Les saisons
What would your vocabulary list look like to encapsulate the seasons? A fun exercise to while away le temps*.
*the time
Filtering by Category: Learn French
Les faux amis
At Lingua Franca we're always encouraging you to take risks with your French. You'll often hear us saying "Just have a guess!" when you're stuck for a word, since we know there's a fairly good chance you'll get it right. French and English share at least 10 000 words, so it's not a bad stratégie* (see?), except when you get it wrong...
The culprit in these instances is usually a faux ami, or a false friend. These are words that look the same or similar in both languages, but have différent* meanings.The naughty Chouchous amongst you will already know to avoid excité* and préservatifs*, but there are many more seemingly innocuous words that can trip you up on your way to conquering la langue française*.
un bouton ≠ a button.
Well, it does actually but it also means a pimple, so attention*.
la monnaie ≠ money.
La monnaie actually means change, so if you hear someone saying "Je n'ai pas la monnaie." it doesn't mean they're broke, just that they might need to break a fifty.
la déception ≠ deception.
We nearly didn't employ someone once when he told us that since he'd worked in sales, he was very familiar with deception. Déception means disappointment, not being untruthful.
la location ≠ the location.
Have you ever seen a sign at a French airport indicating 'location de voitures'? I always assumed it meant the place where the cars were located (and it was never clear to me which cars, by the way), but it made a lot more sense when I finally realised location means 'rental'.
le pain ≠ the pain.
In fact it's the opposite. In France, le pain (bread) is usually synonymous with a whole lot of pleasure.
un tissu ≠ a tissue.
A tissue is un mouchoir, whereas tissu simply means fabric. By the way, for a vrai ami (true friend), you can always say 'un Kleenex' instead of un mouchoir for tissue. The glory of la globalisation*, non?
une prune ≠ a prune. How is that possible? How could it not mean prune? Because une prune is a plum and a prune is un pruneau. Tu piges*?
un slip ≠ a slip. In fact, un slip refers to a pair of men's undies. Not boxers but briefs. Which reminds me, les culottes does not refer to a wide-legged pair of pants. Les culottes is a slang word for women's knickers. Mignon, non*?
By the way, we're not immune to falling into the faux ami trap here at the office either. We're all second-language learners, like you, and have had our share of embarrassing language-related incidents over the years. For example:
Katrina recently responded to a text of Myriam's thanking her for something by saying "Ça me donne beaucoup de plaisir". She thought she was saying “it gives me a lot of pleasure”, meaning, you're welcome. Apparently not. Phrased that way, it means it gives me a lot of physical, even erotic, pleasure, which was really not her intention! She’s since been told the correct phrase is "Ça me fait très plaisir."
Myriam's own slip-up was more a question of pronunciation. When she first arrived in Australia and was setting up the house and buying bed linen, she went shopping for 'shits'. Oops.
The first time someone told Deborah they worked in hospitality, she assumed they worked in a hospital. Tellement mignon*!
Josephine was trying to explain her physique to someone and wanted to talk about her 'measurements' which in French is 'les mensurations'. Translating (almost) directly from French to English she ended up saying that her menstruations were not standard. La honte!*
*strategy | *different | *sexually excited | *condoms | *the French language | *be careful | *globalisation | *Get it? | *Cute, isn't it? | *So cute! *How embarrassing!
L'accent aigu
I absolutely love teaching about the acute accent (accent aigu in French). I find it really interesting.
A mini-leçon from Lingua Franca explaining how the acute accent works in French (it's the one going up over the e).
Firstly, it's a sound we're relatively familiar with even before we come to learn French, since it appears in some very common words we've borrowed: café, risqué, touché, for example.
Secondly, there is a really neat trick I was taught by my French teacher which I now love to pass on. It goes like this: if ever you're faced with a French word that starts with an 'é' and you're having trouble deciphering it, try dropping the 'é' and replacing it with an 's' instead.
For example:
étranger = stranger
état = state
Écosse = Scotland
Pourquoi? Well, the history of language is a long and complicated one, but this is my simple (and by no means authoritative) take on it. Modern French is derived from Latin via Old French. Several other modern languages are also based on Latin, for example Italian, Spanish, Portugese and Romanian. These are often called western Romance languages. If we take an example of the evolution of the word 'study' from Latin to Old French to Modern French, you may start to see an interesting pattern.
Latin: studium
Old French: estude
Modern French: étude
Can you see how when the 's' dropped out of use in the transition between Old and Modern French, the acute accent makes an appearance? It seems English borrowed many words from Old French, and just removed the 'e' over time, leaving us, in this example at least, with 'stude' which is quite close to the Modern English word 'study'. Interestingly, Spanish also borrowed many words at this stage, and yet they chose to keep the 'es' (their word for study is 'estudio').
On aime | We like
on aime | we like
Quelle histoire
One of our lovely students brought back this charming petit livret* on Coco Chanel from a recent trip to France. We frequently have people ask us to recommend children's books as a starting point to reading French, which in theory sounds like a good idea. However, if you think of the average vocabulary of a five or six-year-old, it is quite extensive: they can ask for pretty much anything they want. Therefore, children's books are often more difficult to read than one would expect. At the time of writing, we still haven't found a series of simple story books for learners of French. If you know of one, we'd love to hear about it.
This series by Quelle Histore, while not extremely simple, is great because they tell the story of a known figure, using illustrations help to flesh out the tale. While you're unlikely to understand every single word, with the help of a good dictionary (we recommend www.wordreference.com) you'll be well on your way to reading your first French book.
Coco Chanel is just one of many mini-biographies produced by Quelle Histoire. Bonne lecture!*
*little book | *Happy reading!
DE QUOI? | say what?
DE QUOI? | say what?
REtournons à nos moutons | Let's return to our sheep
If I had a euro for every time I've pulled this one out in a lesson...
I love this French saying as it not only evocative but effective as well.
Our French lessons here at Lingua Franca are casual affairs. Of course, we want our students to learn, and we're happy to report they do, but with groups of like-minded people passionate about French as well as countless other topics, we can sometimes become side-tracked. 'Retournons à nos moutons' (which literally means 'let's return to our sheep' or more colloquially 'let's get back to the subject') is a gentle and amusing way to remind everyone to come back to the topic at hand - le français*.
Apparently the saying originated from a 15th century French play called La Farce de Maître Pierre Pathelin. It tells the story of five characters, each more dishonest than the next, and includes a courtroom scene where the accused is instructed by his lawyer to answer all questions directed at him by saying 'Baaa' in an attempt to have him declared mentally instable. Sounds très drôle* indeed.
*French | *very funny