In Monk S08E02, how come the "Foreign Man" from english-speaking Nigeria connects "poison" with "poisson"?
Curiously, so far, all three of my questions on this forum are related to my watching series in French.
In "Monk and the Foreign Man", S08E02, the key of the problem is solved by the Foreign Man, who is from an english-speaking African country, namely Nigeria.
Earlier, a witness had recognized the van of the murderer, but all he could say is that the word "POISON" was written in big letters on the van.
At some point, seeing a photo of an angler catching a fish, the Foreign man realises that what was really written was "POISSON", so they looked for a fish restaurant with a (probably phoney) french style.
Now in French, that makes perfect sense.
But in english ? I don't even know how the word "poisson" is sounded in this episode. Is it sounded as "poy-son", rhyming with poison in english, "poy-zon" ? Or is it sounded the french way "pwah-song" which does rhyme in french with "pwa-zong" = poison ?
I did check the transcript, as suggested in a comment to my question here by Acccumulation (not a misprint, this user has three Cs in his username - thanks to him for his help), but the spelling does not tell me the answer.
In French the Nigerian man has a very characteristic "french african" accent, what you'd expect from a Senegalese, an Ivorian or a Nigerien (from Niger, not Nigeria).
What accent does he have in English ? Any hint of french accent under the african one ? Why would he ?
Or is there some good reason to expect him to see a connection that "Adrian Monk" did not see?
Best Answer
To answer the question stated in the title - the plot point is dependant on the street kids not being well-educated enough to recognise the word as being French for fish, and instead initiate a misdirect towards a pest control vehicle.
The foreigner we have to assume is better-educated and can therefore make the mental leap required for the plot to be fulfilled, once given a mnemonic device in the fisherman painting.
The pronunciation is not vital to the plot, only the spelling and difference in meaning; moving the hunt from rat catcher to fishmonger or restauranteur.
[To briefly touch on the pronunciation, the character, in a Nigerian accent which I am completely incapable of spelling out any differently to British, pronounces them poy-z?n and pwa-sson, clearly differentiating them in sound and meaning.]
It is not [in the parts I watched] made clear whether the street kids spotted the double 's' and were unaware of the pronunciation difference and meaning, or whether they simply couldn't spell. I can't imagine there being any plot necessity to return to them for confirmation after the misunderstanding was realised.
Why the reveal of this discrepancy was given to the guest star rather than the show hero is something we may never discover. Monk seems to be a kind of 'Sherlock' type character [OCD/Asperger's/irritating yet brilliant trope] so perhaps the audience would expect him to make these leaps ordinarily.
I don't know whether Monk is accredited elsewhere in the series as speaking even elementary French. It might just be a way to avoid his having to posses that knowledge, long term. Equally, it may just be to give the guest star a larger slice of the pie, and incidentally or otherwise, change audience perception of his character's knowledge, intelligence and/or education level.
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Answer 2
It's logical, in my mind, to deduce that the witness didn't speak French and mis-pronounced Poisson as "Poison". I don't speak French, and I never knew that word was pronounced "pwah-song" until I read it in your question. I'm sure I'm probably in the majority on that, as the most predominant languages spoken in the US (where the show was made) are English, Spanish and Chinese (in that order). According to this Wiki page, French is 7th (and pretty far down the list).
- English only – 239 million (78.2%)
- Spanish – 41 million (13.4%)
- Chinese (including Mandarin, Cantonese, Hokkien and all other varieties) – 3.5 million (1.1%)
- Tagalog (including Filipino) – 1.7 million (0.6%)
- Vietnamese – 1.5 million (0.5%)
- Arabic – 1.2 million
- French – 1.2 million
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