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LANGUAGE AND CULTURE

Are these the most maddening words in the French language?

In honour of French language week, here's a look at a list of words that will keep learners up at night in cold sweats.

Published: 21 March 2017 12:16 CET
Are these the most maddening words in the French language?
Photos: Pixabay
Some of these words are hard to say, some are hard to spell, some are hard to understand… and some have just too many meanings.
 
Here are some words in French language that have learners tearing their hair out.
 
Vert/vers/verre/ver/vers
 
These words are all basically pronounced the same, but they mean wildly different things: Green, direction, glass, worm, and verse. 
 
 
The picture below, in which a green worm is going towards a green glass, would be written like this in French: “Le ver vert va vers le verre vert”.
 
Impossible, non?
Plus
 
What a tricky little word. Depending on how you pronounce it, it can mean two opposite things – either “more” or “none”.
 
Eg: Il y en a plus (pronouncing the 's') means there is more. Il n'y en a plus ('s' silent) means there isn't any left.
 
Photo:CollegeDegrees360/Flickr
 
Personne
 
This also has two opposite meanings: 'no one' and 'someone'. French language expert Camille Chevalier Karfis spells it out:
 
Il y a une personne dans le café means “There is one person in the coffee shop”.
Il n'y a personne dans le café means “There is no one in the coffee shop”.

Easy, right? 
 
Baiser

As a noun, this word means “a kiss”. As a verb (with exactly the same spelling).. well… read the dictionary definition below…
 
 
Bien/bon
 
The words for “good” and “well” can be tricky to master, but in short, bon is usually an adjective to go with a noun while bien is usually an adverb to go with a verb. 
 
“This can be challenging for Americans who tend to say “I am doing good,” when they should say “I am doing well,” says Veronique Savoye, better known as French Girl in Seattle.
 
Eg: Comment allez-vous? Je vais bien, merci. (I am doing well thank you.) 
 
Comment sont les frites? (How are the fries?) Elles sont très bonnes. (They are really good.) 
 
And avoid “Elle est bonne” at all costs, if someone asks how a specific woman is going (as in: How's the wife?). 
 
You would be referring to her skills in a specific area that involves lying down. Do not say “Elle est bien” either. What you want is “Elle va bien.”
 
99 (and basically any number above 69)
 
The French have an unusual way of putting numbers together, as we have written about in detail here. 
 
After sixty-nine, funny things start to happen because the French don't have a separate word for seventy, or eighty, or even ninety.
 
Take 77 for example, or rather, ‘sixty-ten-seven' as it would be said in French. And it gets worse. Ninety-nine translates to “four-twenty-ten-nine” or quatre-vingt-dix-neuf.
 
Can you imagine the life of salesman trying to sell discount TVs for €99.99?
 
 
Qu'est-ce que c'est?
 
This phrase, which means “What is that/What is it?” is hugely common and easy to pronounce, but notoriously tricky for some to spell. There are just too many similar sounds for it to roll off the pen (or indeed the fingertips for typists). 
 
And not only that, it's basically nonsense if you translate it literally:
 
Plutôt or plus tôt?
 
Don't worry, the French even seem to struggle with this one (according to the number of Google results that come up in French when searching for this – over 200,000 for the record).
 
Essentially, the two are homonyms – they sound the same, but are spelled differently and mean different things. Plutôt = rather and plus tôt = earlier.
 
C'est pas terrible
 
English speakers can be forgiven for getting confused with the word terrible in French, as saying “c'est pas terrible” actually means something is terrible, rather than isn't, as you would think at first.
 
Serrurerie
 
You've probably seen this word before around French cities – it means locksmiths (the place where a locksmith works). But how on earth do you pronounce it? This word topped out list of most unpronounceable French words in 2015, and hence deserves a mention among the most annoying French words. 
 
 
Reims

This French town pictured below is not pronounced Reems, more like Rahnce. 
 
Yes, while we're talking about hard words to pronounce, we can point you in the direction of ten towns across France with essentially unpronounceable names. Topping The Local's list was Reims, followed by Caen, and the Rouen. See the rest here. 
 
Photo: WikiCommons
 
Asseoir
 
The verb “to sit” or “to be seated” is probably the most annoying verb in the French language. For starters, not only is it irregular, but it has two entirely different conjugation forms (one for assoir and the other for asseoir) – and it only gets more complicated from there. 
 
We recommend you only learn how to say “Sit down” and “Can I sit here” and then fake the rest. If you're a stickler for the right way to say it, here is a taste of ONE of the conjugations (and this is only for the main tenses).  
 

 
 
C'est/s'est/ses/ces/sais/sait
 
Believe it or not, all the words above are pronounced more or less the same – similarly to “say” in English. The definitions of the words are many, and range from “it is” to “to know”. 
 
Beginners to the French language will learn quickly that nothing will really help here except context. 
 
 
Un hôte, une hôtesse
 
This word means both guest and host (in masculine and feminine forms respectively). And when you're learning French, it's bound to come up and catch you out when you're least aware. 
 
Fingers crossed a little slip up doesn't see you agreeing to host a dinner party when you thought you were only going to be a guest. 
 
S'introduire
 
And lastly… as if an introduction in France wasn't a fraught experience already, one of the most two-faced of “false friends” in French is the verb “s'introduire”. 
 
Naturally, you would think it means “to introduce”. It actually means to penetrate, insert or enter. So next time you meet a group of French people and you want to suggest you should all “introduce each other”, the verb you're looking for is “se présenter”.
 
 
Another version of this article was published in February 2016

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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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