Useful Things to Know In French
After two years of living here, I’ve learned a few things about the French language that I never did in school. It just goes to show that context is everything when you’re learning a foreign language.
For example, I had know idea why it was so important to learn the word for sauerkraut—choucroute—back in high school. I mean really, was sauerkraut something I planned on ordering anytime, ever, even if I were in France? In the States, it’s the gross, stringy brownish-yellow stuff you can put on hotdogs (yuck), but how often do we bandy about that word in everyday parlance?
Well, lo and behold, choucroute is some kind of French national dish that everybody seems to love (except me—yuck). It’s basically all kinds of meats and sausage served with potatoes and the sauerkraut. Seriously heavy. Seriously not my thing. But definitely a word that’s useful to know.
So here are a few tips, expressions and random things I’ve learned which will hopefully help you out the next time you want to sound less like a foreigner.
“Tu m’étonnes”: EVERYBODY uses this expression. I didn’t get it for the longest time—why was everyone surprised all the time (which is the direct translation.) In actuality, it pretty much means the opposite, like “no kidding/shit” (although it’s not using a curse like “no shit,” just has that same connotation) or “tell me about it” or “you got that right!”
Examples: Having a baby is a lot of work. Tu m’étonnes. Robert Pattinson is soooo hot. Tu m’étonnes.
Get it? Anyway, I think I’ve used it once while speaking because I feel awkward using it. I think I’m always late on the timing. I hear something and then think, “Oh, I can use ‘tu m’étonnes’ here,” by which point, it’s too late!
The “ouille” words. Malheureusement, I went to Catholic school for twelve years (don’t get me started on that) and it’s where I first learned French. I had a French teacher who was perfectly nice, but had the most HORRIBLE accent. Think Rocky from South Philly channeling Pepe Le Pew. Anyway, like any good Asian student, I parroted everything she taught and have managed to butcher the pronunciations of all sorts of words.
Most horrendously are the “ouille” words: nouille (noodle), ratatouille (same word in English), citrouille (pumpkin). There’s a bunch of these words and I would mangle them all by pronouncing it like “oo-ee” (“oo” like in “moo”), i.e. noo-ee for nouille. Needless to say, every time I ordered “noo-ee,” the waiter would look at me like, “huh?”
Anyway, thanks to Dman’s best friend Igor, I have learned that you pronounce these words like “oo-yuh.” So noodle would be “noo-yuh” (accent on the first syllable.) Waiters don’t look at me funny anymore.
Amour. Perhaps the most important word in French and I have pronounced it wrong for decades!! It’s not amour like “ah-more,” which is how most American say it. It’s “ah-moo-r” (again with the “oo” like in “moo”.) And then you tag the “r” on the end, almost swallowing that “r.” (That’s also how you correctly pronounce bonjour.)
Forget about nous. When you’re learning your French verbs, you always learn how to conjugate for nous or “we.” However, when you’re actually speaking French, almost nobody uses nous, they use on (which I wrongly learned as only meaning “one” as in “one shouldn’t speak with one’s mouth full.”) It can mean that, but it can also mean the general “they,” i.e. “In France, they don’t like Americans.” (“En France, on n’aime pas les Américains.”)
But most of all, on means we, so forget about learning all the conjugations for nous if you just want to learn colloquial French. There, I’ve just saved you many hours of useless memorization!
Verlan. Ah, this is an entire language unto itself and I’ve only just begun to learn what it’s about. Here is a great article explaining it. Basically, you inverse a word (verlan is the inverse or opposite of l’envers which means opposite!) So you take the second syllable of a two syllable word and put it first. For example, if you did it in English, the word “basic” would become “sicba” in verlan. I’ve learned things like “meuf” for femme (woman), “ouf” for fou (crazy) and my favorite (taught to me again by Igor) “winje” for joint (yep, joint.)
But I haven’t really dared to use verlan; as this post states, foreigners just don’t sound right speaking slang. I guess it’s the equivalent of a Frenchie trying to talk “jive.”
So these are a few things to get you started on speaking French more like a Frenchie. Let me know how it goes!
Ha. This post expresses a lot of my experiences over learning the french language…especially the “on” instead of “nous.” Why did I waste so much energy learning the wrong thing? And the “ouille.” How difficult is that? And what about saying “beauty” in french? When french people say it, it sounds like a funny way of saying “booty” in English. But the the “Tu m’étonnes” is a new one for me, so thanks!
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French seems to be a very difficult language to learn! Still, it’d be great to be at the receving end of it, even if I’m being told to piss off. Sexy!
All that talk about chou reminded me of my quest to find good kimchi. The Paris Store here sells a tiny jar that was rather sweet and not spicy enough for my taste. I have since learned that there’s a Korean restaurant nearby that I could ask about kimchi. I’ve seen choucroute here, but the Toulousain speciality is cassoulet (I call it gas-oulet.) This is another insanely heavy dish of beans and fatty meats that you’ll remember for the next 2 days. I laughed at your pronunciation lesson as I’ve struggled with “oo” as in “tout,” and “u” as in “tu.” For the “u,” I feel like I have to jut my lower jaw forward and over pucker my lips before I’m told it’s correct. My previous French language experience was mainly singing arias and chansons and using the International Phonetic Alphabet for pronunciation. However, there’s nothing like living the language in everyday life to beat it into you.
Jenny, do you have a kimchi recipe so you can make your own? my mom taught me a pretty simple one that’s sooo good last time she was here. I’ll post it soon. But you’d need to get your hands on some gochukaru!
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