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FRENCH LANGUAGE

Why do the French love to say ‘f**k’ so much?

The French curse word of choice is frequently an English one. The Local tries to get to the bottom of why the French are so fond of f**k - often in situations that would make an Anglophone blush. (Contains a lot of strong language).

Published: 19 March 2019 23:51 CET
Updated: 13 September 2021 12:14 CEST
Why do the French love to say 'f**k' so much?
Screengrab from 20 Minutes and Canal Plus (blurring by The Local) .

“Fuck” is a common word in France and it’s not just because of the hordes of Brits and Americans living here.

The locals appear to use it in conversation as much as English-speakers do and often even more.

The young and trendy French people aren’t afraid to say it, the English-language TV shows (when they’re not dubbed) aren’t censored, and you can hear expletive-laden rap songs played virtually everywhere and one French juice company even included it on the bottle of a drink marketed at schoolchildren.

French media are also keen on it – TV station Canal Plus had a weekly programme called “What The Fuck France!” while a regular section of the 20 Minutes web site – showing funny and unusual pictures from around the world – was also called “What the fuck” and you can regularly see the word in newspaper headlines.

 

One of the reasons why the French seem to use the word so much is that they just don’t get the weight of ‘fuck’ in English.

While ‘fuck’ has undoubtedly become more widely used in English speaking countries in recent years, there are still plenty of situations where you wouldn’t use it, especially in anything concerning children.

‘Fuck’ is most commonly translated into French as putain, yet there is a world of difference between the two. It wouldn’t be particularly out of order to use putain in front of the elderly, nuns or even children in certain contexts – it’s really all in how you say it.

Camille Chevalier-Karfis, founder of FrenchToday.com, said the use of the word has left her scratching her head too.  

“I am surprised at the use of the word ‘fuck’ in the French language, especially since it seems to me that the French don’t use it right,” she told The Local. 

“Recently a friend sent me an email about her elderly mother that said: ‘je ne supporte plus cette fucking mother méthode’ (I can no longer stand this despicable method my mother uses). Why did she write this part in English? Probably to show her anger, because it sounded good to her this way.

“I would never associate the word ‘fuck’ with my own mother. It just sounds wrong. But the French don’t have enough of a feeling for the word, or rather they have the wrong feeling for it.” 

Perhaps it’s all about being cool?

For the more travelled, more connected younger generation of French people it’s trendy to work all kinds of English words into their everyday conversations, so perhaps it’s no surprise that the f-word is one of them.

Perhaps it’s from watching all those Hollywood films over the years, where the f-word has been given a softer translation when it’s subtitled or dubbed into French.

But the nonchalance towards swearing in English can perhaps be better explained by the fact that the French adore swearing in general. 

Sometimes the French throw out long strings of expletives when they’re irritated, as famously highlighted in the Matrix Reloaded film (see below).

For those interested, the actor, Frenchman Lambert Wilson, says: “Nom de dieu de putain de bordel de merde de saloperie de connard d’enculer ta mère”. 

A rough translation would be: “Godforsaken whore from a piece-of-shit arse brothel – go and bugger yer mother”.

Indeed. 

The French are just a bit more liberal with cursing than the Brits or the Americans, similarly to how they’re more liberal with their sex and nudity on TV.

Yes, the French are a liberal bunch and don’t mind a good bout of coarse language, so you may as well get used to it too. 

But lastly, if you’re thinking about getting into swearing in French, one language expert advises that “know it, don’t show it” is the best approach. 

Member comments

  1. Sort of like Germans adopting the word “shitstorm.” Angela Merkel even used it in a speech! I suppose it *is* a very useful word lol.

  2. The article does not mention the origin of the word, which was not as a cuss word–it is an anagram that was widely used during a certain period in English history.
    Centuries ago, when small hamlets and villages, that could not afford to to maintain a jail and instead relied on stocks and pillories where those persons in breach of the law had their legs or head and wrists locked in the stocks or pillories for passers by to throw object at them.
    The crime committed by the person was written on the stocks / pillories , with a common crime being reduced to an anagram ie
    FUCK meaning “For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge”. Viewed in those terms, not so offensive .

  3. As an american the only word that really disturbs me is when the British use the “C” word, and they use it for all sorts of situations. Stops me dead in my tracks all the time. I can not get over it. And its usage is all over the place from a friend to much worse. And when they combine it with cheeky, I am at a loss for words. How are threy using it!

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LEARNING FRENCH

Is the English language really just ‘badly pronounced French’?

A French linguist has been making waves with his boldly-titled book 'The English language does not exist - it's just badly pronounced French', but does the professor actually have a point?

Published: 23 April 2024 14:35 CEST
Is the English language really just 'badly pronounced French'?

The French linguist Bernard Cerquiglini is clear that the title of his book should be taken with humour and a pinch of salt, beginning his work by explaining that it is a ‘bad faith proposition’.

Clearly, the English language does exist and equally clearly the French are a little uneasy about it – with numerous laws, national bodies and local initiatives attempting to fight back against the anglicisms that now litter everyday speech, from ‘c’est cool’ to ‘un job’. 

But Cerquiglini argues that the supposed ‘influx’ of English words that are now used in France, especially tech-related terms, is nothing compared to what happened when French literally invaded English in the Middle Ages.

And the close similarity that the two languages enjoy today – around 30 percent of English words are of French origin – speaks to this entwined history.

“You can also see my book as an homage to the English language, which has been able to adopt so many words… Viking, Danish, French, it’s astonishing,” he told AFP.

The history

The key date in the blending of English and French is the Norman conquest of 1066, when Duke William of Normandy invaded England with a small group of Norman knights and made himself the English king William the Conqueror.

What happened next was a radical re-ordering of society in which English nobles were displaced and William’s knights were installed as a new French-speaking (or at least Norman-speaking) ruling class. 

The use of French by the ruling classes continued into the 13th and 14th centuries, by which time French was the official language of the royal courts, diplomacy, the law, administration and trade – meaning that ambitious English people had no choice but to learn French in order to take part in official or legal processes. 

Cerquiglini says that half of all English’s borrowings from French took place between 1260-1400, with a heavy slant towards words related to nobility, trade, administration or the law.

But a large group of non-native speakers meant that the French spoken in England was already starting to evolve, and the French words ended up with different pronunciations or even a different meaning. 

As early as 1175, the records show a Frenchman in England snootily remarking that: “My language is good, because I was born in France”. 

English and French started to part ways from the mid-1400s, by which time the two countries no longer shared royalty (the last English possession in France, the port of Calais, was lost to the French in 1558) and gradually systems such as the law courts and trade began to be conducted in English.

French remained widely spoken as a second language by the nobility and the elite right up until the early 20th century and French is still the most widely-taught language in UK schools.

The similarities

It’s not always easy to distinguish between English words that have a French root and those that have a Latin root, but linguists estimate that around 29 percent of English words come from French, another 29 percent from Latin, 26 percent from German and the rest from other languages.

But many of the English words that do have a clear French root are related to nobility, administration, politics and the law.

For example the French words gouvernement, parlement, autorité and peuple are clearly recognisable to English speakers. Likewise budget, revenus, enterprise and taxe, plus avocat, cour, juge, magistrat and evidence.

Amusingly, the French and the English obviously found time to share many insults, including bâtard [bastard], crétin, imbecile, brute and stupide.

Adaptation

But most of the people in England who were speaking French did not have it as their mother tongue, so the language began to adapt. For example the French à cause de literally translates into English as ‘by cause of’ which over time became the English word ‘because’.

There are also words that started out the same but changed their meaning over time – for example the English word ‘clock’ comes from the French ‘cloche’ (bell), because in the Middle Ages church bells were the most common method of keeping track of the time for most people.

When the mechanical clock began to appear from the 14th century onwards, the French used a new term – une horloge – but the English stuck with the original.

The differences

One of the big differences between English and French is that English simply has more words – there are roughly 170,000 words in the English language, compared to about 135,000 in French.

And at least part of this comes from English being a ‘blended’ language – that English people hung on to their original words and simply added the French ones, which is why you often get several different English words that have the same translation in French eg clever and intelligent both translate into French as ‘intelligent’.

Another difference represents the class divide that the Norman invasion imposed between the French nobles and the English labourers.

For example the words pig and cow both have Anglo-Saxon roots, while pork and beef come from French (porc and boeuf) – so when the animal is in the field being looked after by English peasants it has an Anglo-Saxon name, but by the time it is on the plate being eaten by posh people, it becomes French.

There’s also a tendency in English for the more everyday words to have Anglo-Saxon origins while the fancier words have French origins – eg to build (English) versus to construct (French). In French construire is used for both. Or to feed (English) versus to nourish (French) – in French both are nourrir.

Faux amis

One consequence of English and French being so closely linked in the bane of every language-learner’s life – les faux amis (false friends).

These are words that look and sound very similar, but have a completely different meaning. If you don’t know the French word for something you can have a stab at saying the English word with a French pronunciation – and often you will be right.

But sometimes you will be wrong, and sometimes it will be embarrassing.

READ ALSO The 18 most embarrassing French ‘false friends’

Often, faux amis are words that have changed their meaning in one language but not the other – for example the French word sensible means sensitive, not sensible – which is why you can buy products for peau sensible (sensitive skin).

But it once meant sensitive in English too – for example in the title of Jane Austen’s novel Sense and Sensibility – over time the meaning of the English word adapted but the French one stayed the same.

The title

And a word on that title – La langue anglaise n’existe pas, C’est du français mal prononcé (the English language does not exist, it’s just badly pronounced French) is actually a quote from former French prime minister Georges Clemenceau.

He did apparently speak English, but doesn’t appear to have been very fond of England itself – his other well-known quote on the topic is: “L’angleterre n’est qu’une colonie français qui a mal tourné” – England is just a French colony gone wrong.  

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