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LEARNING FRENCH

LEARNING FRENCH

Top 10 bizarre French expressions translated

Learning French is hard enough without all the seemingly bizarre and "untranslatable" expressions out there, that if you don't know the real meaning of, could land you in a spot of Gallic bother. See these top 10 examples to see exactly what you are up against.

Published: 27 January 2014 16:31 CET
Top 10 bizarre French expressions translated
"Stop talking salads" and ten other bizarre French phrases translated. Photo: Mslavic/Flickr

So you have made enough progress in the literal portion of the French language to finally be able to chat with your colleagues at the water cooler or coffee machine.

But, like the man-eating shark lurking in the waters of the film Jaws, but there are other perils awaiting you dear students of French – idioms that just don't translate.

And if you don't know them, the chances are you could end up in a pickle.

If you want to tell someone that they "have a screw lose" or that something is "no big deal", it's no use translating your English expressions because you will just end up looking silly.

You need the Gallic versions.

So to help you on your way we've picked ten strange expressions in French that you could hear at dinner parties or work and deciphered them into English. Click below.

Top 10 bizarre French expressions translated

What are your favourite bizarre French expressions? Let us know in the comments section below.

SEE ALSO: Top 12 French expressions you won't learn at school

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LEARNING FRENCH

How to talk email, websites, social media and phone numbers in Swiss French

It's a very common experience to have to give out your phone number or email address in Switzerland, or take down the address of a website, so here's how to do this if you're in the French-speaking part of the country.

Published: 3 August 2022 12:31 CEST
How to talk email, websites, social media and phone numbers in Swiss French

The correct names for punctuation marks used to be fairly low down on any French-learner’s list, but these days they are vital whenever you need to explain an email address, website or social media account.

Likewise if you want to talk about websites, or social media posts, there are some things that you need to know. 

Punctuation

Obviously punctuation points have their own names, and making sure you get the periods, dashes and underscores correct is vital to giving out account details. 

Full stop/period . point. Pronounced pwan, this is most commonly heard for Swiss websites or email addresses which end in. ch (pronounced pwan ce ash).

If you have a site that ends in .com you say ‘com’ as a word just as you would in English – pwan com.

At symbol @ Arobase – so for example the email address [email protected] would be jean pwan dupont arobas bluewin pwan ce ash.

Ampersand/and symbol & esperluette

Dash – tiret

Underscore _ tiret bas 

Forward slash / barre oblique

Upper case/capital letters – Majuscule (or lettre majuscule)

Lower case – miniscule

The following punctuation points are less common in email or web addresses, but worth knowing anyway:

Comma , virgule. In French a decimal point is indicated with a comma so two and a half would be 2,5 (deux virgule cinq)

Exclamation mark ! point d’exclamation – when you are writing in French you always leave a space between the final letter of the word and the exclamation mark – comme ça !

Question mark ? point d’interrogation – likewise, leave a space between the final character and a question mark 

Brackets/parentheses ( ) parenthèse

Quotation marks « » guillemets 

Numbers

If you need to give your phone number out, the key thing to know is that Swiss-French people pair the numbers in a phone number when speaking.

So say your number is 079 345 6780, in French you would say zero septante-neuf, trois-cents quarante-cinq, soixante-sept, huitante (zero seventy-nine, three hundred forty-five, sixty-seven, eighty ).

Mobile numbers in Switzerland  begin with 079 or 078 (zero septante-neuf or zero septante-huit).

Social media

If you want to give out your Twitter or Instagram handle, the chances are you might need to know some punctuation terms as described above.

Otherwise the good news is that a lot of English-language social media terms are used in Switzerland too.

Twitter, Facebook and Instagram have the same names in Switzerland and have entered the language in other ways too, for example you might describe your dinner as très instagrammable – ie it’s photogenic and would look good on Instagram.

On Twitter you can suivre (follow), aimer (like) or retweet (take a wild guess). You’ll often hear the English words for these terms too, though pronounced with a French accent.

There is a French translation for hashtag – it’s dièse mot, but in reality hashtag is also very widely used.

Tech is one of those areas where new concepts come along so quickly that the English terms often get embedded into everyday use before the French-speakers can think up an alternative.

READ MORE: French-speaking Switzerland: Seven life hacks that will make you feel like a local

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