French Language Blog

But juste une seconde (just a sec’), before we do that that, let’s make sure you bookmark all the previous posts, because what you’ll end up saving as a référence personnelle is an essential guide that will help you overcome the informal French barrier so often met by foreign students, especially when they go to France for the first time and hear French people speak among themselves (“Zut alors, it’s all Greek to me!”), or when they watch French movies, or even listen to French songs!

     
This is a “concrete” (uhm) example of a ”bétonnière qu’on a laissé béton”… - Roughly translated: A concrete mixer which was ”dropped like it’s hot.”  If you still don’t get it, then, well, laisse béton… Or just read the section below!

Once again, the links to the previous posts are listed here alphabétiquement.
 Les voici, les voilà:
 
- A: * B.A.-BA de l’Argot: ‘A’ (the ABC of French Slang: ‘A’)
- B: * B.A.-BA de l’Argot: ‘B’ (the ABC of French Slang: ‘B’)
        * B.A.-BA de l’Argot: ‘B’ [Cont.] (the ABC of French Slang: ‘B’ [Cont.])
- C: * “C comme…” B.A.-BA de l’Argot (the ABC of French Slang: ‘C’)
        * “C comme…(Ça Continue!)” B.A.-BA de l’Argot (the ABC of French   Slang: ‘C’ [cont.])
- D: * “D comme…” B.A.-BA de l’Argot (the ABC of French Slang: ‘D’)
- E: * “E comme…” B.A.-BA de l’Argot (the ABC of French Slang: ‘E’)
- F: * “F comme…” B.A.-BA de l’Argot: ‘F’ [1] (the ABC of French Slang: ‘F’ [1]) 
        * “F comme…” B.A.-BA de l’Argot: ‘F’ [2] (the ABC of French Slang: ‘F’ [2])
- G: * More French Slang! B.A.-BA de l’Argot: “Lettre G” (1ère partie)
        * More French SLANG! B.A.-BA de l’Argot: “Lettre G” (2ème partie)—and ATTENTION aux MEUPORGs!
        * “GRATOS!” and other ‘G’ French Slang words (3ème partie)
- I:     * ‘I’ comme “Illico Presto!”—and more from le B.A.-BA de l’Argot (The ABC of French Slang)
- J:  * Madame JE-SAIS-TOUT (and more of the ABC of French Slang!)
- K: “Hey KEUM, Tu KIFFES l’argot ou KOI?” (an enKore of the ABC of French Slang) 

* * *

Bonsoir! (Good evening!) J’ai une histoire vraie à vous raconter—I have a true story to tell you. Ce matin (this morning), j’étais sur le quai du métro (I was on the subway platform), attendant mon troisième train pour aller au travail (waiting for my third train to go to work). Mon trajet à Brooklyn prend plus d’une heure chaque matin, et c’est parfois décourageant (my commute to Brooklyn takes more than an hour every morning, and sometimes it’s disheartening).

Ce matin, fatiguée, une pensée m’est traversée l’esprit (This morning, tired, a thought went through my head). C’est vendredi—it’s Friday.

The thoughts were not moving that fast, okay? It’s Friday. But hey…

“Mais Dieu merci, c’est vendredi!” I thought. “And I am writing a DMCV (Dieu Merci C’est Vendredi) post today!”

And je vous jure (I swear to you), I smiled. C’était mon rayon de soleil au quai du métro—it was my ray of sunshine on the subway platform. Vous, Hichem et moi: c’est une belle équipe! (You, Hichem and me: it’s a beautiful team!)

J’avais une super idée pour le post d’aujourd’hui (I had a great idea for today’s post), mais je l’ai laissée au bureau (but I left it at the office). But I got home and opened mon ordinateur (my computer), ready to troll the Internet for a new idea. But of course, I opened Facebook first. And voilà, right there in a friend’s status update:

Alors on danse.

Je ne connaissais pas cette chanson avant de piquer le lien du status d’une amie (I didin’t know this song before stealing the link from a friend’s status). Mais elle est très, voire hyper vendredi (But it is very, even extremely Friday).

“Alors on danse” est une chanson de Stromae (“So We Dance” is a song by Stromae). Stromae est l’envers (the inverse) de “maestro”:

“J’ai demandé à un pot de trouver un nom de scène. Il m’a proposé maestro. Comme c’était déjà utilisé, on a choisi son verlan qui donne stromae.”

(“I asked a friend to find a stage name. He proposed maestro. As it was already taken, we chose its verlan, which makes stromae.”)

Verlan is a slang style that inverts words, so that l’envers (the inverse) becomes verlan, femme becomes meuf (“ma meuf”: my woman), et cetera.

That’s already enough of a lesson for vendredi, I think. L’important, c’est d’écouter cette chanson en français (what’s important is to listen to this song in French). Et surtout, d’aller vous amuser ce week-end! (And especially, to go have fun this weekend!) Dieu merci, c’est vendredi .

We can now see that Jennie has finally “made-up” her mind: Both “voyages” and “make-up” made it in last week. You cannot say that il n’y en a pas pour tous les goûts ! 

She also did a great job at shattering yet another prevailing stereotype about le pays de l’hexagone (France, of course): Who ever said that the concept of épilation (body-hair waxing) is so strange to the ever-elusive world of French women?

Like we saw before, idioms are among the first challenges in learning a new language, and surtout (especially) French. Another challenge, almost as unavoidable, when you try to actually go to the country, meet and talk with its people, is the slang of that country, or as it is called in French: l’argot.

L’argot is not necessarily le verlan (the “back slang”), which we talked about last time. In fact, there are many forms of l’argot. One of them, as we see in this video (“qui date un peu“, meaning a bit old), is l’argot des cités (suburbs slang), where many first- and second-generation French of Maghreb and African origin still live:
 

Understanding l’argot in general is also a must if you are a fan of le cinéma français -as previously pointed out by Jennie- where the employed language is not necessarily une langue châtiée (“polished” or refined language)… but quite to the contrary! 

There are of course many dictionaries and references of French slang that are readily available in bookstores and even online with a free access, but the trouble with them is that they list way too many entries, to a point where any foreign reader would helplessly drown into them, completely at a loss as to which expression would actually be more important to learn and memorize than another.

La solution is now here: I am providing you with le strict minimum. The expressions argotiques or familières which you must know when you are surrounded by native French speakers. As a “useful” semi-side note, you will maybe be amused (or perhaps shocked, it depends) to learn that some French people often resort to slang when they do not wish to be understood by foreigners. Now that you’re armed with a minimal knowledge of l’argot, they will have to be extra-careful with you!

Needless to say, however, that you’ll learn here only the expressions that you need to know when you’re, shall we say, in a relatively ”good social company”… Bien entendu (Of course.)

Aujourd’hui (today) we will cover the letter A.

A:

* Accouche!
As in “Allez, accouche !” Meaning: “Confess”, or “spit it out!”  Often used when people urge you to finally reveal something to them. Or you may for example see it in a French movie scene, typically when a police interrogation of a suspect is conducted. Literally, it means: “Come on, give it birth!”  Close expressions with the same meaning as “to confess” is “passer aux aveux“, “lâcher le morceau“, or “passer à table.”

* Accro:
Meaning to be hooked on something, since it’s short for the verb accrocher (to hook something.) Example: “Elle est accro à la musique techtonique” (C’est quoi la ‘techtonique’, you may ask?)

* Allonger: 
This one is rather “versatile”, and depends on the context of its use. The verb allonger means “to extend” or ”to strech out.” So if you say “allonger une claque” or ”un coup de poing”, it means to slap or punch someone, knocking them down. But you may also hear: “Allez, allonge-moi mon fric, mec!”, meaning “Come on, fork over my money, dude!”
As an adjectif, “être allongé” means to be dead. ”Il a avalé son acte de naissance, et maintenant il est au jardin des allongés“, which literally means: “He ‘swallowed his birth certificate’, and now he’s at the garden of ‘the lying down’.” Quite charming of an expression, isn’t it?     

Ami-ami:
 This one definitely amuses me, because it reminds me of a childhood memory of my little brother. When he was very young, he used to call the show “Deux Flics à Miami” (“Two Cops in Miami”, which is the French title of  “Miami Vice”, featuring Don Johnson and Philip M. Thomas) “Deux Flics Ami-Ami”, which means word-for-word “two cops friend-friend”, but it in fact means to be reconciled after a fight.
“Bon, on fait ami-ami, on enterre la hache de guerre, et on fume le calumet de la paix?” The translation of which is: “So, we become friends again, we bury the hatchet, and smoke the peace pipe?”
For a (very) little idea of what “Miami Vice” may sound when dubbed in French, here’s an example (It’s funny that the scene starts with “Croissants” and a French flag…)

Now, let’s “cut down to the chase”:
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x18wn6