Intangible?

French has a number of well-known pitfalls for English-speakers.
Words which look as though they obviously mean one thing, but actually mean something else.

Probably the most frequently encountered is "eventuellement" which looks as though it should mean "eventually" (sooner or later; in the long run) but actually means "possibly" (maybe or maybe not).

Recently, I was confused when several Government Ministers started talking about plans to reduce deficits being "intangible".
I naturally assumed this French word meant the same as its identical-looking English counterpart (immaterial, hard to grasp or define) but that didn't make sense.

A selection of dictionaries showed that whilst basically meaning "untouchable", that can be used either in the sense of "immaterial & hard to grasp" or as "sacred & must not be altered".
The Ministers were using the second sense.

How can you spend 35 years immersed in a language & still discover blind spots?

Parting thot: "Language is the source of misunderstandings." - Antoine de Saint-Exupery

French Hens' Teeth

Saying you expect something to happen "Quand les poules auront les dents", literally "when hens have teeth" is a pretty common French way of saying "never".

Nearer to the idea of "if pigs could fly" than to "rare as hens teeth".

Parting thot: "If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough." – Albert Einstein

Bilan

Another little gem in French which makes you wonder how other languages can manage without an equivalent.

Literally, bilan translates as "balance" or "balance sheet" or "end of year statement" or just "result".
It derives from the Latin for balance or scales.

But it is in very common use, and invaluable, as meaning "the end result, having weighed up all the positives & negatives".
Such a fundamental & frequent concept…

English needs a single word for that.

Parting thot: "Language shapes the way we think, and determines what we can think about." - Benjamin Lee Whorf

Putting ze Rabbit

The less-than-obvious French expression "poser un lapin", literally "to put a rabbit", actually means to fail to turn up for an appointment, without any notice.


Usually employed in an ex-romantic context, when it translates as "to stand somebody up".

Parting thot: "Communication is Talking Listening Acting. Your actions will back you up or undermine everything you say." – DuPont Management

Bof!

How did we ever manage without "bof!"?

I just spent a long time searching dictionaries for a good definition & possible translation.
Definitions say something like "expression denoting apathy or lack of interest".
I didn't find anything like a convincing translation.

This little gem is one of the French expressions which we now use (very frequently) in its original form even when speaking English.
Basically it is a response to the question "What do you think about XXX?"
And it implies that your opinion is perhaps slightly below neutral or that really you couldn't care less.
If it is something you have just done, you are not going to bother to do it again.
If it is a proposition for a night out, well, you could go along with it, but it might be better to think of something else.

English could do with an equivalent.
Or maybe it has, these days - probably in Texto.
It surely must be one of the most frequently used expressions for an indolent generation.

Parting thot: "Broadly speaking, the short words are the best, and the old words best of all." – Winston Churchill

Not in Your Plate

The strange-sounding French expression "ne pas être dans son assiette" – literally "not being in one's plate" - actually means feeling out of sorts or out of place.


The explanation seems to be that the word "assiette", which now means plate, previously referred to where or how you sat to eat, before plates were used at all.

Parting thot: "To avoid sickness eat less; to prolong life worry less." - Chu Hui Weng

Naturally Enough

All six of us now have dual nationality – British & French.
Not counting subdivisions like English & Scottish, of course.
Looking back on it, it wasn't difficult or too expensive; it just took a long time.

Contrary to popular belief both in France & in UK, the kids, born in France to British parents, were automatically & only British with no option of French nationality for many years.
It was only when AA got to age 16 that she could first apply for French Nationality, which she wanted because she felt French & we wanted because it could be necessary for some career options, such as Civil Servant (no longer true).
In fact, for somebody born in France, it was very simple & almost automatic.
There was no problem keeping British Nationality as well, which made the whole deal less traumatic.

Similarly for the other kids, the procedures were simple & rapid.
But the rules & procedures changed each time, the last 2 kids being able to agree to parents requesting their naturalisation at 13.
Currently, for kids born in France of foreign parents, subject to minimum residence conditions, French Nationality is acquired automatically at 18, can be requested by the child at 16 or by the parents, with child's agreement, at 13.

This continual changing of the conditions, and the scare when the National Front candidate got to the last round of the Presidential elections, made us think more seriously about applying for French Nationality ourselves.
Maybe we should do it before it became very difficult or impossible?
Although UK citizenship seemed to give us just as much of everything as being French would, apart from voting in national elections, who could say if that would always be true?
Who could say that Britain would stay in Europe?
What were the chances of the National Front acquiring significant clout?
In any case, after 25 years here, we didn't look like leaving and were feeling more & more French in many ways.
So the idea of actually becoming French, without needing to stop being British, started to appeal sub-consciously, as well as being maybe a logical strategy.

We had already looked at it once, and given up after seeing the list of everything we needed to provide.

But in 2002 we decided to take the plunge.
At that stage, AA, BB & CC were already French but DD was only 12 so only British.
Our application, if successful, would cover DD too.

Pretty obviously, we needed to provide copies of UK passports & French cartes de séjour.
And original birth & marriage certificates.
Less obviously, we also needed originals of parents' birth & marriage ("where applicable") certificates.
Everything not in French had to have a French translation.
But not our own translation; it had to be from a certified (expensive) translator.
Kids' birth certificates & naturalisation certificates.
Deeds of the house.
Proof of kids' scholarisation.
Certificates of employment for previous 3 years.
Employment contract with occupation, dates & salaries.
Last 3 months' pay-slips.
Last 3 years income tax notices.
Some P.237 fiscal document that the local tax office had never heard of, but very obligingly invented, printed, stamped with several posh ink-stamps & signed for me.
I suppose I needed an electricity bill too, as you need that for most things when passport, carte de séjour & driving license are inadequate.
Presumably there must be a big market for forged electricity bills in France.

All that took some organising, and some expense for the new UK certificates & official translations, but it was not the horror story I had expected.

The horror story I had not expected was how long it was going to take from there on.
The Government brochure did warn that it could possibly take over a year, but we optimistically assumed we would be quicker because of our non-complicated position.
In fact the next thing that happened was that DD reached age 13; we applied for Naturalisation for her via the simpler children's procedure; she had to stand up in front of the Magistrates Tribunal & confirm she wanted to be French; and she was French.

At about that time, we heard that the only person dealing with "regular" Naturalisation in Strasbourg had been away on maternity leave, but was now back & had opened our file & found it was now out of date.
Could we please send up-to-date copies of all the incidental stuff we had managed to gather & send correctly last year?
Many months later, we were "invited" to the main Police Headquarters in Strasbourg, with all our original documents, to be interviewed by somebody from the DRRG (Renseignements Généraux, which is basically the Interior Ministry's Anti-Terrorist Intelligence Unit).
In fact there were no spotlights or waterboarding (at least, not for us) and we had a pleasant & very short chat about nothing in particular.
To such an extent that we wondered what information anybody could possibly have gathered from the interview.
Intelligence must be subtle.

The information seemed to have been positive, because shortly (by our recalibrated time-scale) later, we had a communication from the Ministry of Labour saying "Yes – maybe".
In fact what they said was, "Il m'est agréable de vous informer que j'envisage de réserver une suite favorable à votre demande", which means roughly "I am pleased to tell you that I am considering pigeon-holing your request in the happy-ending box."
And that only 18 months after we first applied.

But we weren't out of the woods yet.
A heavy-bold paragraph said we had just 2 months to return yet another form, basically saying we were not joking & still really wanted to be French, honestly.
If we did that OK, then we should see our Naturalisation published in the "Journal Officiel" within 6 months.

Well, the Journal Officiel is a gigantic document published 6 days per week listing all that is new in French Government Laws & Decrees.
Fortunately you can consult it by internet (http://textes.droit.org/) until you get suspicious after finding nothing for ages & eventually find out that they don't include details of Naturalisation on the internet version.
So you find that all Mairies get a paper copy of the Journal that you can consult.
Except our Mairie opted out – probably being too small to hold all that paper.
Strasbourg Mairie gets it OK & kindly let me browse the cardboard boxes of their archives, reading all the Journals since the above letter.
I was surprised to see there were over 2000 naturalisations every week, but we were not amongst them yet.
Once I was up to date, I checked the latest J.O.s at the Mairie every couple of weeks, but still nothing.

The six-month deadline came & went.
After 8 months, I wrote to ask if there was a problem & the next day, crossing in the post, received a letter confirming that we were now French & that the notice had just been published in the Journal Officiel, which I was able to check & photocopy for our archives.
Strangely, DD's name was next to mine, although she had been French for ages, so we don't know whether she is now double-French or whether 2 naturalisations cancel each other, or…
But DS's name wasn't.
Until I thought to look under her maiden name – phew!

After that, in what seemed like no time, we received certificates signed by Chirac & Raffarin, genuine French birth certificates & marriage certificates, even a "Livret de Famille" which all real French families have.

The Livret de Famille is a very official-looking thing, like a double-sized passport, started normally at a marriage & with spaces for recording, with lots of official stamps, the deaths of each of the happy couple & the births & deaths of the first 13 children.
They could have saved some paper if they had asked.

Anyway, all's well that ends well, even after 26 months, and we are genuinely pleased & even proud to be French.
Though relieved not to have had to choose to drop being British.

When can we start to apply to be European?

Parting thot: "It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer." - Albert Einstein

Window Licking Good

Where Anglo-Saxons just go Window-Shopping, the more expressive, more sensuous/sensual French do "Lèche-Vitrines", literally "Lick-Windows".


Parting thot: "When women are depressed, they eat or go shopping. Men invade another country. It's a whole different way of thinking." - Elayne Boosler

Look for Mid-Day at 2 o'clock

The somewhat obscure French expression "chercher midi à quatorze heures", literally to look for mid-day at 14.00 hrs, means to complicate things unnecessarily, or to see difficulties where there are none, or to fail to see the simple solution.

Might typically be applied to an Anglo-Saxon hesitating about driving the wrong way up a very little one-way street or parking quite briefly on a zebra crossing.

Near, but not exact, equivalent: "Making a mountain out of a molehill".

Parting thot: "If you add enough people to a project, one of them will show you why it can't be done."

Fall in ze Apples

One of the strangest common French expressions is "tomber dans les pommes", literally to fall in the apples, which is the normal way of saying "to faint" or "to fall unconscious".

There are more refined alternatives, but they are rarely used in ordinary conversation.

The falling bit is OK, but I don't see where the apples come in.
I have not been able to find any convincing explanation for this odd expression which goes back over 100 years.

Parting thot: "The trouble with people is not what they don't know, but what they know that ain't so." - Josh Billings? Mark Twain? Will Rogers?

Make ze Bridge

Another very common French expression "faire le pont", literally "make the bridge" is only applied to the situation where a public holiday falls on a Tuesday or Thursday and you decide to take off the Monday or Friday as well, to join the holiday up to the nearest weekend.
Which reminds me that "le weekend" has made it officially into French.

Understood, but less common is to "make the big bridge" when a holiday falls on a Wednesday & you join it to either weekend.

"Faire le pont" is so often handy that I am surprised there is not a similar expression in English, though I can see why it would be less used in American.

Parting thot: "A vacation should be just long enough that you're boss misses you, and not long enough for him to discover how well he can get along without you." - anon

Back to Our Sheep

The very common French expression "Revenons à nos moutons", literally "lets get back to our sheep" means "lets get back to the real subject" after some digression.

The origin would appear to be a play from 1464 so it counts as pretty well-established.

Parting thot: "Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner." - James Bovard

Badly Licked Bear

This picturesque French expression "un ours mal léché" literally "a badly licked bear" is applied to an awkwardly rough sort of person with no social polish, badly brought up, maybe a rough diamond, but more rough than diamond.

Seems to have the same roots as the English expression "lick into shape", both deriving from an old belief that bear cubs were born misshapen & had to be licked into shape by their mothers.

Parting thot: "I am a Bear of Very Little Brain, and long words Bother me." – Winnie the Pooh

Not a Cat

The common French expression "pas un chat", literally "not a cat", is just about equivalent to the English "not a soul".
It means "absolutely nobody", typically in the street, at a meeting or somewhere people would be expected.

No idea where it comes from.

Parting thot: "Whatever you are, be a good one." - Abraham Lincoln

Spider on ze Ceiling

If your French friends say you have a spider on the ceiling (une araignée au plafond) they may not be commenting on your housekeeping.

The nearest English equivalent would be "bats in the belfry".

So either modify your behaviour or change your friends.

Parting thot: "A true friend stabs you in the front." – Oscar Wilde

Wooden Mouth & Wooden Tongue

Here are a couple of quite common, but not obvious, expressions in French, using "wooden".

To have a "Gueule de bois", literally wooden face/mouth/gob actually means to have a hangover.
As far as I remember, it is quite a good description of the phenomenon.

To speak in "Langue de bois", literally wooden tongue/language is to use only standard pre-set expressions, preferably lofty-sounding but meaningless waffle & certainly unrelated to the subtleties of the context.
Typically used by politicians & officials & probably most typically by communist leaders & spokesmen.
Short training course, if your French is up to it, at:
http://ddata.over-blog.com/xxxyyy/0/00/38/87/animation-blog/langue-de-bois.pdf

Parting thot: "Education is what survives when what has been learnt has been forgotten." - B. F. Skinner

Like a Hair on ze Soup

"Tomber comme un cheveu sur la soupe."

Perfect French expression with no exact English equivalent.

The nearest is "fly in the ointment" but that is too strong & misses the "exquisitely bad timing" aspect.

Something which "falls like a hair on ze soup" is no great disaster, just a frankly unwelcome, incongruous, irritating detail, arriving at totally the wrong moment, which you can't just ignore, which you would unquestionably rather have done without, and which is going to spoil something you were all set to enjoy.

Like one kid coming out in a rash just as you have loaded the car to go on holiday.

Or your very friendly neighbour turning up with an offering of onions & the intention of a good natter, just as you were leaving for a great bike ride.

Or the phone ringing just as your favourite TV programme starts, although that is getting rarer these days.
Not because of the phone calls, but the TV programmes.

Parting thot: "One spot stains the whole dress." – Belgian proverb

Wot's a Thot ?

The illustration here is the best I can do from memory of Mr Chad, the ubiquitous graffiti character of immediate post-war Britain.
Usually asking "Wot! No eggs?" or "Wot! No bacon?" as a reflexion of severe shortages in that ration-book era.
I expected to find lots of old original drawings via Google, but only found a few modern rehashes.

Thot ?

As an incentive & as a reward, I wanted to start my blog posts with an attractive/interesting/curious picture (not necessarily relevant to the post) and conclude with a genuinely interesting quote (quotation, if you prefer and again not necessarily related to the post) so that at least you would not have totally wasted your time here.

I wondered what to call the last line.

• Quick quote?
• Afore ye go?
• Parthian shot?
• Parting thought?
• Short thort?

In the end, I telescoped 3 & 4 into "Parting Thot" which I assumed would conjour up "Parting thought" along with an onomatopoeic evocation of an arrow being fired into a target…

It seems I overestimated the capacity of my readers to make such lexicological leaps, as they both responded by "Huh?"

Or the more expressive French version, "Hein?"

Actually, "Hein?" is well worth mastering, as it can save you all sorts of grammatical tomfoolery with subjunctives & interrogatory word-orders etc.
Start by strongly curling your upper right lip. (Maybe upper left lip, depending on your –handedness? - I can't curl that bit…) Ambidextrous students should definitely not curl both lips.
The "H" is silent.
The "ei" is about like "a" in "can" but strongly nasal. Practice by pinching your nose until you get the hang of it.
The "n" is also silent, but not wasted, as it was the clue to making the "ei" nasal.
The "?" is the most important bit.
You need to impregnate your "ei" with a rising tone, pitched somewhere between interrogation and incredulity.

Practice frequently so it becomes automatic, otherwise you will miss many opportunities to join in the conversation.

Parting thot anyway: "Person stand on corner with mouth open long time, waiting roast duck fly in." – Chinese Proverb.

Sneezing with an English Accent…

You have all seen the wartime film where the hero daringly escapes from the prisoner-of-war camp, then, using only the three words of German somebody wrote on the back of a cigarette packet for him, bluffs his way through Germany & Belgium & home to fight another day?

Well, "Mon oeil!" (see explanatary post with same title).

I have lived in France for over 30 years, understand written & spoken French perfectly, speak it fluently & even write it reasonably, by SMS-generation standards.
But when the phone rings, in spite of the mental beret over my eye, the mental baguette under my arm & the mental Gauloise hanging precariously from my lower lip, my Jean-Gabin-gutteral "Allo…" is always met by "Ah! Vous êtes Anglais?" where the interrogatory intonation is added for politeness, not from uncertainty.

The other day, I was in a tram in Strasbourg (there is a very good network of modern trams, some of which were even made in England) – anyway, I was in the tram & sneezed, whereupon a little old lady looked up and said, "Ah! Vous êtes…."

Parting thot: "Nice guys finish last" - Leo Durocher (sad, that one…)

Mon oeil!

Approx. pronunciation : Monnoyy

Literally : "My Eye!"

Invaluable little French utterance expressing total rebuttal of whatever has just been said.

Manages to have all the vigour, but none of the vulgarity, of the equivalent English-language expressions, which mostly involve parts of the anatomy not normally exposed in polite company.

Parting thot: "Human beings are the only creatures that allow their children to come back home." – Bill Cosby