Chez is one of those few French words with no exact English equivalent. It’s a preposition that can be literally translated as "at the home of" or "at the establishment of," as Alex Terrier uses it when describing his early music influences.
Ensuite j'ai découvert chez mes parents
Then I discovered at my parents' place
des disques trente-trois tours...
some thirty-three rpm records...
Caption 11, Alex Terrier - Le musicien et son jazz
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It can also be used in front of a surname to indicate a family household:
Chez les Marchal, le bac c'est une affaire de famille.
At the Marchals', the bac is a family affair.
Caption 23, Le Journal - Le baccalauréat
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(Note that French surnames don’t take an extra s when pluralized: les Marchal.)
Or it can be used with disjunctive pronouns (moi, toi, soi, etc.) to mean "at my house," "at your house," or even just "at home":
L'hiver, les gens préfèrent rester chez eux...
In the winter, people prefer to stay at home...
Caption 1, Fanny parle des saisons - La Bouffe
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You can also use chez for businesses, offices, restaurants, and other commercial locations:
Je suis pizzaman chez F&F Pizza, un shift par semaine.
I'm a pizza man at F&F Pizza, one shift per week.
Caption 2, F&F Pizza - Chez F&F
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J'ai rendez-vous chez le dentiste et je suis en retard!
I have an appointment at the dentist and I'm late!
Caption 10, Micro-Trottoirs - Art ou science?
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But chez doesn’t only refer to buildings! Quite often, you will also see it used more figuratively. For example, just as "at home" can mean "in one’s house," "in one's country/native land," and just "familiar" in general, chez soi (or chez nous, chez moi, etc.) carries all those meanings as well:
On se sentait absolument chez nous.
We felt right at home.
Caption 23, Les Nubians - Le multiculturalisme
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Finally, when describing something "about" or "in" a person, "among" a group of people, or "in the work of" an author or artist, chez is the word to use:
Je l'ai retrouvée, je l'ai vue chez toutes les femmes, toutes les filles.
I recognized it, I saw it in all the women, all the girls.
Caption 53, Alphabétisation - des filles au Sénégal
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Les pâtes sont très populaires chez les Italiens.
Pasta is very popular among Italians.
Il y a beaucoup de figures bizarres chez Salvador Dalí.
There are many bizarre figures in the work of Salvador Dalí.
We chez Yabla encourage you to speak French as much as you can chez vous!
Take a look at these three words: éventuellement, actuellement, forcément. If you read one of our previous lessons, you would probably guess that these words are all adverbs. And you would be right! You might also guess that they mean "eventually," "actually," and "forcefully." No such luck this time. These words are all false cognates (or faux amis, literally "false friends"), which are words that look similar in two languages but mean different things. French and English share too many faux amis to include in one lesson, so for now we'll focus on these three deceptive adverbs.
Éventuellement is synonymous with possiblement, which means "possibly" (no false friends there!). It can also be more specifically translated as "when necessary" or "if needed."
Éventuellement dans... dans telle ou telle de cir'... situation...
Possibly, in... in such and such a cir'... situation...
Caption 19, Actu Vingtième - La burqa
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Aujourd'hui il y a dix-sept médicaments disponibles,
Today there are seventeen medications available,
utilisés éventuellement en combinaison.
sometimes used in combination.
Caption 17, Le Journal - Le sida
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"Eventually" is usually translated as finalement (finally) or tôt ou tard (sooner or later):
J'ai décidé finalement de ne pas aller à la fête.
I eventually decided not to go to the party.
Nous y arriverons tôt ou tard.
We'll get there eventually.
Our second adverb, actuellement, is not "actually," but "currently" or "presently":
Actuellement sans travail, ils résident aujourd'hui près de Saintes, en France...
Currently unemployed, they now live near Saintes, in France...
Caption 3, Le Journal - Les Français de Côte d'Ivoire
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"Actually" in French is en fait (in fact):
Et... pour imaginer le texte, en fait j'ai eu une vision dans ma tête.
And... to imagine the lyrics, actually I had a vision in my head.
Caption 16, Melissa Mars - On "Army of Love"
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And in case this wasn't complicated enough, "currently" has a faux ami of its own: couramment (fluently).
Nicole parle couramment cinq langues.
Nicole speaks five languages fluently.
Finally, forcément means "necessarily" or "inevitably." "Forcefully" is simply avec force or avec vigueur:
Je l'aime bien, mais euh, enfin,
I like him all right, but uh, well,
ce n'est pas forcément le meilleur qui soit...
he's not necessarily the best there is...
Caption 14, Interviews à Central Park - Discussion politique
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This one actually makes sense if you break up the word. Like many adverbs, forcément is made up of an adjective (forcé) plus the ending -ment, which corresponds to the English adverbial ending -ly. Forcé(e) means "forced," so forcément literally means "forcedly" or "done under force," i.e., "necessarily."
Actuellement and éventuellement are also made up of an adjective plus -ment, and their adjectives are also false cognates: actuel(le) means "current" (not "actual") and éventuel(le) means "possible" (not "eventual"). These words have noun forms as well: les actualités are the news or current events, and une éventualité is a possibility. (Interestingly, éventualité is a cognate of "eventuality," another word for "possibility.")
English and French share so many faux amis that there are entire books dedicated to the subject. But if you're not itching to memorize them all right away, you can learn why there are so many of them in this article.
Well, it's official. French Prime Minister François Fillon has declared that the title mademoiselle (Miss) will no longer be included on any government forms or documents. The decision comes after months of campaigning by two French feminist groups, Osez le féminisme! (Dare To Be Feminist!) and Les Chiennes de garde (The Watchdogs), who argue that the term places an unfair emphasis on a woman's marital status. Mademoiselle literally means "my young lady" (ma + demoiselle), just as madame comes from "my lady" and monsieur "my lord." Monsieur has long been used to identify both single and married men, as the archaic male equivalent of mademoiselle, mon damoiseau, never became an honorific title. Now madame will be used for all women, whether single or married, and is thus best translated as "Ms." instead of "Mrs."
Madame, qu'est-ce que vous avez préparé, vous?
Ma'am, what about you, what did you prepare?
Caption 17, Actus Quartier - Fête de quartier Python-Duvernois
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Ne riez pas, monsieur, c'est très sérieux.
Do not laugh, sir, it's quite serious.
Caption 17, Le Journal - Les effets bénéfiques du rire!
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Non, c'est madame qui a préparé le riz.
No, it's the lady who prepared the rice.
Caption 38, Actus Quartier - Fête de quartier Python-Duvernois
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Y a un beau monsieur là de quatre-vingt-treize ans qui veut vous inviter, hein!
There's a handsome ninety-three-year-old gentleman here who wants to invite you, you know!
Caption 33, Actu Vingtième - Le Repas des anciens
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Mesdames et messieurs,
Ladies and gentlemen,
sans plus tarder, voici Hugo Bonneville.
without further delay, here is Hugo Bonneville.
Captions 4-5, Hugo Bonneville - Être musicien
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Si is a little French word that mainly corresponds to three little English words: "if," "so," and "yes." Although these are three very different words, it’s usually easy to tell which one si is referring to in context. So let’s see what si can do!
Most of the time, you’ll probably hear si used to mean "if," as Bertrand Pierre uses it in his emotional song "Si vous n’avez rien à me dire" (with text by Victor Hugo, of Les Misérables fame):
Si vous n'avez rien à me dire
If you have nothing to say to me
Pourquoi venir auprès de moi?
Why come up to me?
Captions 1-2, Bertrand Pierre - Si vous n'avez rien à me dire
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Note that when si meaning "if" is followed by il ("he" or "it") or ils ("they," masculine), it is contracted to s'. This is perhaps most commonly seen in the expression for "please," s’il vous plaît (formal) or s’il te plaît (informal), which literally translates to "if it pleases you."
Si can also be used to indicate a contrast or opposition, in which case it means "whereas":
Si Émilie aime la musique rock, Henri la déteste.
Whereas Émilie loves rock music, Henri hates it.
Since si and "so" look quite similar, it shouldn’t be too hard to remember this meaning of the word. Just keep in mind that si refers to the adverb "so" (as in "so happy"), not to "so" as a conjunction (as in "move so I can see"):
Pourquoi si long et pourquoi si las, tenir à bout de bras?
Why so long and why so weary, to hold at arm's length?
Caption 26, Dahlia - Contre-courant
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One of the first words you learn in French is the word for "yes," oui, but sometimes si can also mean "yes" (as it does in Spanish and Italian). However, si only means "yes" in a very specific context: when someone is contradicting a negative question or statement. In case that sounds kind of convoluted, here's an example:
Non! Il n'est pas bien, Sarkozy! -Si, si, si. -Si, il est bien.
No! He's not good, Sarkozy! -Yes, yes, yes. -Yes, he's good.
Captions 15-17, Interviews à Central Park - Discussion politique
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If oui were used here instead of si, the speaker would just be confirming the negative statement ("Yes, Sarkozy is not good"). On the other hand, si takes a negative proposition ("He's not good, Sarkozy!") and turns it into a positive one ("Yes, he's good"). This is why it can come in very handy when you want to correct someone or express a contrary opinion.
To conclude, here are two expressions with si that you might find useful: si ça se trouve... ("maybe" or "it could be the case that") and si ce n'est que... (apart from the fact that):
Si ça se trouve, Georges n'a jamais terminé ses études.
It could be that Georges never finished school.
Nous n'avons rien en commun, si ce n'est que nous sommes tous les deux français.
We have nothing in common apart from the fact that we are both French.
This tiny word is probably one of the most versatile in the French language. So now that you know all about si, here's a challenge for you: try writing a two-sentence dialogue using as many meanings of the word as you can. Just use this lesson as a guide, and it'll be easier than you think!
Voilà is a very common word in French, and depending on the context, it can take a number of different meanings, the most general of which is "there/here it is." In grammatical terms, voilà is categorized as a presentative, or a word that is used to introduce something. Voilà comes from the imperative phrase vois là (see there), which makes the presentative nature of the word even more apparent. At its most basic, voilà is used to present a specific object or person
Donc voilà mon super falafel, avec de l'aubergine grillée...
So here is my super falafel, with grilled eggplant...
Caption 9, Mon Lieu Préféré - Rue des Rosiers
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Ah! Ben tiens, voilà Socrate.
Oh! Well look, here comes Socrates.
Caption 9, Il était une fois: l’Homme - 6. Le siècle de Périclès
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In these two examples, we see how voilà can be used to direct our attention to both an object (Caroline's "super falafel") and a person (Socrates). But when voilà isn't literally presenting us with something, it is often used as a way of emphasizing a statement:
La poésie c'est comme l'amour:
Poetry is like love:
c'est le plus court chemin entre deux êtres. Voilà.
it's the shortest path between two people. There.
Caption 39, Marché de la Poésie - Des poètes en tout genre
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In a sense, you could say that voilà is "presenting" us here with the metaphor on poetry that precedes it. But on a slightly less articulate note, when voilà is used for emphasis, it often acts as a sort of filler word, used when someone wants to end one topic and move on to another:
Euh... voilà. Après, l'inspiration, elle...
Uh... there you are. Well, inspiration, it...
elle vient de plein de sources diverses et variées.
it comes from a lot of different and varied sources.
Caption 48, Niko de La Faye - "Visages"
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You can also use voilà to affirm another person's statement:
Voilà, vous pouvez même voir le petit bateau en photo, euh, ici.
That's right, you can even see the little boat in the photo, uh, here.
Caption 50, Arles - Le marché d'Arles
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Or you can use it to express a period of time:
Voilà près de sept ans que les professionnels du bois attendaient ça.
For nearly seven years, the lumber business has been waiting for this.
Caption 5, Le Journal - Firewood
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Because voilà can be used in so many different situations, it is often tricky to translate ("there," "here," "there you go," "there you have it," "that's it," "there you are," and so on). And since no English word can really capture voilà's breadth of meaning, sometimes it's best not to translate it at all. In fact, the difficulty of translating voilà might be why it's become an (often humorous) English exclamation as well.
Now let's take a look at voilà's sister word, voici (from vois ici, "see here"). Like voilà, voici is also a presentative, but whereas voilà can either mean "there it is" or "here it is," voici usually just means "here it is." And unlike voilà, voici isn't used for emphatic or filler purposes, but almost exclusively for introducing or presenting a specific person or thing:
Nous voici devant une des quatre Statues de la Liberté
Here we are in front of one of the four Statues of Liberty
que l'on peut trouver dans la ville de Paris.
that you can find in the city of Paris.
Captions 24-25, Voyage dans Paris - Jardin du Luxembourg
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You can get a better sense of the difference between voici and voilà when they are both used in the same sentence:
Voici ma maison et voilà celle de mon ami.
Here is my house and there is my friend's.
As you can see, voilà is used to point out something at a distance, whereas voici indicates something close by. The difference between voici and voilà is similar to the difference between ceci (this) and cela (that). In fact, another way of translating the sentence above would be, "this is my house and that is my friend's."
You've probably heard voilà used in English before, but voici hasn't really managed to make the crossover. Besides the fact that voilà is often hard to translate (voici is much more straightforward), this could also be because voilà often acts as a standalone phrase (Voilà!), whereas voici generally doesn't. But don't underestimate a good voici when speaking French: if you want people to notice something that's right in front of them, it's the word to use!
In this lesson, we'll take a look at some of the different ways of welcoming people in French, all involving the word bienvenue (welcome).
In English, you usually welcome people to a particular place: “welcome to my house,” “welcome to New York,” and so on. In French, however, any number of prepositions can follow bienvenue, depending on their object:
Bonjour et bienvenue sur Yabla.
Hello and welcome to Yabla.
Caption 1, Yabla à Nancy - Le masculin et le féminin
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Bienvenue dans la plus chic des stations alpines, Gstaad.
Welcome to the most fashionable of the Alpine ski resorts, Gstaad.
Caption 3, Le Journal - Gstaad
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Bienvenue au théâtre, mes amis!
Welcome to the theater, my friends!
Caption 18, Il était une fois: l’Homme - 6. Le siècle de Périclès - Part 2
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The choice of preposition specifies the kind of place where you are being welcomed. In the first example, Yabla is a website, and if you are on a website, you are sur un site web. So here you are literally being welcomed “onto” the website. In the second example, you are being welcomed “into” a ski resort, dans une station alpine. And in the third example, you are being welcomed “to” the theater: au théâtre.
Another way to welcome someone in French is with the expression être le bienvenu / la bienvenue / les bienvenus / les bienvenues (to be welcome):
Que les visiteurs soient les bienvenus sous mon toit.
May visitors be welcome under my roof.
Caption 9, Il était une fois: l’Homme - 6. Le siècle de Périclès - Part 3
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Ben, vous êtes les bienvenus à découvrir de visu...
So, everyone is welcome to come in and see with their own eyes...
Caption 38, Galerie "Art Up Déco" - La galerie d'art
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Literally translated, the expression vous êtes les bienvenus means something like, “you are the welcome ones.”
Note that bienvenue used as a greeting (either alone or at the beginning of a sentence) is a feminine noun, short for je vous souhaite la bienvenue (literally, “I wish you welcome”). Therefore, its spelling doesn’t change. On the other hand, the bienvenu/e/s after être le/la/les is an adjective used as a noun that must agree with its subject. So you would write, Vous êtes les bienvenus/bienvenues en France, but not, Bienvenus/Bienvenues en France! The correct form would be: Bienvenue en France!
You can also put the above expression in the imperative form:
Soyez les bienvenus chez moi.
Welcome to my home.
It is also very common to see bienvenu/bienvenue used to express a wish, as in this sentence:
Vos suggestions seraient les bienvenues.
Your suggestions would be welcome.
And if you’re in Quebec, you’ll hear bienvenue used by itself to mean “you’re welcome.” So when you say merci (thank you) to a French person, he or she will respond with de rien or je vous en prie. But a French Canadian will answer, Bienvenue!
As you can see, you have a lot of options with this one elementary word. But no matter how you use it, you’ll definitely make people feel welcome!
There are two ways of saying "either... or..." in French, and they both involve repeating one word. The first is the construction soit... soit.... Soit is a conjunction that marks a set of alternatives, and it is also spelled the same as the third-person present subjunctive form of the verb être (to be):
Les médecins étaient soit morts, soit partis.
The doctors were either dead or gone.
Caption 4, TV8 Mont Blanc - De retour de Haïti
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A similar construction with soit is que ce soit... que ce soit..., which can best be translated as "be it... or...":
Que ce soit déposer dans le sable,
Be it landing on sand,
que ce soit déposer dans la neige...
or on snow...
Caption 26, Le Journal - École de pilotage
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The second way of saying "either... or..." is ou... ou.... Ou by itself just means "or" (not to be confused with où, "where"), but when it is repeated to describe two or more choices or alternatives, the first ou means "either":
Ou vous pouvez le laisser tout simplement sur la plage,
You could either simply leave it on the beach
ou vous en servir comme cendrier.
or you could use it as an ashtray.
Caption 15, Jean-Marc - La plage
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Sometimes, bien can be added to ou to emphasize the distinction:
Ou bien il est très heureux, ou bien il est misérable.
Either he's very happy or he's miserable.
Note that you will often see a comma separating the alternatives soit... soit... and ou... ou... (soit morts, soit partis).
Now that we've learned how to say "either... or...," we'll move on to its opposite, "neither... nor...." There is only one way to say this in French: ni... ni....
Ni vu ni connu
Neither seen nor known [on the sly]
When using ni... ni... with verb phrases, add a ne in front of the verb:
Nous ne sommes ni les premiers, ni les derniers.
We are neither the first nor the last.
Caption 3, La Conspiration d'Orion - Conspiration 2/4
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Sometimes, you might just find a single ni:
Cette femme habite un monde sans foi ni loi...
This woman inhabits a world without faith or law...
Caption 19, Le Journal - Milady
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So now, if you're ever asked to recite the unofficial creed of the US Postal Service in French, you won't hesitate to say:
"Ni la neige, ni la pluie, ni la chaleur, ni la nuit n'empêchent de fournir leur carrière avec toute la célérité possible".
"Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds."
(The creed is actually a line from Herodotus.)
In a previous lesson, we introduced a trio of words that are spelled the same except for their accent marks: côté, côte, and cote. We will examine a similar trio in this lesson: des, dés, and dès.
You might already know that des is a contraction of de and les. It is always followed by a plural noun, and can be used as a preposition to mean "of," "from," or "by," or as an article to mean "some" or "a few." Note that when des is used as an article, it is often left untranslated.
Ce monde des images, habité par les images, dans les images.
This world of images, inhabited by images, in the images.
Caption 25, Projet "Polygon" - PIIMS et la République des Images
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Des gens super beaux avec des... avec des peaux super lisses.
Really beautiful people with… with really smooth skin.
Caption 34, Niko de La Faye - "Visages"
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When you place an acute accent on the e of des, you get the French word for "dice": les dés (le dé in the singular). In the kitchen, you might hear the expression couper en dés (to dice). And if you're sewing by hand, it might be helpful to use un dé à coudre (a thimble; literally, a "sewing dice").
Le backgammon se joue avec des dés.
Backgammon is played with dice.
With a grave accent, des becomes dès, a preposition meaning "starting from," "as early as," or "since." Here are some examples of this versatile little word from our video library:
Près de trois cent mille personnes venues dès l'aube
Nearly three hundred thousand people who came as early as dawn
applaudir les héros des océans.
to applaud the heroes of the oceans.
Captions 14-15, Le Journal - Les navigateurs du Vendée Globe
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Et j'ai toujours, euh... dès les... les premières fois où j'ai découvert...
And I've always, uh... ever since I first... first discovered...
Caption 24, Manu le Malin - Album Biomechanik III
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Les épreuves commencent dès demain.
The exams begin as early as tomorrow.
Caption 28, Le Journal - Le baccalauréat
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Although dès is frequently used on its own, you'll also sometimes see it coupled with another word, notably in the expressions dès que (as soon as, whenever) and dès lors (from then on, since then, consequently, therefore):
Tout de suite, en fait, dès que je suis arrivée ici, euh...
Right away, in fact, as soon as I arrived here, uh...
Caption 6, Alsace 20 - Mangez bien, mangez alsacien!
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Dès lors, elle n'est jamais retournée à la maison.
From then on, she never returned home.
Now that you're familiar with the difference between des, dés, and dès, let's see if you can decipher this sneaky little sentence:
Le magicien a su piper des dés dès l'âge de cinq ans.
(The magician knew how to load dice from the age of five.)
Take a look at the following captions and see if you notice anything unusual:
Et si vous regardez bien au deuxième étage,
And if you look closely at the second ["third" in the US] floor,
il y a une magnifique frise.
there is a splendid frieze.
Caption 14, Voyage dans Paris - Butte Montmartre
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Donc vous voyez la petite lumière rouge en...
So do you see the little red light in...
au premier étage?
on the first ["second" in the US] floor?
Caption 32, Mon Lieu Préféré - Rue des Rosiers
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Although it might seem like we’ve made some errors in our translations, the number discrepancy you see is actually completely accurate. This is because the floors of French buildings are not numbered in the same way that American floors are.
As you can see, a given French floor is always one number lower than a given American floor: le deuxième étage corresponds to the third floor, not the second, and le dix-huitième étage corresponds to the nineteenth floor, not the eighteenth.
The explanation for this is simple: the French (and most other Europeans) don’t count the ground floor of a building when numbering its stories, whereas Americans do. The French word for "ground floor" is rez-de-chaussée, and the floor above le rez-de-chaussée is le premier étage (the second floor). In American English, "ground floor" and "first floor" are generally synonymous and thus can both be used for rez-de-chaussée. So when you’re in a French elevator, instead of seeing a button marked "G" for "ground floor," you’ll see one marked "RC" for rez-de-chaussée.
Note, however, that French-Canadian speakers have adopted the US system, so you won't have to worry about subtracting floor numbers when you're in Quebec (you can learn some more about Canadian French in this lesson). You'll notice this when listening to Annie Chartrand, a French-Canadian musician, describe her childhood home:
J'habitais au deuxième étage avec mes parents
I lived on the second floor with my parents
et au premier étage, c'était un bar taverne...
and on the first floor, there was a bar-tavern with...
Captions 24-25, Annie Chartrand - Sa musique
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Here is a little table to review:
In France | In the U.S. | In Quebec |
le rez-de-chaussée | first floor | le rez-de-chaussée/le premier étage |
le premier étage | second floor | le deuxième étage |
le deuxième étage | third floor | le troisième étage |
Therefore, a three-story house in the US (first floor + second floor + third floor) is the same as une maison à deux étages in France (rez-de-chaussée + premier étage + deuxième étage) and une maison à trois étages in Quebec (rez-de-chaussée/premier étage + deuxième étage + troisième étage).
To make this a bit easier, you could take the word étage to mean specifically an upstairs floor in France. Indeed, one way of saying "upstairs" in French is à l’étage (the other way is en haut, while "downstairs" is en bas). In that case, le premier étage could be translated more precisely as "the first upstairs floor," i.e., the second floor.
A side note: To remember the word rez-de-chaussée, a bit of etymology might be useful. Une chaussée is another word for "road," and rez is Old French for ras, meaning "flat" or "level" (think of the word "razor"). The ground floor is called le rez-de-chaussée in French because it is level with the road.
And for an in-depth discussion of floor numbering around the world, see this Wikipedia entry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storey#Numbering
In this weather forecast for the Mont Blanc area, you'll come across a word with a very specific meteorological meaning: la bise. Translated as "north wind," la bise is more precisely a chilly wind that passes through certain areas of eastern France and Switzerland (you can find a more detailed and scientific account of this phenomenon here). Some French windows might feature un brise-bise (literally, "breaks" or "stops the north wind"), a small curtain usually made of lace that covers only a portion of the window. These are definitely more decorative than functional.
Donc le temps va s'arranger; on aura toujours un peu de bise pour ce mardi matin.
So the weather will settle down; we'll still have a bit of a north wind for this Tuesday morning.
Caption 10, TV8 Mont Blanc - Météo du 26 octobre 2010
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On an unrelated note, une bise is also an informal way of saying "a kiss." You might hear it most often in the expression faire la bise, which refers to the customary French greeting of giving someone a peck (or more than one!) on both cheeks. This helpful article breaks down when and how to use this very common gesture: https://www.thoughtco.com/french-kisses-french-english-bilingual-story-1368026.
Who doesn't like to quietly sip a beer?
...s'attabler au comptoir et boire tranquillement sa bière...
...sit at the counter and quietly sip his beer...
Captions 11-12, Le Village de la Bière - Ceci n'est pas un bar!
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But at the Village de la Bière, in Strasbourg, a sip is all that you are going to get, as this emporium of brew has only une licence-dégustation (tasting license). This permits them to supply you with a mere sampling of, for example, une bière brune (dark beer), une bière blonde (light-colored beer), or une bière rousse (brown ale), before you settle on the bouteille de bière (bottle of beer) that most meets your approval. (You won't find many canettes de bière or "cans of beer" in this establishment!)
Owner Alain Pesez is passionate about his calling, and he will guide you through a vast selection:
J'ai entre trois et quatre cents sortes de bières...
I have between three and four hundred kinds of beers...
un assortiment qui bouge, qui varie et on vend de la bière
a selection that changes, that varies, and we sell beer
des quatre coins du monde.
from the four corners of the world.
Captions 6-7, Le Village de la Bière - Des bières de partout
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Stocking over three hundred types of beer in one single shop is no small feat! We might even say, Ce n'est pas de la petite bière! On the surface, we might read that as, "This is not a little beer!" but, in actuality, this expression means "It's no small thing / It's no small matter" or "It's really something / It's a big deal." The expression dates back to the eighteenth century, when une petite bière was a weak, poor-quality beer, created by reusing the grains from an earlier batch.
The phrase can not only imply that a matter is significant, but also that something or someone is of high caliber, of quality.
Un Nikon, c'est un très bon appareil photo. Ce n'est pas de la petite bière.
A Nikon is a very good camera. It's not a piece of junk.
These days, you might drink a high-quality bière pression (draft beer) to accompany a tarte flambée at your local Flam's:
Donc c'est tout de suite plus sympathique accompagnée
So it's nicer right away accompanied
d'une petite bière pression.
by a small draft beer.
Caption 28, Le Restaurant "Flam's" - Les tartes
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Bière pression originates in un baril (a barrel/keg) and flows out of le robinet (the tap) and into une chope (a mug). Of course, you might prefer un panaché with your meal: that's a very popular mixture of beer and lemonade.
There is another meaning of bière that has nothing to do with fermenting grains to create a delightful effervescent beverage. The expressions mettre quelqu'un en bière and la mise en bière both refer to placing a body into a bière or "coffin." Note that, apart from these expressions, "coffin" is usually not referred to as une bière, but rather un cercueil.
On that note, remember that life is short! Tune in to these and hundreds of other fun and interesting authentic videos here at Yabla that will help quench your thirst for French mastery!
When you think vineyards, you probably conjure up images of rolling hills and sprawling fields, lush with grapevines planted in neat rows. So it may surprise you to learn that vineyards aren't just for la campagne. In fact, that most urban of French locales, la grande ville de Paris, has a few grapevines of its own!
Our favorite Parisian tour guide, Daniel Benchimol, takes us around the neighborhood known as La Butte Bergeyre, which, believe it or not, is home to a couple of vineyards. It's surprising such a tiny neighborhood could fit a vineyard—after all, there are only ten or so streets:
Il y a en tout une dizaine de rues avec des très, très jolies villas.
There are a total of about ten streets with some very, very pretty villas.
Caption 11, Voyage dans Paris - Butte Bergeyre
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Take a look at the word dizaine. On first glance, an English speaker might be tempted to translate this as its phonological cousin, "dozen." But dizaine actually means "about ten." Why the similarity? "Dozen" comes from the Old French dozaine, and its modern French equivalent is douzaine.
As you can probably guess by now, -aine as a suffix added to numbers indicates an approximation of quantity. So, une dizaine is "about ten," une douzaine is "about twelve" (a dozen), une trentaine is "about thirty," and so on. "Dozen" is the only similar word of this type in English, but who's to say we couldn't one day have a "tenzen" or a "thirtyzen" too?
A Yabla French subscriber recently asked an interesting question about a caption in one of our videos.
L'éco-musée du pays de Rennes ... s'en est occupé...
The eco-museum of the county of Rennes ... took it upon itself....
Captions 18-19, Le Journal - Gourmet en Bretagne
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Shouldn't, the subscriber asked, the participle actually be occupée—with an extra e—to match the subject eco-musée? After all, the word-ending -ée most often denotes a feminine word in French—so wouldn't the verb need to agree in gender here? As it turns out, even though musée ends in -ée, it is actually a masculine noun. So occupé is correct. Musée is not the only word that's masculine despite ending in -ée.
Moi, je me souviens à l'époque,
I remember in those days
même que j'étais dans un lycée d'filles...
even though I was in an all-girls high school...
Caption 21, Le Journal - Baisers interdits dans les couloirs!
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Like musée, the noun lycée—even a lycée filled with girls and only girls—is masculine, which we can tell here because it's preceded by the masculine article un. Un ("a," masc.) or le ("the," masc.) are the right determiners to use with lycée or musée, and not une ("a," fem.) or la ("the," fem.), as one may have expected with such an ending.
What other nouns end with -ée but are nevertheless masculine words? The most commonly used are:
un athée (an atheist)
à l'apogée (at the peak)
un camée (a cameo)
un mausolée (a mausoleum)
un trophée (a trophy)
un macchabée (a stiff, also a Maccabee)
un pygmée (a pygmy)
un scarabée (a beetle)
C'est dans sa loge qu'on a retrouvé Buridane.
It's in her dressing room that we caught up with Buridane.
Caption 2, Télé Lyon Métropole - Buridane
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Did you catch the interview with the lovely chanteuse Buridane? It took place backstage, in her loge, what we would call her "dressing room." However, on the other side of the curtain, loge can also refer to box seating, usually private, elevated, and not cheap—a nice place from which to watch the show. Sport and theater fans will recognize that we have the same word in English: "loge" seating areas offer a bird's-eye view in a luxurious setting. It's from this meaning that we get the common French expression être aux premières loges, which means "to have a great view," or "front row seats."
Where else will you find une loge? Out in the country! A rustic cabin (or "lodge") of the kind used by skiers, hunters, or park rangers is also called a loge.
Finally, if you enter a French building, bourgeois or not, beware of the loge du concierge or "caretaker's apartment." You won’t sneak past unnoticed, even if you tiptoe... so be sure to have a good reason to be there!
And just as loge can be "lodge," logement can mean "lodging," as in housing or a place to stay. Take this example, where retirement-age protesters point out that Sarkozy doesn't quite share their concerns:
Et lui, il a pas de souci de voiture, il a pas de souci de logement...
And him, he has no car worries, he has no housing worries...
Caption 22, Le Journal - À la retraite en France
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There's also the verb loger, which, as you may now be able to guess, means "to house" or "provide accommodation for."
See if you can spot any other lodging-related words in our videos!
After watching her scour the desert Mad Max–style for clues to track down her amour perdu in the video for "Love Machine," we know that Melissa Mars is a romantic. Her "Army of Love" video also gives us a few clues—on how to speak the language of love, en français.
Petites fées du cœur / Accueillent les âmes sœurs
Little love fairies / Welcome the soulmates
Captions 25-26, Melissa Mars Music Videos - Army of Love
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If you know that the word âme is "soul" and the word sœur means "sister," you might think that Melissa is referring to her many Mini-Me's as "soul sisters." Actually, âme sœur is French for "soulmate," and even though the term is of the female persuasion, it can apply to any member of a happy couple. In French, guys can be soul sisters too!
Our favorite friendly tour guide, Daniel Benchimol, gives us a look in living color at the history-rich, up-and-coming Paris quartier of Belleville.
As sometimes happens with urban areas that were once on the sketchy side, Belleville has recently gentrified. These days, it's home to a thriving diverse community. You'll see people from all walks of life strolling along the Rue de Belleville and the Boulevard de Belleville. (It's easy to know you're in the right neighborhood. Just look at the street signs!)
There's even a Parc de Belleville:
Nous sommes ici dans le Parc de Belleville,
We're here in the Parc de Belleville [Belleville Park],
qui est vraiment le... le poumon de ce quartier.
which is really the... the heart ["lungs"] of this neighborhood.
Captions 12-13, Voyage dans Paris - Belleville
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Notice that Daniel tells us the park is le poumon of the neighborhood—"the lung" of the hood—just as Central Park is sometimes called "the lungs" of New York City, thanks to the fresh air it offers.
Les Bellevillois are known for their distinctive fun and funky accents. Wondering what they sound like? Just listen to France's favorite songbird, Édith Piaf. La Môme hails from the streets—the rues and boulevards—of Belleville!
Give up? Start thinking in French. Do you see it now? They're all French homophones! So what are the tricks to distinguishing between mère, maire, and mer.
Let’s start off where life itself does—with our proud moms. In French, your mother is your mère.
Annie Chartrand, from Quebec, recalls the limited English ability of her own mère (as well as her père, her father).
Si je pense à mes parents, à mon père et ma mère,
If I think of my parents, my dad or my mom,
ils parlent anglais, mais c'est un peu plus,
they speak English, but it's a bit more like,
comme on dit en bon québécois, "baragouiné".
as we say in good Quebecois French, "baragouiné."
Captions 14-16, Annie Chartrand - Grandir bilingue
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Charles Baptiste, from Paris, sings of something nobody wants their mother to do (nobody nice anyway) in the song Je sais:
Tandis que ma mère se met à pleurer
Whereas my mother starts crying
Caption 21, Charles-Baptiste - Je sais
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Let's move away from such sadness (we hope Charles's mère is feeling better) to our second homophone: maire (mayor).
One way to distinguish this word from its homophones: maire (mayor) is a masculine noun and so is preceded by the masculine article le. But la mère (the mother) and la mer (the sea) are both feminine. Note that more people nowadays are using la maire to refer to a female mayor (see our lesson about the feminization of professions in French), although the officially correct term is la mairesse.
The mayor of Groslay, a town north of Paris, is not very popular… He banned chicken in municipal lunchrooms because of fears of avian flu.
L'interdiction du maire a également déclenché la colère des agriculteurs.
The mayor's ban has also triggered the anger of the farmers.
Caption 9, Le Journal - Le poulet dans les cantines
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However, some mayors are less cautious than others. The mayor of Lille, for example, not only supported protesters who recklessly (and illegally) switched off street lighting in the city center, she joined their rally, French flag in hand!
Et c'est toujours au nom du service public
And it is still in the name of the public service
que la maire de Lille soutient les agents d'EDF en grève.
that the mayor of Lille supports the EDF agents on strike.
Captions 22-23, Le Journal - Grève de l'EDF à Lille
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Let's move on to our last homophone: la mer (the sea).
La mer is often a romantic image in popular songs. (Who doesn't love a little Charles Trenet?) Lyon-based ska band Babylon Circus sings about the sea in a song about dreams and lost hopes:
Les rames étaient trop courtes pour atteindre le niveau de la mer
The oars were too short to reach sea level
Caption 12, Babylon Circus - J'aurais bien voulu
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So now, no more confusion between la mère (the mother), le maire (the mayor), and la mer (the sea)!
An accent, or the lack of one, can sometimes determine the meaning of a French word.
For example, let's take ou, the common conjunction that means "or." After his extensive travel abroad, Chef Rachel Gesbert likes to use exotic ingredients when he returns to France "or" to Europe:
Et quand on revient en France,
And when we return to France,
ou en Europe... on a envie de certains produits.
or to Europe... we feel like mixing certain products.
Captions 27-28, Le Journal - Gourmet en Bretagne
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Ou bien also means "or," plain and simple. Anglophones, seeing the extra word bien, might be tempted to translate ou bien as "or even," or to add some other nuance. But in fact, ou bien is used pretty much interchangeably with ou, as we find in the report on the recent discovery of Saint-Exupéry's lost plane, near Marseilles.
Mais personne ne sait s'il s'agit d'un accident,
But nobody knows whether it's a question of an accident,
d'un suicide,
of a suicide,
ou bien d'un tir ennemi.
or of enemy fire.
Captions 27-28, Le Journal - Saint-Exupéry
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However, when we draw a simple accent grave over the u in ou, we get the adverb où, which is used to indicate "where." Anne Liardet, mother of three, racing solo around the world on the "Vendée Globe," tells us:
J'suis bien, là où je suis...
I'm all right where I am...
Caption 25, Le Journal - Les navigateurs du Vendée Globe
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In their worldwide hit "Senegal Fast Food," Amadou and Mariam, the singing-songwriting duo from Mali, ask:
Dakar, Bamako, Rio de Janeiro
Dakar, Bamako, Rio de Janeiro
Où est le problème, où est la frontière?
Where is the problem, where is the border?
Captions 25-26, Amadou et Mariam - Sénégal Fast Food
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Another meaning of où is "when," indicating time. Notice the way French movie star Agnès Jaoui uses it when talking about dreams and fame:
C'est bien... de rêver, mais y a un moment où
It's good... to dream, but there comes a time when
il faut juste se récupérer soi-même.
you have to go back to who you are.
Captions 32-33, Le Journal - Le rôle de sa vie
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So, there you have it: the short story of ou!
FYI: Keep in mind there are at least two other words that sound exactly the same as ou and où, but have their own unique spellings: une houe is "a hoe," like we use in the garden, and du houx is "holly," the stuff the halls are decked out with come Christmas!
In her song "Diesel" (extremely popular with Yabla viewers!), Elea Lumé declares:
Et si il y a eu maldonne
And if there was a mistake
Je me fais mon propre prud'homme
I'll take responsibility for it
Captions 33-34, Elea Lumé - Diesel
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When we are playing cards, la donne is "the deal." It comes from the verb donner, that very common French verb that means "to give." It also means "to deal," which is not hard to see since cards are "given out" to the players. Sometimes the dealer (le donneur—literally, "the giver") screws up, and hands too many or too few cards to one or more of the players. In the poker rooms of Paris this is known as a fausse donne (false deal), mauvaise donne (bad deal), or maldonne—which we get when we preface donne (deal) with mal ("bad" or "wrong"): a "wrong deal." In English the common term for all of these is "misdeal."
Cards are ripe metaphors for life, as anyone who's ever been "dealt a bad hand" or suffered "the luck of the draw" knows. In French, the phrase il y a maldonne has drifted from the cards-specific "there is a misdeal" to the more general "there is a mistake."
A quick aside about another of Elea's lyrical selections here: if you look up prud'homme in the dictionary, you find that it is a member of a labor court, one which decides disputes between management and workers. So when Elea says je me fais mon propre prud'homme (literally something like, "I'll be my own jury"), she is saying that she'll assume full responsibility; she's not going to take it to a third party for help—she'll stand on her own.
Besides signaling a mistake, il y a maldonne takes on another metaphorical meaning: "there is a misunderstanding." The exuberant chanteuse Cassandre expresses a negated variation of the phrase when she sings:
Mais non y a pas maldonne
But no, there's no misunderstanding
C'est super romantique!
It's super romantic!
Captions 33-34, Vous avez du talent - Cassandre - "Je te saoule"
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So make no mistake! As in English, French words or phrases often evolve from literal to metaphorical meanings, and their meaning can change based on their context. Getting to know these subtleties is not a bad deal at all!