Category Archives: French language

Friday’s French – tort & wrong

June 5, 2014 Rosemary Kneipp 1 Comment

Il a tort – elle a raison : He’s wrong – she’s right.

This photo has absolutely nothing to do with the subject of wrong and right. I just like the view!

Tort comes from the Latin tortus meaning “twisting” as in tortuous so it’s a sort of deviation from the straight and narrow, isn’t it?

Faire du tort à quelqu’un means to harm someone morally.

Tort also carries the idea of fault. Elle a un tort, c’est de trop parler: her one fault is that she talks too much. (I think a lot of us are inclined that way. The day Jean Michel taught me never to give an excuse for not being able to do something I didn’t want to do, I felt liberated! Saying “I’m afraid I can’t make it” rather than “I can’t come because”then launching into a lengthy explanation is just so much easier once you learn the knack).

Ils ont tous les torts de leur côté: the fault is entirely on their side.

But tort is not usually used to indicate an error or mistake.

I’m in the wrong job – je ne suis pas fait pour ce travail (I’m not made for this job) which shifts the onus, doesn’t it. It’s not really the job that wrong after all.

That’s the wrong kind of plug – ce n’est pas la bonne prise (it’s not the right plug).

She married the wrong man – elle n’a pas épouse l’homme qu’il lui fallait (she didn’t marry the man she needed).

It’s the wrong road for Paris – ce n’est pas la bonne route pour Paris (it’s not the right road for Paris)

He told me the wrong time – il ne m’a pas donné la bonne heure (he didn’t give me the right time).

Interesting, isn’t it ? In all the above examples, the negative is used to express the idea of wrong.

Occasionally however, mauvais (bad) is used to mean wrong just as bon (good) is used to mean right.

You’re going the wrong way – tu vas dans le mauvais sens.

He made the wrong calculation – il a fait un mauvais calcul

The reflexive verb se tromper is often used to mean wrong as well although it literally means to make a mistake.

He took the wrong train = Il s’est trompé de train or Il n’a pas pris le bon train.

“You’re wrong” can be either vous avez tort or vous vous trompez.

I’m sure you have lots of other examples.

French language

Friday’s French – fauchage & faux

May 29, 2014 Rosemary Kneipp 1 Comment

There was a sign in front of our house this week saying fauchage which actually means scything or reaping. The word for scythe is faux. Obviously the council workers were not going to appear with scythes. Fauchage now also means mowing or cutting with machines.

It got me thinking about the word faux which also means false. Faux meaning scythe comes from the Latin falx falcis whereas the adjective meaning false comes from falsus, from fallere, to deceive. I was a little disappointed to learn they actually have nothing in common! I’d worked out my own little scenario.

The verb faucher has a couple of other meanings. One you often (unfortunately) hear on the news has to do with car accidents. Il a été fauché par un bolide = He was knocked over by a car going at top speed.

Il a été fauché par la Mort is a euphemism for death, since the symbol of Death is the scythe.

Faucher is also slang for steal: il m’a fauché mon portefeuille (he stole my wallet) and as a result, je suis fauché means I’m broke ! If you want to go one step further, you can say fauché comme les blés (completely broke), blé meaning wheat.

The noun fauche means thieving. Il y a beaucoup de fauche dans le métro = there’s a lot of thieving in the metro. But it’s not a word you hear often.

Fauchaison is reaping or mowing time (using a scythe, that is) but I don’t imagine it’s the sort of word you would really have much use for.

To go back to the adjective faux, it has a whole lot of other uses, all similar in meaning to false. Un faux billet is a forged or fake banknote while fausse monnaie is forged currency.

Faux marbre is imitation marble while faux bijou is fake or imitation jewellery.

Faux papiers , quite logically are false or forged identity papers.

When someone says c’est faux, they mean it’s wrong or not true not that it’s false.

If you ring a wrong number, it’s a faux numéro, which somehow makes it sound as though you didn’t make the mistake.

An instrument that is faux is out of tune and not a fake which is interesting. Elle chante faux means she sings out of tune which is think is a bit hard.

And we all know about a faux pas, don’t we ?

I’m sure you’ve got other examples of faux.

French customs, French language

Friday’s French – livret de famille, fiche, fichier

May 22, 2014 Rosemary Kneipp 9 Comments

When I first got married in France and saw our livret de famille I thought it was very neat although I didn’t realise its importance. It’s a little book in which the details of your marriage are written and which is completed with each child. When you get divorced, your livret is updated as well. If you are not married, you are issued a livret de famille when your first child is born. If you separate or divorce, you get another one.

Each town hall chooses its own cover. The Paris one is velvet!

The first thing I discovered when my children when to school was the fiche d’état civil which was a piece of paper delivered by the town hall containing the information about an individual child taken from the livret. I even needed one when Black Cat started ballet! What a waste of time. What busy mother (or father) wants to go to the town hall and sit around waiting for a civil servant to copy information by hand onto a piece of paper?

At the time, the only ID in Australia was a drivers licence or passport and children certainly didn’t need ID if they stayed within the country! Fortunately, the fiche d’état civil was abandoned in the year 2000 and the carte d’identité became compulsory and free even for children.

Inside the livret. If you're not married, it starts with the mother's or father's details of birth. If the parents are separated or divorced, each can have a livret. — Inside the livret. If you’re not married, it starts with the mother’s or father’s details of birth. If the parents are separated or divorced, each can have a livret. The one on the right shows my divorce details.

So what exactly is a fiche, you might be wondering (état civil = civil status). It’s one of those funny words that has several meanings and no satisfactory translation usually because we don’t often have an equivalent concept.

The fiche d’état civil was a flimsy bit of A4 paper. A fiche can also be made of stiff paper or cardboard such as a fiche-cuisine which is a recipe card. Those cards we used to take notes on and put in a filing box in the old days were called fiches. Index cards, if I remember rightly.

At the doctor’s, you might be asked to fill out a fiche which I guess we would call a form. But there is also the word formulaire. I asked Jean Michel to explain the difference between fiche and formulaire. “Bonne question”, was his typical reply.

Its seems that a fiche is used to contain basic data whereas a formulaire is used to make a request, such as a passport or enrolment formula (fiche d’inscription).

Another popular fiche is the fiche de paie or pay slip which you are supposed to keep for your entire life if you want to get your pension.

A fiche technique is a specification sheet or spec.

A fichier is a set of fiches and therefore a file and that includes computer files which are also fichiers. If you want to be specific, you can say fichier informatique. Although ordinateur means a computer, the word informatique is used in most other contexts: informatique = computer science; il est dans l’informatique = he’s in computers; l’industrie informatique = computer industry. By extension fichier d’adresses is a mailing list.

And to go back to livret, when else do we use the word in French? A livret de caisse d’épargne is a savings bankbook (pretty rare these days), and a livret scolaire is a report book, though I don’t know if they have those any more. Livret can also be used to describe any booklet and even a catalogue for an art show, for example.

An opera libretto is a livret d’opéra.

Perhaps you know other meanings of the word fiche?

French language, Restaurants

Friday’s French – terrible & formidable

May 16, 2014 Rosemary Kneipp 5 Comments

“I love your blog. It’s terrible”. This comment was left on my daughter’s blog. I’d hate to think what the comment would be if she didn’t like the blog!

Un restaurant terrible dans la rue Montorgueil

The reader making the comment is French of course and not aware that terrible is something negative in English. Like formidable. Telling someone they are formidable in French means they’re great whereas in English it’s means you wouldn’t like to get on their wrong side. Hardly the same, is it? In French you’d say redoutable or even terrible.

Il est terrible can mean that he’s fantastic or awful depending on the context. That makes it easy to remember, doesn’t it?

Although terrible comes from the Latin terribilis which in turn comes from terrere, to frighten, it now has several meanings in French:

1. Inspiring terror or fear e.g. Une terrible catastrophe

2. Reaching a violent or considerable force e.g. Il s’est produit une terrible secousse – There was a terrible earthquake

3. Very unpleasant e.g. Il a un caractère terrible – He has an awful character

4. Representing a large quantity e.g. J’ai un travail terrible à faire – I’ve got an enormous amount of work to do

5. And more familiarly, out of the ordinary, inspiring admiration or surprise e.g. Il est arrivé avec une fille terrible – He turned up with a terrific girl.

And there you have it – the English version of terrible meaning something positive, namely terrific, which is usually positive in English, except for expressions such as “There was a terrific storm”.

Un autre restaurant dans la rue Montorgueil qui a l'air terrible — Un autre restaurant dans la rue Montorgueil qui a l’air terrible

Formidable, which comes from the Latin formidabilis, which in turn comes from formido, dread or terror, has kept its original meaning in English, whereas as its meaning in French is always positive, whether the idea is colossal or imposing e.g. Une volonté formidable – Incredible determination, inspiring admiration e.g. un type formidable – a terrific person, or something astonishing e.g. C’est quand même formidable qu’il ne vous ait rien dit – It’s really astonishing that he did say anything to you.

So if someone tells you about un restaurant terrible, you can add it to your list of places to go!

French language, Italy

Friday’s French – Venetian blinds & persiennes

May 9, 2014 Rosemary Kneipp 5 Comments

When you grow up in Australia, you know all about Venetian blinds. They are not nearly as popular in France and most people don’t know how to use them. We had them at the French university where I taught and I began each year with a lesson on how to open and close them! However, I had never really thought about the name until we got to Venice where our home exchange/rental flat had two sets that didn’t close properly.

Venetian blinds and shutters in Venice — Typical Venetian shutters withVenetian blinds on the right

Our French guide book, Le Routard, mentioned them, giving persiennes as a translation which is rather strange because persiennes are something quite different. They are what I call louvres, which is a funny word when you come to think about it as it comes from the French word open.

Louvres and modern Venetian blinds on the Rialto Bridge

Obviously modern Venetian blinds are adaptations of the original ones. I checked out the windows in Venice but they mostly seemed to have wooden shutters or curtains with only a few Venetians on some older buildings. I found some slatted shutters or louvres on the Rialto bridge but they are hardly what I’d call a Venetian blind.

These shutters in Venice would be called persiennes in French

In fact, Venetian blind turns out to be very nebulous terminology and seems to cover various types of blinds, made of different materials (wood, metal, plastic) and consisting of horizontal overlapping slats held together with a cord so they can be rotated open or closed.

The generic term for blind in French is store which comes from the Italian stora, meaning mat. It also includes the sort of awnings you have in front of a shop or café in France. Like a blind, a store can be solid or have slats.

Those metal and glass awnings over front doors are called marquises by the way, which I think is a lovely term but I have no idea where it comes from.

Back to our blinds. Persiennes are mostly wooden but can also be metal with horiziontal and occasionally vertical overlapping slats that are fixed. They can be opened in several ways – outwards or upwards like a window, by sliding across, etc.

Un store de restaurant avec des persiennes aux fenêtres

Some persiennes are a type of shutter or volet. A volet can also be solid and is defined as a covering over a window to block out the light from either the inside or outside. Most French houses have them and most French people prefer to sleep in almost total darkness.

This was very strange to me when I first moved to France as we only had Venetian blinds in our house and they weren’t necessarily closed. They certainly didn’t block out all the light. Once I got used to sleeping with shutters, I found it very difficult not to have them. Our flat in Paris only has roller blinds so I had curtains made with special light-blocking lining.

Our house in Blois has shutters that open and close inside and guarantee total darkness. A recent Australian visitor loved them – she said it was like sleeping in a cave!

A thought has just struck me – what is the Italian meaning of Venetian blinds is not our Venitian blinds at all, but the French persiennes? I hope someone will be able to answer me!

Architecture, French language

Friday’s French – fenêtre, vitre, baie & vitrail

April 25, 2014 Rosemary Kneipp 8 Comments

You’d seriously think that something as simple as a window would have a direct correspondence in French, now wouldn’t you ? Well, it doesn’t . The English word “window” has a much wider connotation than the French fenêtre.

The comparison starts off simply enough. J’ai regardé par la fenêtre = I looked out the window. Mon appartement a cinq fenêtres = My apartment has five windows. Its when you start getting more specific that it gets more complicated.

The house has a big window overlooking the sea = la maison a une grande baie vitrée qui donne sur la mer. Baie actually means an opening in a wall, a door or a window, and vitré is the adjective from vitre = glass. Fenêtre in fact is generally used to mean the window frame even though the technical word chassis exists.

In English you would say, “I cleaned the windows” but in French you’d say j’ai nettoyé les vitres or even j’ai nettoyé les carreaux (since a lot of window panes are square) and not j’ai lavé les fenêtres. A window with a lot of little panes is a fenêtre à petits carreaux.

Whereas we would say “his ball broke the window”, in French you would say il a cassé la vitre avec sa balle. Verre can be used but it’s not the correct term.

Avec toutes ces fenêtres, le château de Beauregard est très vitré. Beaucoup de fenêtres à meneaux.

A reader drew my attention to the use of vitré meaning a large number of windows in a TV programme about the Château de Champs sur Marne. La maison est très vitrée, même archi-vitrée. This is not the way the word is usually used and conveys the idea of a large amount of glass.

You would never use fenêtre to describe a large window that doesn’t open. It’s a baie vitrée as above. Note that our bay window is protruding where as baie vitrée is not. The French use the English term bay-window or fenêtre en saillie.

Une belle vitrine et porte vitrée pour faire du lèche vitrine dans la gallérie du Palais Royal

A really big glass window is called a verrière while a shop window is called a vitrine, with lèche-vitrine (lécher = lick) meaning window shopping! A ticket window in a train station, for example, is a guichet and the same word is used for ticket counter.

A stained glass or leadlight window is a vitrail in French (plural vitraux) with no distinction between the two in French. Leadlight could actually be used for both in English but stained glass is used traditionally for ornate windows and leadlight for windows of domestic and commercial architecture that are generally simpler.

Notre petit vitrail avec son cabochon de la cathédral de Chartres

One of the most surprising words connected with fenêtre that I know is défenestration. The first time I heard il s’est défenestré du sixième étage on the radio, I had no idea what it meant. I’ve heard it many times since. They never say “he jumped out the window” or “threw himself out the window” but always use the verb défenestrer.

Here are a few other windows to finish off :

fenêtre à guillotine = sash window (typically French, huh?)

fenêtre à battants/à meneau = casement/mullioned window

fenêtre à croisillons = lattice window

porte-fenêtre = French window

And in the world of computers :

fenêtre de dialogue = dialogue box

fenêtre d’aide = help window

fenêtre active = active window

I’m sure you know some more.

French language

Friday’s French – travail

April 18, 2014 Rosemary Kneipp 3 Comments

I wrote a short post last week about travaux so I thought I should talk about travail today. You may remember that travail comes from the low Latin trepalium, instrument of torture, derived from the Latin tres, three, and palus, stake.

I was about to give travaux scientifiques and travaux manuels as examples of travaux when I realised that you can also say travail scientifique and travail manuel and it doesn’t quite mean the same thing, even though the translation is often the same. In fact, travaux scientifiques – scientific work – are often the product of travail scientifique – also scientific work! But the line between them can be very fine.

C’est un travail scientifique original = It’s an original scientific work

Il vient de publier les résultats de ses travaux scientifiques. = He’s just published the results of his scientific work.

Il a fait un travail scientifique extraordinaire = The scientific work he carried out was extraordinary (though this can be translated in many different ways depending on the context).

The distinction between travail manuel and travaux manuels is a little easier.

Il aime le travail manuel = He likes manual work.

Les travaux manuels occupent les enfants et aident à leur développement = Manual work occupies children and helps them to develop.

But the main meaning of travaux manuels is arts and crafts.

Travail intellectual is intellectual work in the sense of brainwork or mental work while travaux intellectuels corresponds to the work produced and is often opposed to travaux manuels.

Il fait un travail intellectuel = He does intellectual work.

Jean Michel often says “Qu’est-ce que c’est que ce travail?” to mean“what’s going on here?”

And here are a couple of expressions to finish off:

Le travail c’est la santé which approximately means that work is good for you.

“à travail égal, salaire égal” = equal pay for equal work.

Alors, au travail !

French language, Renovation, Uncategorized

Friday’s French – travaux

April 11, 2014 Rosemary Kneipp 6 Comments

This is going to be a very short post because we are up to our necks in travaux. Travaux, the plural of travail is, interestingly enough, from the low Latin trepalium, instrument of torture, derived from the Latin tres, three, and palus, stake.

Jean Michel en pleins travaux en train de percer un mur de 70 cm. — Jean Michel en pleins travaux : percement d’un mur de 70 cm.

Well, I can tell you, the pain in both my hands (being left-handed I am fairly ambidextrous) from wielding spatulas, trowels, paint brushes and rollers for the last week certainly makes it feel like torture! The end result will be a laundry, initially without a sink.

Travaux is a very useful word and covers practically anything. Note that in French, it is always used in the plural and never in the singular, in this context. And you can use it by itself without any explanation. Nous faisons des travaux = We doing renovation works/alterations/plumbing and so on.

renovation work = travaux de rénovation

roadworks = travaux routiers

woodwork = travaux sur bois

plumbing work = travaux de plomberie

alterations = travaux d’aménagement

major projects = grands travaux

farm work = travaux de la ferme

metalwork = travaux sur métal

I’m sure you can find plenty of others! Je dois reprendre mes travaux de peinture!

French language, Uncategorized

Friday’s French – gate, clôture, barrière , portail

April 3, 2014 Rosemary Kneipp 9 Comments

I am a firm believer in learning vocabulary if you want to speak another language with any fluency. However, it has the disadvantage of giving the impression that A always equals B. Which is not true of course.

Notre portail vert qu'on a repeint pendant une vague de chaleur — Notre portail vert qu’on a repeint pendant une vague de chaleur

I still remember learning that gate = barrière = and fence = clôture and find it difficult not to automatically say “barrière” and “clôture” each time The problem is that they are not always equivalents !

Our house in Blois has a portail (which we repainted in a heat wave), which is used to designate a large metal or wooden gate. The bits on either side of our portail are murs or walls because they are made of stone. Our little house also has a portail but it’s wooden.

No barrières in sight! So I asked Jean Michel , “qu’est-ce que c’est qu’une barrière“. He thought about it and very helpfully said “Je ne sais pas”. So I’ll tell you what I think it is. As far as I can see, it refers to a barrier, such as the Great Barrier Reef in Australia (grande barrière de corail), a safety gate or a crowd barrier (une barrière de sécurité), a language barrier (barrière de la langue – now that’s useful!) and more important still, a level crossing gate (barrière de passage à niveau) – you may remember my close shave in Germany last summer.

A gate can also be a porte, such as the town gates or gate to a castle or even a garden gate if it looks like a door. Those enormous gates that you see on the façade of many buildings in France originally designed to take a horse and carriage through are called portes cochère.

If it’s not enclosed on all sides by a wall and not big enough to let a vehicle through, it’s a portillon.

A large metal gate that doesn’t have any solid parts the way our green gate does is called a grille d’entrée.

Une grille d'entrée à la Place Stanislas in Nancy — Une grille d’entrée à la Place Stanislas in Nancy (though the actual gates are missing!)

Fortunately, fence isn’t quite as complicated. Below, you can see a clôture which is definitely a fence, but the stone wall behind it is a mur d’enclos.

Une clôture en fer devant un mur en pierre

Theoretically, you can have a clôture en bois such as the one the neighbours used for their chicken yard below, but most people would call it a palissade. The wire fence next to it is a clotûre though.

The first two panels erected between our wall and the neighbour's gate — Une palissade, suivie d’une clôture, suivie d’un portail.

So next time you want to say “fence” or “gate”, I hope you’ll do better than me!

French language, Uncategorized

Friday’s French – amener, emmener, apporter

March 27, 2014 Rosemary Kneipp 20 Comments

Viens ! Je t’emmène à la Tour Eiffel. Apporte des sandwichs, nous pouvons faire un pique-nique sur place. J’amènerai ma cousine avec moi.

Come on! I’ll take you to the Eiffel Tower. Bring some sandwiches – we can have a picnic there. I’ll bring my cousin with me.

Ce bus vous emmènera jusqu'à la Tour Eiffel — Ce bus vous emmènera jusqu’à la Tour Eiffel

Now before we go any further, I’d just like to mention that the differences between these three verbs in French can be very subtle. Also, in English “bring” and “take” are not always used correctly e.g. “bring me the ball” but not “take me the ball”. “He took me to the cinema” and not “he brought me to the cinema”.

Emmener is fairly simple and corresponds to “take” used correctly in English:

Le bus vous emmènera jusqu’à la Tour Eiffel = The bus will take you to the Eiffel Tower

Je vous emmène dîner au restaurant = I shall take you out to eat

Il a emmené un livre dans sa chambre = He took a book to his room.

Amener and apporter are a diffcrent kettle of fish.

Apporter is used in the following cases:

N’oubliez pas d’apporter vos CD = Don’t forget to bring your CDs.

Un jeune homme a apporté ces fleurs = A young man brought these flowers.

Je vous apporte des bonnes nouvelles = I have some good news for you (literally I’m bringing you some good news).

Il doit nous apporter des preuves = He has to bring us proof.

Cette réforme apportera des changements = This reform will bring changes.

What do you notice about all the above sentences (taken straight out of my Larousse French dictionary, I might add)? They all refer to things such as CDs, flowers, proof, changes and sandwiches, and not people.

If people are involved, then amener must be used and not apporter.

Amenez votre ami à la maison = Bring your friend home

Dites-moi ce qui vous amène = Tell me what brought you.

Ce bus vous amène à la gare = This bus takes you to the station.

I can hear you jumping up and down! What about the other bus, the one that takes you to the Eiffel Tower? Ce bus vous emmènera jusqu’à la Tour Eiffel. All I can say is that if there is a difference, it’s so subtle that you won’t ever have to worry about it!

Most of the other uses of amener correspond to the idea of provoking a result.

Cette crise économique risque d’amener des problèmes sociaux = This economic crisis could cause social problems.

Amener l’eau à ébullition = Bring water to the boil.

Il a amené la conversation sur le problème de chomage = He steered the conversation towards the problem of unemployment.

Vous nous avez amené le beau temps = You brought us the good weather.

You might wonder with this last one why you wouldn’t say Vous nous avez apporté le beau temps. It’s because you can’t literally bring good weather the way you can with sandwiches, but cause the good weather to happen.

I wrote this post at the request of a reader so will be interested to know whether it has helped!

Aussie in France