young, young voice

Blasted homophones!  They're everywhere, draping their silky selves upon humdrum dialogue, disguising words to the strained not-fluent-enough listener.  There's a holiday this week in Geneva, the Jeûne Genevois (the Genevan Fast); you can read all about it here.  When the Jeune Genevois was first introduced to me, my poor, overworked ears heard it as 

jeune, jeune voix...which means young, young voice.  

Surely some of you have had these moments, haven't you?  People join together in conversation.  There is a thread to this talking, and everyone is participating.  At this early point, we nonfluents are thrilled, regardless of the topic, because we have thus far comprehended most of the relatively superficial theme, and we are even able to help it along with small comments and not terribly exposing questions.  We could quite happily continue at this shallow depth forever, really, but no, one of the fluents inevitably decides to get fancy and pull in some more obscure word work.  That's when it happens, the nonfluent's brain makes the most sense it can of what has been said, settling upon the closest sound alike.  

Therein occurs a divide.  The fluents pursue their conversation with ease,  flaunting their finesse, while the innocent nonfluent has unknowingly misunderstood that one word, that keystone to the conversation, sending them tumbling to a completely different, often dada-esque topic of discussion which they try to uphold.  If the nonfluent is not vigilantly monitoring for possible divides s/he could make the irreparable mistake of letting out an impulsive reply, and in doing so, reveal to all participants that s/he has been nodding and providing looks of comprehension, even vocal affirmation when, in fact, s/he has been earnestly 
driveling
to an audience of peers.

"Ah, interesting!  And do the children sing on this holiday?"   

{You know, with their young, young voices.}

These days, it feels like I have a young, young voice myself.  

Happy Jeune Genevois to you. 

Although they call it a fast, we hear it's ok to eat
tarte aux pruneaux (plum pie) on the Jeune Genevoix.