of course have been lime. I realised and self-corrected my mistake for a later version but the original menu had already been circulated.
You can guess: Blush and red now added to the colour palette of lemon, green and lime.
However:
The interesting thing is that green lemons do exist and they are not limes. Although lemons and limes are from the same plant family they are not the same fruit. In fact, some supermarkets recently had to compensate for shortages of lemons - you know the yellow ones - by selling green lemons. Now they are the same fruit at different stages of ripeness, with the green ones having some days extra shelf life. They are not limes.
This sets me to wondering if the restaurant whose menu I had translated really wanted to use green lemon and not lime. And I think all of this would be lost in translation.
But:
Citron vert in French still means lime and for a Francophone the tartness of that vocabulary error still lingered in the mouth.
So I decided on an action plan. And that's to squeeze several minutes a day into recovering and brushing up my French. I have developed a tiny habit of finding 5 or 10 minutes a day to really focus on the language. Often I get caught up in an article or listening to an item and 20 to 30 minutes could pass but the basic commitment is to finding that 5/10 daily.
And that simple habit is bearing fruit. From green to yellow it's ripening nicely.
More:
Here's an article from Yummy that I found interesting: What's the Difference: Green Lemon v Lime
Do you have your own "green lemon" moment? Or a daily habit for retaining and improving your French? I would love to hear.
