“Uncle S loves to read your blog, but he did say we had to find a way to tell you that it’s LA Maison Loup, not LE Maison Loup,” says my mother.

My heart sinks.

“No that can’t be right,” I say, “I looked it up. Michael said he thought it was LA as well and I specifically told him, ‘No. I looked it up.’”

But Uncle S does have a Masters degree in French Literature.

Oh no.

“Well let’s ask M,” says my mother, “she’ll know.”

M is visiting us from Paris and speaks fluent French, so of course she’ll know. I corner her the second she walks in the door.

“M, if you were to say, ‘The Wolf House’ in French, how would you say it?”

“Ummmm…,” she begins to reply in her fantastic French accented English, “how many wolf is in the house?”

“No, none. Not a house of Wolves. The Wolf House. Like, the Smith House. How would you say the Smith House?”

“La Maison du Smith.”

“No!”

“I’m sorry…yes,” she smiles.

“Well how did I get Le Maison Loup? I must have…oh wait…is the word Loup (wolf) masculine or feminine?”

“Au Francaise, it’s masculine, Le Loup.”

“Oh no. I know what I did. I looked up to see if Loup was masculine or feminine, thinking The Wolf House. Le Loup Maison. But in French the noun comes before the adjective, so I just switched them leaving Le with Loup, but it should be La with Maison. Ack!!!”

Jeff Vanuga

“What is this for?” M asks giggling.

“Oh it’s just the name of my blog. I wanted it to be The Wolf House, but in French. But I translated incorrectly to , Le Maison Loup!”

“Oh it’s so cute,” she smiles, “It’s not French, but it’s cute.”

This causes us all to burst out laughing when my mother says, “That should be the tagline of your blog. It’s not French, but it’s cute.”

So be it, for now anyway. You know I won’t be able to stand the error for too long though right? You know I am so nerdy that it will keep me up at night and one day I will transfer this WHOLE site to a grammatically correct domain name because I’m crazy like that.