Sometimes all you want to do is laugh. Au bureau la semaine dernière (Last week at work), I was introduced to a very funny video that I thought I’d share with you, chers lecteurs (dear readers). A collègue (coworker) over heard me speaking French with another collègue and thought we’d get a kick out of it. I hope you will too !

The accents are a little ‘off’ and the grammar isn’t always perfect , but when a video is this fun (and evocative of a certain genre of French style), you just have to share it ! Can you “fix” the errors I’ve identified without looking at the answers below the lyrics?

* ‘MDR’ is text short-hand for ‘mort de rire’ (dying laughing). It’s the French equivalent of ‘lol’ or ‘ROTFL’

** ‘foux’ is the plural form of the word ‘fou’ which means crazy, or insane. The feminin form is ‘folle’.

*** This should of course be ‘au’. The preposition ‘à’ (to) followed by the definit article ‘le’ (the) is combined to ‘au’ (to the) in the same way ‘de’ (of) and ‘le’ are combined to form ‘du’ (of the). In the plural:‘à’ plus ‘les’ is ‘aux’ and ‘de’ plus ‘les’ is ‘des’.

**** It’s nonsense, but it’s correct ;-).

***** ‘Ça va?’ can be, as we see here, both a question and its answer. It is an informal expression that uses the verb ‘aller’ (to go) that could as easly be translated as ‘How goes it?’ as a question and ‘It goes.’ in response. You will also commonly hear ‘Comment vas?’ or ‘Comment vas-tu?’ (or ‘Comment allez-vous?‘ in the formal or plural form) which means the same thing.

****** ‘C’est ici’ would be correct . . . unless of course he wanted to say ‘C’est si . . .’ (It is so . . . ) but even that would be an odd formulation here.

******* ‘français/e’ without an aritcle (‘le’, ‘la’, ‘un’, or  ‘une’) is an adjective, ‘le francais’ is the language . . . ‘Parlez-vous le français ?’ is the correct construction, but you will also commonly hear ‘Parlez-vous francais ?’ (without the ‘le’). Par contre (on the other hand), when speaking about learning a language (vs. speaking one), you always use the definite article (‘Pierre apprend l’anglais.’ / Peter is learning English. ‘J’apprends le russe.’ / I am learning Russian.). And finally, when speaking about the French globally, remember to capitalize it. ‘J’aime les Français.’ / I like the French (people).

And if you made it this far, this! A virtual tour of Paris with love from the mayor of Paris herself. Enjoy!