A vowel (or two) by any other pronunciation...

Every now and then I'll come up with something I think is a successful pun or a play on words in French, only to be told that it doesn't really work for native French speakers. My French friends sometimes do the same in English. It just serves to underline how different the phonology can be between two languages, even when we're basically understanding each other and being understood.

Here's an example of this phenomenon on an ad in the Paris métro. It's for a play called "Public or not Public." (The word public in French, by the way, means 'audience'.) It took me a while to realize that this title is supposed to be a play on "To be or not to be." The reason is, well, there are two reasons. The first is that the vowel sounds in public are not the same as those in to be. (For you IPA aficionados, public has /ʌ/ (hmm, that's not displaying right, it should be like an upside-down "v") and /ɪ/, while to be has /u/ (if not reduced to a schwa) and /i/.) The second problem is that the stress in public falls on the first syllable, while the stress in to be falls on the second.

Because of these two reasons, public and to be are not sufficiently similar in English for one to be able to stand in for another in a play on words. However, French does not have these vowel contrasts (public would likely be pronounced with the same vowels as to be), nor does it have contrasts of stress. So the title of the play is an acceptable play on words in French-pronounced English. Turns out, as you can read in the comments below, that "X or not X" is perfectly possible in French no matter what X is. So the stuff about English phonology still holds (see the links in my comment below for more on "to X or not to X" in English) but in French, apparently phonology doesn't play a role here. Thanks again, francofriends!