Category Archives: French language

French customs, French language

Friday’s French – autant pour moi – au temps pour moi – sorry

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It took me a while to actually understand what this expression is all about. Autant usually means “as much as” or “as many as”, such as prenez autant que vous voulez – take as much as you want. Autant pour moi may be short for C’est autant pour moi with the general idea being “so much for me”.

I have since discovered a more plausible explanation. It seems that the real expression is au temps pour moi, of military origin where temps is the precise moment in time at which certain movements are made and distinguished by a pause when using a weapon. It’s the same idea as “marching in time” or “clapping in time”. Saying au temps pour moi is like admitting you weren’t in time.

But the origin remains a controversy and today, autant pour moi is found at least as often as au temps pour moi. The Collins-Robert bilingual dictionary gives “It’s my mistake” as a translation, which is pretty close to the idea being conveyed.

However, the real meaning is a lot subtler than that, as I have come to realise over the years. It is actually a male substitute for an apology about being wrong.

I don’t know about other Anglophone countries, but Australia is a very apologetic nation. People are always saying they’re sorry about something, even when it’s not their fault.

It’s not very French though. Je suis désolé(e) exists of course, and is used, when a woman, in particular, wants to express commisseration e.g. je suis désolée d’avoir appris que vous avez été cambriolée – I’m sorry to learn you have been burgled.

Very often, only the past participle is used, without the verb, and the meaning is much more cursory, e.g. désolé d’être en retard – sorry I’m late.

More often than not, it is used to convey exactly the opposite, Je suis désolé mais je n’irai pas – I’m sorry but I’m not going, which is also a perfectly acceptable English usage as well, the difference being that it is used more often in French.

The reflexive verb s’excuser is far more frequently used than désolé in the apologetic sense. Excusez-moi d’être en retard – literally “forgive me for being late” but more like our “I’m sorry I’m late” in terms of frequency and register.

You can also say je vous demande pardon or je vous demande de me pardonner, both of which are sincere apologies for having done something undesirable. Ditto for je vous présente mes excuses.

To apologise for being wrong is something altogether different and seems to go against the grain. This is where autant pour moi comes in. Someone makes a blatant error, insisting upon it until you prove they’re wrong. When you finally produce evidence, they say with a shrug autant pour moi.

There is another version of excusez-moi which is typically French as well : je m’excuse – literally “I excuse myself!” At least that way there is no fear of their apology being refused … It’s usually used when you’ve finally managed to wring out an apology from some one. The polite form is je vous prie de m’excuser or voulez-vous bien m’excuser. Now je m’en excuse is slightly different and conveys the idea of “I’m sorry about that”.

There are a few other synonyms out there such as contrarié , chagriné, confus, embêté and navré, each conveying a slightly different meaning.

Je suis contrariée d’être en retard : I’m sorry I’m late, with the idea that I really did want to come on time but something prevented me that I couldn’t do anything about.

Je suis chagriné d’apprendre le décès de votre père : I’m sorry to learn of your father’s decease, with the idea of being emotionally affected. It would be a bit OTT to say Je suis chagriné d’être en retard!

Je suis en retard ; je suis vraiment confus, I’m late; I’m really sorry, gives the idea that I am embarrassed about being late. It doesn’t mean “confused” of course. If you want to say “Everyone’s telling me something different. I’m confused”, you could say Tout le monde me dit quelque chose de différent. Je ne sais pas quoi penser. Confusing, huh?

Je suis embêté d’arriver en retard, I’m sorry I’m late, meaning that I am personally annoyed about not being on time and have probably missed out on something.

Je suis navré d’être en retard : I’m sorry I’m late, but I’m polite and well-educated and sincere about it, not just paying lip service.

Sorry about all that confusion – have you got it straight now? What do my French friends think?

French customs, French language

Friday’s French – S’il vous plait

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Last week, I talked about the use of bonjour in French. This week, I want to comment on another very common expression – s’il vous plaît (or s’il te plaît in the familiar form). It literally means “”if it pleases you but, like bonjour, it is not necessarily used under the same circumstances as please.

To start off with, the so-called magic word is not used as frequently in French as it is in English. A child asking for an ice-cream should say s’il te plaît maman or s’il te plaît papa. However, if he is asked if he wants an ice-cream, the answer is more likely to be oui, je veux bien and not oui, s’il te plaît. This is particularly so in the case of adults who would never say oui, s’il vous plaît but simply oui or oui, je veux bien when offered something to eat or drink. Veux is from the verb vouloir “to want” so je veux bien literally means “I want well” and is not directly translatable.

If you want to ask someone politely to help you do something, you’d say est-ce que tu veux bien m’aider and not aide-moi s’il te plaît which is much more abrupt and corresponds more to “help me, will you”.

The very frequent “yes thanks” used in English is not possible in French. You can say non, merci or just merci WHICH MEANS NO unless the context indicates otherwise, but never oui merci. I can remember when my father was in France once and we went to visit friends who didn’t speak English. He understood he was being asked if he wanted a beer and replied merci. I decided not to say anythng until he expressed surprise at not being given anything to drink!v

You’d never see a sign saying S’il vous plaît, ne mangez pas dans le bus instructing people not to eat in the bus but Veuillez ne pas manger dans le bus, veuillez being the polite command form of the verb vouloir mentioned above, which isn’t translatable either. It very roughly means “would you”. You’ll see veuillez in several contexts such as Veuillez faire l’appoint which means that you should give the exact change.

In Belgium and in the north of France, s’il vous plaît is also used when someone gives you something. For example, a waitressr will say s’il vous plaît when she sets down your plate in a restaurant. It is also used instead of je vous en prie (you’re welcome, literally I pray you) in response to thank you.

Attracting the waiter's attention
Attracting the waiter’s attention

And while we’re talking of restaurants, you can use s’il vous plaît to attract the attention of a waiter, raising your hand at the same time with your fingers together (as opposed to apart when you wave).

Do you know of any other differences between the English use of please and French use of s’il vous plaît?

Flowers & gardens, French customs, French language

Friday’s French – Bonjour

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Now you might wonder why I am writing a post about something as basic as bonjour which everyone knows means “hello”.

However, Black Cat and I were having a discussion the other day about WHEN and HOW it is used in French which is quite different from the English use of hello.

Japanese cherry blossoms at Parc des Sceaux. Absolutely nothing to do with bonjour but we finally got there on Wednesday and it was breathtaking
Japanese cherry blossoms at Parc des Sceaux. Absolutely nothing to do with the subject but we finally got there on Wednesday and it was breathtaking so I wanted to share

If I am in a supermarket in Australia and want to ask the man filling the shelves where the coffee is, the most polite way is to go up to him and say, “Excuse-me, but can you tell me where the coffee is”.

Now, if I do that in France: “Excusez-moi de vous déranger, mais savez-vous où se trouve le café?“, I am likely to get a nasty look. The person will say, “Bonjour” and wait for me to reply “Bonjour“, then I have to ask the question again and will get a helpful answer.

If you go into a bakery or a butcher’s shop or even a doctor’s surgery, you should always say bonjour to the people present, and it’s even more polite to follow it with messieurs, or mesdames or messieurs dames depending on who’s present. You can also walk in and say messieurs dames without bonjour.

Just one tiny section of the Japense cherry tree grove
Just one tiny section of the Japense cherry tree grove

There is no equivalent to our good morning or good afternoon . Bon matin doesn’t exist, although bon après-midi  does (or bonne après-midi because après-midi is one of the rare words that can be both masculine and feminine and keep the same meaning) but that is something you say on leaving and  it means “have a good afternoon” which, of course, is quite different.

You can start saying bonsoir instead of bonjour from about 5 or 6 pm onwards, particularly when it’s dark in winter. Bonne nuit is only used when someone is going to bed.

So if bon après-midi means have a “good afternoon”, how to you say “have a good day?” The answer is bonne journée, as opposed to bonjour because the ée ending indicates something that is ongoing. Very occasionally, you might hear passez une bonne matinée (have a good morning) but never bonne matinée by itself ! Bonne soirée means have a good evening (or what’s left of it). Saying Au revoir. Bonne journée when you leave a shop will be very much appreciated.

The cherry blossoms form incredible bunches
The cherry blossoms form incredible bunches

Every morning when I wake up (provided we wake up at the same time) Jean Michel wishes me bonne journée. I really miss it when he gets up before me. Just before we begin to watch a film at the cinema, he says bon film and at the beginning of a holiday or weekend, he says bonnes vacances  or bon weekend.

Now what about salut? This is an informal way of saying both hello and goodbye and is not used to greet the butcher, for example.

Another thing while we’re on the subject is introducing yourself. If you’re invited to dinner and there are people you don’t know, it’s perfectly acceptable to shake their hand and say, “Bonjour, je suis David“, but it’s practically unheard of to give your name otherwise unless asked.

For example, when I wasn’t strong enough to help Jean Michel get a very heavy wardrobe up the front stairs once, he went looking for help and found a man picking up his son from a birthday party next door. Neither he nor the man introduced themselves and to this day, we still don’t know his name. That, in France, is perfectly normal, but would be considered very rude in Australia.

And, I nearly forgot: you only say bonjour once to the same person the same day. After that, you say rebonjour et even just re!

I’d be interested to hear other people’s experience under similar or different circumstances.

If you want to know how to pronounce bonjour and salut, there’s a great You Tube video by French Sounds.

Next Friday: s’il vous plaît which also holds some surprises!

 

FURTHER READING

AllAboutFranceBadge_bisThis post is part of Lou Messugo’s All About France montly blog linky. For other posts on France, click on the link.

 

French language

Friday’s French – hôte

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Hôte is the strangest word because it has two opposite meanings: guest and host! So chambre d’hôte, which means Bed & Breakfast in French, is literally “guest room” while table d’hôte is the host’s table.

Le Clos Postel, one of the my favourite chambres d'hôte in the Cotentin
Le Clos Postel, one of the my favourite chambres d’hôte in the Cotentin

So, je suis votre hôte, vous êtes mes hôtes means “I am your host and you are my guests”. Of course, to avoid the ambiguity, you can say, je suis votre hôte, vous êtes mes invités, which is what most people do. The problem only exists in the masculine, by the way, because hôtesse can only mean hostess and not guest.

Now how did this come about? The reason is simple. There are two different etymologies: one comes from the Latin hospes meaning guest, which also gives hôpital and hôtel, and the other from the Old French hostage (lodging) which also comes from hospes. Now, to make things more complicated, hospes is derived from hostis (stranger, enemy). This explains the meaning of our modern word hostage (otage in French). It was the place where enemies were lodged. Have I lost you?

On another track, have you noticed that the ô in French corresponds to “os” in English: hôte: host, hôpital: hospital, hôtel: hostel? The “os” reappears in the corresponding French adjectives: hospitalier. A circumflex nearly always indicates an “s” that fell out of the language in French, so we have château: castle, bête: beast, août: August. I’m sure you can think of a few examples.

French customs, French language

Friday’s French : Vide-greniers, vide-armoires, brocante

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Until recently, I had never heard of a vide-armoires, which literally means “wardrobe emptier”. I have been to many vide-greniers (grenier means attic) and brocantes and had worked out the difference for myself. The vide-greniers provides the occasion for people to get rid of all the stuff they don’t want any more. A lot of towns hold one once a year. Sometimes they are combined with food stalls, but not always.

Vide-greniers
Vide-greniers

The term brocante comes from brocanteur who, according to the Larousse dictionary, is someone who buys and then sells (or swaps) secondhand goods. However, brocante is sometimes used to mean vide-grenier and the two can be combined. So you can find householders selling children’s hand-me-downs and old lamps next to a professional selling old furniture.

The etymology is not certain. There is a French expression de bric et de broc which means “made of bits and pieces”, maybe related to the German gebrochen or Italian brocco. It could also come from a broc repairer where brocs are the metal staples that used to be used to hold old pottery together.

Real antiques are usually sold at a “foire des antiquaires” but sometimes you find them at brocantes as well.

Vide-armoires
Vide-armoires

So I wasn’t sure what we’d find at a vide-armoires When we arrived in Bracieux, we discovered it was being run by the local tennis club. It turned out to be strictly private individuals – no professionals – and only clothing, mostly children’s. So not of much interest to us.

And before I finish, the correct spelling is vide-greniers and not vide-grenier and the singular and plural are the same.

Architecture, France, French language, Loire Valley châteaux

Friday’s French – donjons and dungeons

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Donjon and dungeon are so obviously of the same origin that I was curious to know why the meanings are so different although both relate to feudal castles. What the French call donjon is what we call a keep in English, whereas the places where prisoners are kept is called oubliettes, from the verb oublier, to forget. No need to go into etymology there!

Angers Castle Keep or donjon
Angers Castle Keep or donjon

Donjon, also written dongun, doignon and dangon in the past, is from the Gallo-Roman dominiono, attested in various forms (dunjo, dungeo, domniono, domnio, etc.), in turn derived from the Latin  dominus meaning “master”. It was used for the part of the castle reserved for the master and his family. It was well-protected against seiges and also included strategic food and weapon stocks. Prisoners who needed to be particularly guarded were also kept there.

It seems that the first recorded instance of the word in English near the beginning of the 14th century also meant “an underground prison cell beneath the castle keep”. But it actually seems that it is more likely that the word derives from the Frankish *dungjo, *dungjon- (“dungeon, vault, bower”), from Proto-Germanic *dungijōn, *dungō (“an enclosed space, treasury, vault”), from Proto-Indo-European *dʰengʰ- (“to cover, hide, conceal”),related to Old Saxon dung(“underground vault, cellar”), Old High German tung (“a cellar, underground living quarter”), Old English dung (“a dungeon, prison”), and Old Norse dyngja (“a detached apartment, lady’s bower”). (Thank you Wikipedia!)

So there you go, dungeon doesn’t seem to come directly from donjon at all which is disappointing somehow!

 

 

 

French customs, French language

Friday’s French – notaire

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Anyone who has been involved in buying (or selling) a house or appartment in France will know who the notaire is but may not be aware of exactly what they do, mainly because the equivalent does not exist in the Anglosaxon world. According to the Chambre des Notaires, which has a very useful English version of their website, by the way, “a Notaire is a legal specialist with a public authority mission who draws up authenticated contracts on behalf of his clients. He is self-employed”.­

Notaire's office in Montrichard with its easily recognisable insignia
Notaire’s office in Montrichard with its easily recognisable insignia

The word “notary” exists in English, but has a very different meaning. According to the British Notaries Society, “A Notary is a qualified lawyer primarily concerned with the authentication and certification of signatures and documents for use abroad … and also authorised to conduct general legal practice (excluding the conduct of court proceedings)”. Very different from the French notaire.

So what does the notaire do exactly? He/she is involved in all real estate transactions, as well as wills, marriage contracts and other similar legal documents. Many French people consider that notaires charge too much but it is not their fees that are expensive – it’s the taxes levied by the French government. Doing your own conveyancing in France is simply not possible.

What a lot of people don’t know is that they can consult the notaire free of charge on a variety of matters. Before I bought my first house in the suburbs of Paris, I went to see the notaire to ask what sort of price I should pay because they keep very strict statistics on real estate transactions. He gave me the average “price per square metre” for a house in the area I was looking in and that is exactly what I paid. When I sold it ten years later, the price had doubled.

I went back to see him again of course when I was selling the house after my divorce and buying an apartment instead. Once again, the price had doubled when I sold it ten years’ later. When Jean Michel and I got married, we went to see him so he could advise us on our marriage contract and wills since we each have two children from another marriage and it was important to protect their interests.

After that, I did several interpreting/translating jobs for another notaire whom we subsequently adopted, particularly as the previous one had retired by then. When we bought Closerie Falaiseau, I naturally asked that she be involved in the sale as I knew she would look after my interests. If each party has a separate notaire, they split the fees, so it doesn’t cost any more to have your own.

It was actually quite amusing when we signed the final deed for the house. My notaire was not available on the day and time chosen by the notaires in Blois, who obviously were not going to go out of their way to accommodate a Parisian notaire. They had already been a bit difficult about sending her the deed (and then she picked up a few errors which they didn’t like) so she very apologetically sent her very competent clerc instead. Since the clerc would have had to get up at the crack of dawn to get to the office notarial by 10 am by train, we offered to take her with us in our car.

She was very chatty and we had a most interesting ride, stopping at Paul’s along the motorway to have breakfast. We were very pleased to have her present at the signature. It wasn’t that our previous owners were not honest – they are the loveliest people you could imagine – but they had asked to stay another two weeks in the house after the final signature. We knew they would leave in time, but imagine what might happen if they both had a fatal car accident and their heirs (they don’t have any children) refused to leave the house?

Our notaire was able to make sure that we were completely covered by the law in the event of a problem, an issue which the previous owners’ notaire had not bothered to address.

So my advice is to make sure you have your own notaire, who will look after your best interests, and not just go along with the one suggested by the sellers or the real estate agency. Go and see the notaire in advance and explain your situation and what you’re looking for. I’m sure you’ll find them very helpful.

And if you need help seeing a notaire because your French isn’t good enough, I’ll be happy to help if you live in my area (Loire Valley) or your notaire is willing to use their visio system. As a certified translator, I am qualified to do so.

Closerie Falaiseau, French language, Loire Valley

Friday’s French – chien assis

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Whether you’ve heard the term chien assis – literally sitting dog – or not, you probably don’t know its correct meaning. I didn’t until a couple of days ago although I thought I did. The windows in the photo below have always been referred to by the people I know as chiens assis, but I’ve never been able to fathom why.

Our "capucine" windows
Our “capucine” windows

It’s because they aren’t chiens assis at all – they are lucarnes à croupe or capucine.  What we call dormer windows in English are lucarnes which comes from the Latin word for “light” and they all have different names in French. The chien assis which, it seems, is a word used in the Loire Valley, is actually quite rare and so far, I haven’t found any! Below is a photo from one of my very favourite dictionaries – Dicobat by Jean de Vigan – and it’s full of lots of wonderful definitions and sketches. You may wonder why I have such a dictionary but it’s because I do a lot of translations in the field of building.

Lucarnes in Dicobat by Jean de Vigan, Editions Arcature
Lucarnes in Dicobat by Jean de Vigan, Editions Arcature

So you can see in the photo above, second from the left, what the real chien assis looks like and it does sort of look resemble a sitting dog. The one of the left is a chien couché or lying down dog. It’s also called a lucarne rampante, meaning “creeping” or “crawling”. Below is an example in our street in Blois.

Chien couché or rampant
Chien couché or rampant

Most dormer windows are capucines, but we did find quite a few examples of “lucarne-fronton” on the more bourgeois houses in Blois.

Lucarne fronton
Lucarne fronton

In one of the little towns in Sologne called Mur-de-Sologne, I found examples of pignon and meunière dormer windows.

PIgnon & meunière
PIgnon & meunière

And this house, which we came across in a forest area in Sologne, has a lucarne rampante à jouées biaises  which literally means a “crawling light with sloping reveals”. What a mouthful!

Rampant
Lucare rampante à jouées biaises

Now just in case you tried to click on the link to my competition post on the Top Ten Châteaux in the Loire Valley yesterday and it didn’t work, you can try again here. All comments welcome!

Food, French language

Friday’s French – persillé

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A post by Susan from Days on the Claise in which she described the fare offered at her local charcuterie set me thinking about the word “persillé” which literally means “parsleyed”, used to describe pâté or brawn with parsley through it.

However, when applied to an entrecôté or côte de boeuf, it also means “marbled”, that is, with streaks of fat through it. I couldn’t quite understand how, etymologically, you could get from parsley in a pâté to streaks of fat in meat.

robert_etymologique

So I checked out my very favourite dictionary, the “Dictionnaire Historique de la Langue Française”, a beautiful two-volume affair that has that lovely thin bible paper. I happened upon it once at the Maison du Dictionnaire in Paris when I was looking for some technical dictionaries and, despite its exorbitant price, couldn’t resist buying it. But I’ve never regretted it.

“Persillé” was first recorded in 1694 with its original meaning of blue or rather green-veined cheese, “not to be confused with persillé meaning a preparation with parsley as a condiment”, a rather strange thing to say as you would imagine that the resemblance to parsley would have come first.

By analogy with the green-veined cheese, it means anything “with green stains” (1864). There’s a cheese called “persillé de Savoie“. But it has another unexpected meaning. In Provençal, “persil” (parsley) is slang for “money”, along with “oseille” (sorrel) and “épinards” (spinach), and, by analogy (once again), for prostitution (1840). As a result, “persiller” also means “to sollicit clients” no less.

So now you can go off to the butcher’s and ask for an “entrecôte bien persillée” (unfortunately the way I prefer it) and to the cheesemongers and surprise them by ordering “fromage persillé“.

Art, French language, Paris

Why Inge Came to France

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One of my greatest pleasures in teaching at the university in France was meeting young people from English-speaking countries across the world and learning about their hopes and aspirations. My French Life, the global community of French and francophiles connecting like-minded people in English & French, has just published my interview with Inge Laino, who is both tour guide and translator and manager of Paris Muse which gives private guided tours of Paris art museums. Enjoy!

Why Inge Came to France

inge_laino_2_myfrenchlife_maviefrancaise“I can say that I have accomplished most of what I set out to do: join the Peace Corps, go to Africa, live in France and master a foreign language.” I don’t think many people of Inge’s age could say the same thing!

A New Yorker from Queens; Italian on her father’s side and Flemish on her mother’s, Inge went with her parents and four older siblings on holiday to Belgium every year.  “I HATED it… I didn’t speak Flemish and I hated being in linguistic exile. Read more