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FRENCH WORD OF THE DAY

French Word of the Day: pas de souci

It is impossible to get through the day without hearing, and saying, this very useful little phrase. Even an experience as common as buying a baguette is often accompanied by this little civility.

Published: 14 February 2019 16:44 CET

French Word of the Day: pas de souci

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Why do I need to know pas de souci?

Pas de souci will show French people you are not an ill-mannered foreigner and that you understand the basic rules of politeness.

What does it mean?

Pas de souci is the French equivalent of saying ‘no problem’, ‘not a bother’ or ‘don’t worry’.

It is used as an informal response to merci when you do someone a favour or help them. It can be used when you open a door for someone and they, hopefully, say thank you. Or when you give someone directions and they express gratitude for not spending another hour lost in Paris’s meandering streets. Or if your friend announces he has forgotten his wallet and you offer to treat him to lunch.

Souci literally translates as 'worry', so the whole phrase means ‘without worry’. You could also use pas de problème or tout va bien.

How is it pronounced?

This sounds almost exactly as it is written, although the s is silent in pas.

Here's a handy audio file to help you learn.

Examples

‘Mon dieu ! J'ai oublié mon portefeuille.’ ‘Pas de souci’ — ‘My God! I have forgotten my wallet.’ ‘Don’t worry.’

‘Je suis désolé d'être en retard, merci d'avoir attendu.’ – ‘Pas de souci’— ‘I'm sorry I am so late, thank you for waiting.’ – ‘Not a bother’.

For more French Expressions and French Words of the Day you can CLICK HERE to see our full list

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French word of the Day: Jours ouvrés

Why do I need to know jours ouvrés?

Because you need an accurate time estimate.

What does it mean?

As most French learners will know, jours means days, while in this context ouvrés means ‘working’. Therefore jours ouvrés – roughly pronounced jzoor-ouv-ray – means ‘working days’. You may also see jours ouvrables, which means the same thing.

You’re most likely to come across this in the context of estimates on how long things will take – for example a delivery or the processing of an official task or perhaps the results for a test or exam.

And this is where the calendar comes in – ‘working days’ doesn’t include the weekends, but also excluded are public holidays, of which France has quite a lot. So an estimate for livraison dans les cinq jours ouvrés – might actually take almost two weeks to reach you, if there are weekend days and public holidays in between.

Days on either side of public holidays (known as ‘pont‘ days) are technically working days, but don’t be too surprised if things don’t happen on these days either.

Although ouvrés looks similar to ouvrir (to open) the root of the work is actually ouvrer – an archaic verb meaning to work or to labour.

This word was gradually supplanted by travailler in around the 16th century, but some derivatives of it are still used – most commonly ouvrier (or ouvrière for women) which means a worker – it can be used for all types of salaried workers, but is more commonly used for people who do manual labour or work with their hands.

It’s often used in a political sense too – one of France’s leftist political parties is Lutte ouvrière, which translates as Worker’s struggle.

Use it like this

La livraison est estimée à trois jours ouvrés – Delivery is estimated within three working days

Les résultats seront communiqués sous 48 hours (jours ouvrés) – the results will be sent within 48 hours (on working days)

Not to be confused with

If you want to talk about ‘open days’ – days when institutions including schools, the military or artists workshops open up to the public – in France these are known as portes ouvertes (literally ‘open doors’).

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