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LANGUAGE AND CULTURE

What’s your most embarrassing linguistic faux pas?

Every week, we ask a regular panel of readers to discuss a particular aspect of life in Sweden. This week: linguistic faux pas.

Published: 25 March 2009 13:07 CET
What's your most embarrassing linguistic faux pas?
The Local; Philip MacKenzie

Graeme Newcomb

Graeme Newcomb

On a balmy summer night last year I thought (in my wine-fueled state) that I would try and impress my in-laws with my fluent mastery of the lingua franca. I spotted a large fox running towards the forest and thought, here is my opportunity: brimming with confidence I exclaimed what I thought was “titta på den stora räven” (‘look at that big fox’). What actually came out was “titta på den den stora röven” (‘look at that big asshole’). By this time the fox had disappeared into the forest and the only thing visible was the neighbour, who is universally unpopular with the in-laws. The gods of multi-cultural relationships were looking down on me that night.

Emma Chataway

Emma Chataway

Whenever I speak Swedish I feel pretty embarrassed all of the time, sometimes I’ll be concentrating hard on making sure I say a particular thing right or pronounce something properly that I make another mistake that I’d usually get right. It’s just so frustrating to think so much about what you’re going to say next.

Once when I was at my boyfriend’s parents’ place, I was losing terribly in a card game with the whole family. I tried to get my boyfriend to help me and batted my eyelids and said, “Älskar du med mig?” Everyone looked up and started laughing. I didn’t realize I had asked if Micke was sleeping with me; I thought it was an innocent, “Do you love me?” I’ll never make that mistake again.

One thing that really annoys me is that I can’t say ‘familj’ right. I just can’t round it off at the end, I don’t hear the difference between how I say it and how my boyfriend says it, but somehow it’s always wrong. I can say ‘sju’, I can pronounce all the letters in the alphabet fine, I just can’t seem to get ‘familj’ right. So if I have to say it I always make a small cough towards the end of the word, I really don’t want to be feigning a cold every time I talk about my family but it seems to work or make Micke laugh whenever I give it ago. But I pledge, one day I’ll say it perfectly and before that happens I’ll keep practicing. And well, if it never happens, I guess I’ll just have to keep coughing.

Igor Trisic

Igor Trisic

Generally I have problems with everything at the moment. It even seems that my English has gotten a bit worse since I started speaking Swedish. When it comes to the grammar the hardest is to make sure that conditional adverbs (e.g ‘inte’) come after finite verbs in conditional sentences. Furthermore ‘hade’ and ‘har’ are almost omitted in conditional sentences in written Swedish which often makes me wonder was it ‘hade’ or ‘har’ which got omitted. As for pronunciation, the biggest problem right now is how one should pronounce ‘ö’ and ‘sj-’. ‘Sjuksköterska’ for example. And I guess I will not be going to ‘Örebro’ anytime soon.

Thomas Smith

Thomas Smith

So far I have not had any embarrassing moments, but I have had some problems with the tone and pronunciation of some Swedish words. My most usable phrase is, “Kan du prata engelska?”

I must not be saying it quite right, because I get some puzzling looks from Swedes when I say it, but once I say, “English”, everything is fine.

Daniel Nyström

Daniel Nyström

When I was younger I played hockey for Djurgårdens IF and we once had a Canadian team visit and stay with us. I was quite good at English for my age (about 13), but I really hadn’t figured it out 100 percent yet.

We all had one player from the other team staying with us. When I didn’t know how to say a word, I wanted to say “I don’t know how to pronounce that.”

But I kept saying, “I don’t know how to expel that” — relating to the word “spell”.

Every time I said that, he looked at me funny, but didn’t correct me, and in retrospect it’s one of those things that made me take more interest in my English classes.

Mary Uhlin

Mary Uhlin

Linguistic faux pas for me have been many, but as for now when I do speak Swedish, I still inject the words in English when I am uncertain if I have said it correctly. I mostly have faux pas when I engage in conversations.

For example, in my office last week they were talking of going to a Microsoft meeting after lunch, I spoke up and said that I had also brought “micro mat” (microwave food) with me to eat and continued on with how everyone seemed to be doing that a lot more these days. [Microsoft in Swedish is pronounced meecro – soft].

I am still at the stage where I must listen intently to what is being said because every time I go a little on auto-pilot I never get it right! However, I am usually always good for giving the people around me a good laugh!

For members

LANGUAGE AND CULTURE

Le Havre rules: How to talk about French towns beginning with Le, La or Les

If you're into car racing, French politics or visits to seaside resorts you are likely at some point to need to talk about French towns with a 'Le' in the title. But how you talk about these places involves a slightly unexpected French grammar rule. Here's how it works.

Published: 30 November 2021 13:04 CET
Updated: 4 December 2021 17:47 CET
An old WW2 photo taken in the French port town of Le Havre.
An old WW2 photo taken in the French port town of Le Havre. It can be difficult to know what prepositions to use for places like this - so we have explained it for you. (Photo by AFP)

If you’re listening to French chat about any of those topics, at some point you’re likely to hear the names of Mans, Havre and Touquet bandied about.

And this is because French towns that have a ‘Le’ ‘La’ or ‘Les’ in the title lose them when you begin constructing sentences. 

As a general rule, French town, commune and city names do not carry a gender. 

So if you wanted to describe Paris as beautiful, you could write: Paris est belle or Paris est beau. It doesn’t matter what adjectival agreement you use. 

For most towns and cities, you would use à to evoke movement to the place or explain that you are already there, and de to explain that you come from/are coming from that location:

Je vais à Marseille – I am going to Marseille

Je suis à Marseille – I am in Marseille 

Je viens de Marseille – I come from Marseille 

But a select few settlements in France do carry a ‘Le’, a ‘La’ or a ‘Les’ as part of their name. 

In this case the preposition disappears when you begin formulating most sentences, and you structure the sentence as you would any other phrase with a ‘le’, ‘la’ or ‘les’ in it.

Masculine

Le is the most common preposition for two names (probably something to do with the patriarchy) with Le Havre, La Mans, Le Touquet and the town of Le Tampon on the French overseas territory of La Réunion (more on that later)

A good example of this is Le Havre, a city in northern France where former Prime Minister, Edouard Philippe, who is tipped to one day run for the French presidency, serves as mayor. 

Edouard Philippe’s twitter profile describes him as the ‘Maire du Havre’, using a masculine preposition

Here we can see that his location is Le Havre, and his Twitter handle is Philippe_LH (for Le Havre) but when he comes to describe his job the Le disappears.

Because Le Havre is masculine, he describes himself as the Maire du Havre rather than the Maire de Havre (Anne Hidalgo, for example would describe herself as the Maire de Paris). 

For place names with ‘Le’ in front of them, you should use prepositions like this:

Ja vais au Touquet – I am going to Le Touquet

Je suis au Touquet – I am in Le Touquet 

Je viens du Touquet – I am from Le Touquet 

Je parle du Touquet – I am talking about Le Touquet

Le Traité du Touquet – the Le Touquet Treaty

Feminine

Some towns carry ‘La’ as part of their name. La Rochelle, the scenic town on the west coast of France known for its great seafood and rugby team, is one such example.

In French ‘à la‘ or ‘de la‘ is allowed, while ‘à le‘ becomes au and ‘de le’ becomes du. So for ‘feminine’ towns such as this, you should use the following prepositions:

Je vais à La Rochelle – I am going to La Rochelle

Je viens de La Rochelle – I am coming from La Rochelle 

Plural

And some places have ‘Les’ in front of their name, like Les Lilas, a commune in the suburbs of Paris. The name of this commune literally translates as ‘The Lilacs’ and was made famous by Serge Gainsbourg’s song Le Poinçonneur des Lilas, about a ticket puncher at the Metro station there. 

When talking about a place with ‘Les’ as part of the name, you must use a plural preposition like so:

Je suis le poinçonneur des Lilas – I am the ticket puncher of Lilas 

Je vais aux Lilas – I am going to Les Lilas

Il est né aux Lilas – He was born in Les Lilas  

Islands 

Islands follow more complicated rules. 

If you are talking about going to one island in particular, you would use à or en. This has nothing to do with gender and is entirely randomised. For example:

Je vais à La Réunion – I am going to La Réunion 

Je vais en Corse – I am going to Corsica 

Generally speaking, when talking about one of the en islands, you would use the following structure to suggest movement from the place: 

Je viens de Corse – I am coming from Corsica 

For the à Islands, you would say:

Je viens de La Réunion – I am coming from La Réunion 

When talking about territories composed of multiple islands, you should use aux.

Je vais aux Maldives – I am going to the Maldives. 

No preposition needed 

There are some phrases in French which don’t require any a preposition at all. This doesn’t change when dealing with ‘Le’ places, such as Le Mans – which is famous for its car-racing track and Motorcycle Grand Prix. Phrases that don’t need a preposition include: 

Je visite Le Mans – I am visiting Le Mans

J’aime Le Mans – I like Le Mans

But for a preposition phrase, the town becomes simply Mans, as in Je vais au Mans.

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