Tag Archives: Friday’s French

French language

Friday’s French – cote, côte, coteau

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These words all look fairly similar but they’re not, of course, or I wouldn’t be talking about them.

Une côte sur la piste cyclable
Une côte sur la piste cyclable

To start off with, cote and côte are not even remotely related and not even pronounced in the same way! Cote is pronounced much like the English “cot” whereas côte is almost like “caught” but not quite. To an untrained Anglo-Saxon ear, they sound pretty much the same of course but they’re not!

Cote comes from the mediaeval Latin quota pars meaning each one’s share, which gives a whole range of derivative meanings such as a quotation on the stock market, a school grade, someone’s rating or standing (la cote de popularité du président = the president’s popularity rating (very low at the moment), elle a la cote = she’s very popular at the moment) and even dimension (as-tu pris toutes les cotes = have you taken all the measurements?).

Côte, with its circumflex indicating a dropped “s” you may remember, comes from the Latin costa meaning “flank” and has even more meanings than cote.

First we have the ribs in our body (j’ai mal aux côtes = I have sore ribs), leading to expressions such as côte à côte = side by side.

Côtes premières et côtes découvertes
Côtes premières et côtes découvertes – the top one is découverte and bottom première

Then we have animal ribs with côte d’agneau = lamb chop, côte première = loin chop, because it’s among the first ones on the rib and côte découverte, my favourite which is the ones streaked with fat further along the rib. I don’t, however, know what they are called in English. Any suggestions?

Another meaning of côte is the sort of ribbing you get in velvet (velours à larges côtes = wide rib corduroy, velours côtelé being regular corduroy) or knitting (j’ai fait les poignets en côtes = I did the cuffs in ribbing).

But doesn’t côte mean “coast”, I can hear you saying. How do you get from rib to coast? Well, the coast flanks the sea or ocean, doesn’t it? So we have Côte d’Azur = the French Riviera. Also, there is no separate word for coastline. Une côte rocheuse = a rocky coastline while a coast road = une route qui longe la côte but more often than not it is called une corniche (or route en corniche).

An entirely different meaning, but still attached to the idea of flank, is slope or hillside. This is one you need to know when you’re cycling (si la côte est trop dure, je descends du vélo = if the hill is too steep, I get off my bike).

A hillstart in a car is un démarrage en côte.

But coteau also means a slope or hillside and can even mean a hill only it’s not used in the same way.

Les vignes poussent sur un coteau
Les vignes poussent sur un coteau

A coteau is a hillside or slope on which vineyards are grown to start with. You may remember some really steep ones we saw in Germany this summer along the Moselle. Les vignes poussaient tout au long du coteau = There were vines growing all along the hillside/slope BUT Je suis arrivée en haut de la côte sans m’arrêter = I got to the top of the hill without stopping (yes, it does happen!)

In fact, the slopes on either side of a river are always called coteaux. Il habite sur le coteau = He lives on the side of the hill and not Il habite sur la côte which means he lives on the coast. Now, isn’t that confusing?

The only way I can really explain is that coteau gives the idea of a surface area whereas côte indicates height. I think the first and last photos illustrate the difference well. Are you with me?

French language

Friday’s French – prune and other metaphorical colours   

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carte_grise_verteI’m reading a book in French and come across an expression I don’t know (which doesn’t often happen – I’m a translator after all). “C’est quoi, prendre une prune”, I ask Jean Michel. “Une amende”. So why would you call a speeding or a parking ticket a plum? Maybe it’s the colour of the ticket, he surmises, like a carte verte or carte grise. Prune incidentally corresponds to what we call burgundy.

 

This is very typical of French – designating something by its appearance rather than its purpose. Carte grise is what EVERYONE calls car registration papers and the carte verte is the insurance certificate and not a working visa.

However, I checked out prune and the expression doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the colour but rather the fruit. Back in the 13th century, prune already had several metaphorical meanings: a blow, bad luck, something worthless, all of which correspond pretty well to a speeding or a parking ticket.

The actual reason why prune developed these meanings is obscure but one legend has it that the crusaders brought back plum trees from Damask after the second crusade which they lost, prompting the king to say, “Don’t tell me you only went there for plums” (i.e. for nothing).

Another ticket-related colour is aubergine which later became pervenche or periwinkle blue used to designate traffic wardens after the colour of their uniforms. Their official name is contractuelle because they are employed on a contractual basis and are not regular civil servants.

The real name for a ticket is a PV or procès-verbal, which is really the strangest thing because it literally means a verbal process, yet it’s written down.

Many years ago, I accidentally went through a red light (I didn’t see it – it was one of those very low ones and I was turning right) and was stopped by a policeman. He asked for my carte grise, carte verte and permis de conduire (which used to be pink but was never called a pinkie which, incidentally, is petit doigt or auriculaire in French because it is the only one small enough to be inserted into the ear).

I did the “excusez-moi monsieur, je suis vraiment désolée, je n’ai pas vu le feu” bit and he answered “je ne vais pas vous verbaliser” which I assumed meant I wasn’t going to get away with a spoken reprimand and that he was giving me a ticket. But he waved me away instead! Verbaliser actually means to give someone a procès-verbal. Very disconcerting.

Do you know any more expressions based on colour?

French language

Friday’s French – prochain, next, this,  huitaine & quinzaine

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That may seem like a strange combination but an English-speaking friend living in France has suggested I deal with the topic of “this” and “prochain“.

lune

This is what she wrote: “ I just had a confusing text message exchange with a French friend who I’m going to visit this Saturday. And yes, “this Saturday” was the cause of confusion. He speaks English quite well and he likes to practise it when he texts as well.  I was confirming my train arrival times with him and he said to me in English “so I’ll see you next weekend then!”

Even though I was pretty certain he was (badly) translating “le weekend prochain”, I still had to make sure we were on the same page and that he’d be there to meet me THIS weekend.”

In English, we make the distinction between “this Saturday”, that is, the one coming, and “next Saturday”, meaning the one after that, whereas in French, “samedi prochain” is the one coming and “samedi en huit” is the one after that. You can’t say “le weekend en huit”, though. You’d have to say something like “je te vois dans dix jours”, with dix being anything between 9 and 13!

But why “en huit”, you may be wondering. A week in English consists of seven days, but in French a week is “huit jours” – even in legal documents – despite the fact that semaine comes from the Latin septimana meaning seventh. But then another way of saying week is huitaine. The same applies to a fortnight, which is “quinze jours” or quinzaine and not quatorze jours as you would imagine.

Where does this all come from? Well, it seems is comes from the Romans who divided the month (30 or 31 days) into four unequal periods. So for a 30-day month, you’d have eight days followed by seven days, twice. A quinzaine was thus an 8-day period plus a 7-day period. This also explains why “huitaine” means week.

In France, the expressions sous huitaine and sous quinzaine (within one week and within two weeks) acquired a legal meaning in the Middle Ages which still exists today.

This is borne out by a similar use in Italian where quindicina is used for a period of two weeks.

I was talking to Jean Michel about huitaine and quinzaine and he said he remembers people using the term lunaison when he was young. I immediately checked my Larousse. It’s a real word and is the interval between two new moons, whose average length is 29 days, 12 hours, 44 minutes and 2.8 seconds (nothing like precision, is there?).

Now isn’t that interesting?

French language

Friday’s French – docteur, médecin, toubib, doctor

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Doctor Antoinette Séjean
Doctor Antoinette Séjean, nutritioniste

I was surprised recently when a 6th year French medical student told me that there is a difference between a médicin and a docteur : a médecin is able to prescrire but is not qualified whereas a docteur has a Ph.D.

After translating in the field for nearly 40 years and never having witnessed this distinction, I was not convinced and have not found any literature supporting his statement since.

Certainly je vais chez le médecin is exactly the same as je vais chez le docteur. However, you would say bonjour docteur and not bonjour médecin, athough you could say bonjour monsieur le médecin if you wanted to be very polite.

Un médecin généraliste ou just un généraliste is the equivalent of our general practitioner (GP) and definitely qualified!

He was actually speaking about internes who, after 6 years at the faculty of medicine during which they usually do 4 annual 3-month practical periods in a hospital (as externes), spend another 3 years full-time in a hospital before presenting their thesis and becoming a GP or 4 or more years to become a specialist.

A doctor whom you see regularly (what we loosely call my doctor) is docteur or médecin traitant (but not docteur traitant). Qui est votre médecin traitant? Who is your doctor?

When I first arrived in France from Australia, I was surprised to hear people talk about ma gynécologue, mon pédiatre, mon rhumatologue and never about mon docteur, always referred to in any case as le docteur. The system has now changed but until a few years ago anyone could consult a specialist without a referral. You still can but you won’t be reimbursed by social security with the exception of gynaecologists, ophthalmologists, psychiatrists and stomatologists (but only for run-of-the-mill treatment, called acte médical).

My mother-in-law always referred to the doctor as le toubib, borrowed in 1898 from  the Algerian word for witchdoctor but which has the same root as medicine. It’s familiar of course and would sound very strange in the mouth of a foreigner!

In English, it is customary to address anyone with a Ph.D. as doctor but docteur is only used to refer to a medical practitioner in France. No distinction is made between a G.P. and a specialist who is also called docteur, unlike the Australian practice of calling a specialist Mr.

When you get higher up on the scale and become a Professor, however, you become le professeur Jacques Dupont, for example.

Among the various specialities, oncologue is used in preference to cancerologue; you go to see a rhumatologue if you’re having back problems , an oto-rhino-laryngologiste, more commonly known as ORL, if you have an ear, nose or throat infection, an angiologue for varicous veins and a pneumologue for lung problems.

The French love using scientific words whenever they can and would consider our more down-to-earth ear, nose and throat specialist, eye specialist and lung specialist almost to be baby talk!

French language

Friday’s French – frais & fresh

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I keep walking past this little grocery store in our neighbourhood and seeing the sign: “fresh drink inside – boissons fraîches” and wondering whether tourists really understand that he’s selling cold drinks.

fresh_drinks

Tu as de l’eau fraîche? does not mean “Do you have fresh water?”, but “Do you have cold water?” L’eau froide is used as opposed to l’eau chaude, that is, cold water out the tap and not hot water. You can also say l’eau glâcée (iced water) to mean cold water out the fridge. And fresh water (as opposed to salty water) is eau douce.

L’air frais, on the other hand, means fresh air while l’air froid means cold air, as you would expect.

You can have légumes frais (fresh vegetables), oeufs frais (fresh eggs), pain frais (fresh bread) and peinture fraîche (fresh paint). However, a fresh coat of paint is une nouvelle couche de peinture.

In fact, nouveau or nouvelle is always used when the intended meaning is new e.g. une nouvelle feuille de papier = a fresh sheet of paper, to make a fresh pot of tea = refaire du thé, to make a fresh start = prendre un nouveau départ, a fresh face = un nouveau visage (as in someone you haven’t seen before) and fresh fields and pastures are nouveaux horizons, which is rather amusing. I wonder to what extent it reflects French and English thinking?

Nouvelles fraîches means recent news – we’d hardly talk about fresh news, would we?

Je ne suis pas très frais ce matin means I’m not feeling the best today (probably as the result of a late night).

Argent frais can mean either ready cash or fresh money depending on the context.

To say it’s cool or chilly, we also use frais – il fait frais. And servir frais means serve cold or chilled.

In weather-related  contexts, grand frais is, surprisingly, used for near gale while joli or bon frais is a strong breeze. But those are nautical terms.

If you’re talking about fresh coffee that has just been ground, you have to say café moulu and not café frais, which means freshly made coffee.

When fresh means cheeky, you never use frais, but rather impertinent or familier. I tried to find out from Jean Michel how to say “don’t get fresh” in French but he couldn’t think of anything. I can imagine a teenager responding with something like, “Ca va pas, non?”

Any suggestions?

French language

Friday’s French – normalement, normal & norme

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In a very amusing post, Abby from Paris Weekender talks about her new pet peeve as opposed to her previous one which is normalement that got me thinking about how it is used in French.

Totally irrelevant photo taken in Rue Tiquetonne. I wish my geraniums would grow like that!
Totally irrelevant photo taken in Rue Tiquetonne. I wish my geraniums would grow like that!

Abby gives the example of normalement meaning that something should happen :

Le magasin est ouvert demain ? Normalement, oui. – The store is open tomorrow?  It should be, yes.

Another context you’ll frequently find is normalement il vient jeudi – he normally/usually/generally comes on Thursday. Alternatives are d’habitude il vient le jeudi and en général il vient le jeudi.

C’est normal and ce n’est pas normal are also common expressions. The first means “it’s only natural” while the second means “there must be something wrong”.

Merci de m’avoir aidé ! C’est normal. – Thank you for helping me. It’s only natural. Or in Australian parlance “No worries, mate!”

Il est en retard. C’est pas normal. – He’s late. Something must be wrong/that’s not like him.

Ce n’est pas normal qu’ils soient libérés de prison si tôt. – It’s not right that they’ve been let out of jail so soon.

Note the use of the subjunctive soient and not sont (not that everyone uses it!)

Sometimes you can avoid the subjunctive without ambiguity, but it’s not always possible.

Il n’est pas normal d’attendre trois semaines pour avoir un RdV chez l’ophthalmo – You shouldn’t have to wait three weeks to get an appointment with the eye specialist.

(Unfortunately in France it always seems to be the case particularly in the country. Same for gynaecologists, I might add.)

So when would we say “normal” in English and not in French ?

He got there at the normal time : Il est arrivé à l’heure habituelle if you mean he got there at the time he usually does and il est arrivé à l’heure précisée/réglementaire if you mean that he got there at the time he was supposed to.

To get back to normal is revenir à la normale and not revenir à normal.

Which makes me think of norm. It’s the norm = C’est la norme.

Norme also has the meaning of standard e.g. normes de fabrication = manufacturing standards

Ce produit n’est pas conforme aux normes françaises : This product does not comply with/conform to French standards.

Have you heard normal or normalement used in other contexts ?

And, normalement, this blog will be back to it’s usual format next week!

French language, Uncategorized

Friday’s French – déjeuner, jeûne and jeune

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déjeunerBreakfast and déjeuner both have the same origin. I don’t mean their Latin root, but their meaning. Jeûne = fast and dés = stop. But déjeuner doesn’t mean breakfast, it means lunch. Breakfast is petit déjeuner.

On the days we practise intermittent fasting our déjeuner really is when we break our fast. I searched around to see why déjeuner is the midday meal in French and came across the unverified information that it is because Louis XIV didn’t get up until noon. It seems that déjeuner still means breakfast in some far-flung corners of rural France. That, too, is unverified.

The expression à jeun which means while fasting is used quite a lot in French to mean not having eaten. For example, for a surgical operation or certain blood tests, you need to be à jeun. We would probably say on an empty stomach.

Funnily enough, the equivalent of letting your children go hungry is faire jeûner ses enfants. Not that you probably need to know such an expression.

Jeune, of course, has another meaning – young – but without a circumflex, and comes from the Latin jovenus while jeûne comes from jejunare meaning to be abstinent. See how important those circumflexes are!

Jeune can be used in contexts other than youth as well. I love the expression donner un coup de jeune which literally means “to give a stroke of youth” and can be used in various ways. Ils ont donné un coup de jeune à l’immeuble = they gave the building a face-lift or they freshened up the building.

La nouvelle lui a donné un coup de jeune = the news gave him a new lease of life.

And while we’re the subject of freshening up, I learnt an interesting expression from my younger brother when he came to visit once. He took himself off to the hairdresser’s with his schoolboy French and when he came back, I asked how he went.

“I just asked for a trim”, he said. “And how did you do that?” “Juste rafraîcher“, he answered. I went into hysterical laughter (that’s an older sister for you) because the only meaning I knew was to freshen up. “I found it in my phrase book”, he said indignantly, “and they understood exactly”.

I appealed to Jean Michel and was somewhat embarrassed to learn that it’s exactly the right expression! So now you can go to the hairdresser’s to get a trim in France.

French language

Friday’s French – tort & wrong

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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!
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

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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.

photo_150_fauchage

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

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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!
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?

 

 

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