The French Journey

Another trailer, this one more serious than the last, for the new Vincent Cassel film called: L’instinct de mort.

You’ll find the key phrases below in French and English, listen out for them in the trailer (bande annonce) and try to copy how they’re pronounced.

Ferme ta gueule!
Shut your mouth! (Gueule being slang for bouche)

Qu’est-ce que tu faisait en France?
Je braquais les banques.
What did you do in France?
I robbed banks.
(sounds like keske - that’s also how kids write it in sms messages – also, bonus points for noticing the guy asking the question having a Canadian/Quebecois accent)

Le jury réunie condamne Jacques Mesrine à la peine de 20 années de réclusion criminelle
The jury condemns JM to the sentence of (think, ‘on pain of’)20 years of criminal reclusion

Vous voulez m’enfermer?
(Tu me manques)
Allez-y enfermez moi.
Mais sachez que je m’évaderai. (Future tense ending ai)
(Je t’aime papa.)
Et ca vous pouvez compter sur moi.
You want to lock me up?
(I miss you)
Go on then, lock me up.
But know that I’ll escape.
(I love you dad)
And you can count on me for that.

C’est quoi ces conneries, Jacques?
What’s all this BS, Jacques?

Tu veux toujours avoir le dernier mot tu te retrouves toujours tout seul.
Et c’est comme ça que tu finiras, Mesrine, tout seul.
You always want to have the last word and you always end up alone.
And that’s how you’ll end up, Mesrine, alone.

Moi?! Moi!?
Me?! Me?!

Police, rendez vous! (Not rendezvous, rdv, like a meeting, but the verb ‘se rendre’)
Police! Surrender!

Personne ne me tue tant que j’ai pas décidé.
Nobody kills me until I say so (lit. nobody kills me for as long as I’ve not decided).

The French trailer, a bande annonce, for Ice Age 3 is pretty funny and brilliantly dubbed in French and English. This gives us the opportunity to use it to learn French and have a smile or two along the way.

I provide the English for the version française, as a more literal translation, the English version of the trailer, en V.O. (version originale), will include the original dialogue for comparison.

The idea again being just to hear French in context, copy the accent of this very standard French and learn some new expressions. I’ve made some useful common expressions bold.

L’évenement le plus énorme, depuis 2 millions d’années, va faire basculer le monde, dans une nouvelle dimension.
The biggest event in 2 million years will shake the world into another dimension.

Que personne ne bouge un poil.
Nobody move a hair.

Bientôt.
Soon.

Nous vivions au dessus d’un autre monde et nous ne savions pas.
We were living above another world and we didn’t know it.

Je me sens – tout petit.
I feel – so small.

Je suis trop jeune… pour… être mangé.
I’m too young… to… be eaten.

Aïe!
Ouch!

Je suis toujours aussi beau gosse.
I’m still as good looking as ever.

- Toi, tu rentres au village
- Parle à ma tronc!
- You’re going back to the village
- Talk to the trunk!

Pour la preimère fois à l’écran, Scrattina.
For the first time on the screen, Scrattina.

C’est la commencement d’un nouvelle ére.
It’s the dawning of a new era.

Tremblement de terre!
Earthquake!

C’est quand même mieux que rien.
It’s still better than nothing.

Sautez!
Jump!

Vous avez peut-être faim, je sais exactement ce qu’il vous faut.
Perhaps you’re hungry, I know exactly what you need.

Je croyais que t’étais une femelle!
I thought you were a female!

As promised, here’s the English, VO, version:

While viewing the video of French comedians Thomas and Jamel, listen out for the sentences I’ve written out below. This is full speed, comedy French, so only an advanced speaker would understand everything BUT that is not the goal here. The aim is to familiarise you with some great everyday French, how it sounds, when it’s said and how to say it.

TIP
Try to copy how the comedians talk, use the text below to put some words to their sounds and really try to mimic how they talk. Just copy them and see if anything sticks. It normally does. Don’t worry about remembering everything – you’ll pick up the important words as time goes on. Take your time and use the pause button.

What’s it all about?
Jamel is a famous (in France) French comedian who has started a comedy club, which includes the performer. Jamel is the seated man, Thomas is standing and performing. They exchange comedy insults and then promote Jamel’s new DVD. (Which I have nothing to do with – cela/ça ne me concerne pas!)

Pour ceux qui n’ont pas encore compris ce que c’est le Jamel Comedy Club, c’est un arabe qui fait bosser un noir pour faire rire des blancs. C’est l’intégration. Comme quoi ca avait un role vraiment positif, les colonies.
For those who haven’t yet understand what the Jamel Comedy Club is, it’s an arab making a black guy work to make white guys laugh. That’s integration for you. What a positive role the colonies had.

Je t’adore, toi.
I love you/think you’re great.

Je sais que tu m’adores.
I know you do.

Même si tu n’es pas le plus drôle de la bande.
Even if you’re not the funniest of the group.

Je vois, je vois, tu commences le clash, c’est ca?
I see, I see, you’re starting the clash/battle then, is that it?

Tu ne me respectes pas, en gros, c’est ca?
You don’t respect me, basically, is that it?

Je souviendrai toute ma vie de ses débuts, je lui découvrait en KFC et il jouait pour les chicken wings à l’époque.
I’ll always remember when he was starting out, I discovered him in KFC and he was performing for chicken wings at the time.

D’autant plus, t’es le seul carambar géant que je connaisse.
What’s more, you’re the only giant carambar I know.
(Carambar the sweet, which is brown, a cheap reference to Thomas’ skin colour – racial issues are sometimes dealt with in a more open manner in French).

Je te kiffe.
I dig you. (Slang)

Comme par hasard, le top 5 d’aujourd’hui…
As if by chance, today’s top 5 happens to be about reasons to buy Jamel’s DVD.

Roule ma poule.
Hit it, man. (Literally: roll it, my chicken)

Poule is only used because it rhymes. You can say: ça roule? (are you well/is it rolling/going well) and the reply can be “ça roule ma poule” (slang).
Likewise:
“Ci-mer Homer” means thanks, in backslang with a rhyme.
“Fonce Alphonse” means get out of here (Foncer – to leave quickly)
etc.

5. …fera plaisir au Melissa Theriau – A famous French newsreader, famed mainly for her appearance. Plenty of examples are available on youtube
4. Profits will be given to… us.
3. Not one gag by Laurent Gerra (must be a “bad” comedian)
2. In the hidden bonus’ is the 4th season of prison break.
1. If you don’t do it we’ll all be kicked out.

A reference article for those stuck trying to get their heads around language jargon. Only read this for reference, it’s really quite tedious. It’s not the fun part of language learning, but if you want to learn quickly, having a rough idea of the mechanics that the people who designed the language put in place, it’s a bit of a requirement. If you don’t learn them by heart in a week, you’ll pick them up over time.

Adjectives (Les adjectifs)
They describe nouns. They “add” a “jective”, ok, there’s no such thing as a “jective”, but they “add” something to the noun. That’s a memory hook you can use – adding something to a noun. Not a verb, that would be an adverb.

Examples: thin, muscular, green, fun

Adverbs (Les adverbes)
They are “add”ed to a “verb”. But also to adjectives and other adverbs. If you forget, think of any verb (action) and think of the word added to it. “Run” “Run slowly“. There’s your adverb.

- Comparative (comparatif) and superlative (superlatif)
Comparative compares things (thinner, more muscular, greener, more fun)
Superlative marks which thing is most super (most thin, most muscular, most green, most fun, best)

Agreement (Les accords)
Adjectives change in French depending on the gender and number of the noun they describe. So a noun like “l’americaine” (the American female) with the adjective “marrant” (funny) can be put together like so:

L’americaine est marrante (added e to show feminine noun)
Les americaines sont marrantes (added e and s to show feminine and plural)

These added letters are called “accords”. They have some pronunciation implications.

Articles (Les articles)
Definite (l’article défini): the (le, la, les)
Indefinite (l’article indéfini): a, an, some (de, du, de la, des)

Conjunctions (Les conjonctions)
Joining words. Conjoining. Quite a lot of them, used to join sentences: and, but, because, or, when.

Gender (Le genre)
Masculine and feminine, the famous le and la of French. Un or une. It applies to nouns, and then the adjectives “agree” with them and so you see the gender in the nouns and in the adjectives. You can often tell the gender of a noun from its ending – there are some easy rules to tell gender.

Nouns (Les noms)
People, places and things.
A proper noun is a name of something (nom propre)
An abstract noun is a non-tangible (nom abstrait)

Number (Nombre)
Singular or plural (singulier or pluriel). Single refers to one thing. Plural refers to more than one.

Prepositions (Les prepositions)
Words used before nouns to describe position or relationship.
Down the road, between the shops, on the roof before sundown and after midnight.

Pronouns (Les pronoms)
They are very important words which stitch sentences together showing who is doing what to whom. There are several types of these:

1. Demonstrative (Les pronoms démonstratifs)
this, that; these, those. Ceci, cela; celles-ci, celles-là.

2. Direct Object (Les pronoms de complément direct) – Who receives the verb?
me, you, him, her, it, us, them – me, te, le, la, nous, vous, les
She receives it – Elle le reçoit (she it sees)
I buy them – Je les achète (I them buy)

3. Emphatic (Les formes accentuées des pronoms)
Instead of using voice emphasis, French uses words.
It’s me – c’est moi.  It was him – c’était lui.

4. Indirect Object (Les pronoms de complément indirect) – Pronoun used when the action done is to, for or of someone. Very similar to the Direct Object but these pronouns show that a verb is happening to someone, for someone. Not really something you need to think about when talking. Used mainly when writing to get it perfect.
me, te, se, lui, nous, vous, leur
Examples:
Je te donne cinq euros (I to you give five euros = I give to you five euros)
Nous leur disons “ciao” (We to them said “ciao”)

Y – there (J’y vais = I’m going there)
En – of it, some (Want a drink? Non, j’en ai = No, I’ve got one)

5. Indefinite (Les pronoms indéfinis) – Pronouns used to describe general (undefined) subjects or objects – nobody in particular – each one, someone, everything – chacun, quelqu’un, tout

6. Interrogative (Les pronoms interrogatifs) – Pronouns used to interrogate, ask questions.
Qui, que, quoi, lequel etc.

7. Personal (Les pronoms personnels) - A general name that groups subjects, objects (direct and indirect) and reflexive pronouns. Je, tu, il, elle, on, nous, vous, ils.

8. Possessive (Les pronoms possessifs) – Saying what is possessed or owned.
le mien (mine), le tien (yours), le sien (his/hers), le nôtre (ours), le vôtre (yours)

9. Reflexive (Les pronoms refléchis) – These words refer back to the subject of the verb.
Je me lave = I wash myself.

10. Relative (Les pronoms relatifs) - These words join clauses together.
L’homme qui dansait toute la nuit. The man who danced all night.
Ce sont les chaussures qu‘elle portait. These are the shoes which she wore.

11. Subject (Les pronoms personnels – sujet) - These words show who is “doing” the verb.
Je, tu, il, elle, on, nous, vous, ils, elles

Verbs (Les verbes)
Action words. They all follow certain patterns that can be learned and applying to any verb you say. Over time these will become apparent, just keep working through, exposing yourself to as many as possible. You’ll get it. To help you get there, these are the tech-terms used when talking about verbs, for reference:

1. Infinitive (L’infinitif) – This is the “full version” of the verb. The last two letters of it will tell you which of the three verb groups it belongs to (-er, -ir, -re).

2. Conjugation (La conjugaison) – This is what happens to verbs when you want to show different tenses, persons and moods. If you change a verb, you’ve conjugated it.

3. Irregular verbs (Les verbes irreguliers) – Verbs that don’t follow one of the three main patterns – they have their own. They happen to be the verbs you need to use often, so you’ll have to get a grip on them to make sense to people. I’ll show you the patterns to help you remember them.

4. Object (Le complement) – The person or thing affected by the verb. Can be a noun or pronoun.
Nous aimons les chats, nous les aimons. We love cats, we love them.
Love happens to the cats, it happens to them. They are the object – contrast with subject:

5. Subject (Le sujet) – The person or thing doing the verb action. Can be a noun or pronoun.
Les garçons aiment la musique. Ils l’écoutent. The boys love the music. They listen to it.

6. Tenses (Les temps) – These tell you when things happen, through conjugation. Past, present, future, all three (and more) verb tenses.

7. Past participles (Les participes passés) - Verb endings used to show past tense.
Dansé, senti, couru, pris, conduit

8. Present participle (Le participe présent) – Verb ending that corresponds to -ing in English. It’s -ant in French.
Dansant, courant, partant – Dancing, running, leaving.

9. Imperatives (L’imperatif) -  A form of the verb used to give orders.

10. Reflexive (Les verbs pronominaux) – Verbs that come with a pronoun to show that it happens to the subject.
Il se lave. He washes himself.

Questions are welcome – feel free to leave a comment.

Just how did French end up being one of the most scientific, diplomatic and awkward languages in the world? And why didn’t it turn out like Italian and Spanish? Below is a brief explanation of how this all came to be.

To start with, we need to go back to the language spoken in the area before anything like French arrived: Gaulois. Not the cigarette, more like the cartoon characters Asterix and Obelix. They’re Gauls. They lived in Gaule. They were Celtic, like the Britons on the British Isles before the Romans came. They were the ones that thought France was nice enough as it was and didn’t carry on up to the rainy island. They all spoke a very similar language from tribe to tribe and so for the sake of argument we’ll call it Gaulois.

But of course the Romans eventually turned up. Everywhere. Julius Cesar is to blame, in fact, as it was under his rule that the legions marched in. They didn’t force Latin on anyone, they just made sure that you had to speak it to get anywhere in life. To be a Roman citizen, for instance, you’d have to throw everything you knew away and embrace your new, sophisticated overlords. The Celtic oral tradition gave way under the weight of new Latin schools springing up for the ambitious movers and shakers.  Vulgar Latin, the Latin of  the people, a cut down version of Classical Latin that would probably be called Latin Light today, moved in and made itself comfortable in very little time. By the 5th Century the Gaulois language group had disappeared leaving only around 70 words in the Latin language, many of which exist to this day.

This new street Latin evolved into what is known by French historians as Roman, leaving Classical Latin for prestigious use only. Roman simplified word conjugations (endings), picked up some articles (le, la, un, une) and made its own version of the conditional tense up (I would go there, if…).

From 375 AD the Germanic tribes decided it was their turn to have a go at invading. It is nice land, after all. Amongst these tribes were the Franks (their own name meaning “free”) who took the northern region and set the “langue d’oïl” wheels in motion. If you weren’t there at the time, that was apparently how they said “yes” in the north (oïl) and in the south the Wisigoths occupied Spain and moved into France bringing their word for “yes”, “oc”, thus the “langue d’oc“.

Clovis lead the Franks to victory over them all in 486, converted to Catholicism and set up the Frankish Kingdom, making the Germanic language they spoke the lingua franca. No, a lingua franca is a language that people not sharing a common tongue speak, not the case here, but it does come from when Arabic rulers referred to all Europeans as Franks and used a mix of Italian, French, Greek and Persian to communicate throughout the Middle East as a language of diplomacy. But that is veering slightly off topic and ahead on the timeline.

The Frankish language gave over 500 words to modern French, including its name. But the initial invader’s language prevails and Roman, spoken in over 600 varieties in France alone, survived the Germanic panic.

A document written in 842 AD is laid out in both Frankish and Roman. It’s called the Serments de Strasbourg and was the first recorded text written in both languages. Historians consider this text to be the birth of French. The first literary text written in French is called la Séquence de sainte Eulalie and is a 29 verse poem written in 880 about saintly martyrdom.

Old French evolved from this new culture of writing things down. The French kings stopped talking Frankish one sunny day in 987, when Hugues Capet was crowned king of Île-de-France (the Paris region) and claimed he didn’t “understand a bloody word of that awful Frankish nonsense”, going on to mimic the sounds of his forefathers for a good five minutes, causing general ripples of polite, fearful laughter around his throne. Then in 1119, moving swiftly on, the word King of France was used for the first time instead of the usual King of the Francs, being referred to by a pope as a “special son of the Roman church”.

It was known as françois then, but the word français was born at this time too. Yes, they had misspelled it, but they found that out in their own time just centuries later. We now call this early stuff Old French, evolved from the Oïl (oui) language and it spread out from Paris as a fancy, royal way of speaking. The aristocrats jumped on that bandwagon pretty quickly. Latin remained the language of choice for churches, universities and a small group of medieval graffiti artists and underground rappers who liked how easy it was to rhyme in Latin.

When French started to be used for official documents in Parliament and the King’s court it became known as Middle French, not at the time of course, they thought they were speaking modern French. It took a long time for them to figure out how wrong they were. But they liked it and it stuck and so Latin took a back seat and Middle French caught on in the upper circles of society.

During the Renaissance period the printing press appeared. It was like a very, very slow internet that spread standard French spelling and literature all over the country. They could have been posh and printed in Latin, but as there were far more French readers it made financial sense to sell to the masses. Printed dictionaries appeared and the language flourished. Yet a group of proud François speakers, lead by Joachim du Bellay signed a document in 1549 that claimed the French language was poor and not adapted to poetic expression. They decided to enrich it by creating words from Latin, Greek and regional languages, playing their part in maturing French into what it is today.

After this explosion of Frenchism, the aptly named François de Malherbe set out the grammar rules for a perfectly pure, rigorous and clear language – something that didn’t really happen in English. If you want someone to blame for an awkward language, I’m not saying you should, but I’ll just draw your attention to this particular man.  Future writers celebrated his work, “Enfin Malherbe vint…” finally Malherbe came, they cried. And cried.

In the 17th century French became firmly established as the language to use in France, despite only being spoken by just one million people out of 20 million Frenchmen. The nobles, bourgeois and businessmen were the main culprits. In 1635 the Académie Française was created by Richelieu. It further cemented French’s position with dictionaries, grammar books, rhetorical and poetic guides, spelling and pronunciation rules.

The first philosophical writings were written in 1637 by René Descartes (Discours de la méthode) starting a long tradition of French language nonsense intelligent writing, replacing the Latin normally used for that kind of pretentious pontification noble etching.

More work was to be carried out on the language by the nerdiest men France ever saw, such as Claude Favre de Vaugelas (1585-1659) who wrote Remarques sur la langue française, that went through the whole language removing “low words” (les mots bas) such as Italianisms, old words, countryside words and even some technical words.

By the 18th century French had such a good reputation that it was being used as a language of diplomacy, a status it would enjoy until the Treaty of Versailles in 1919. During the 18th century churches, colleges and universities continued to use Latin while the people of France received no formal education so that they could keep working the land. On the eve of the French Revolution, some say that only a quarter of the French population spoke French, the rest speaking regional languages: in the north they spoke Oïl, Oc and Occitan in the south, Breton, Basque and Catalan too, Franco-provençal (Franche-Comté, Lyon, Switzerland and the Savoie), Flemmish, Alsacien and many more were spoken. But not French.

With the Bourgeois Revolution winning back power, they imposed their language, French. Revolutionaries declared war on regional languages, such as Henri-Baptiste Grégoire who deemed his own country to still be a  “Tower of Babel” in 1794. He described French as a language and all the other methods of communication feudal fossils and patois. A decree was enacted to this effect, sanctioning the War on Languages once and for all. The concept of one nation and one language really came together at this time in France.

Napoleon, being Corsican, spoke his own language and didn’t try very hard to support French, handing the schools over to the church, who then proceeded to teach Latin so as not to break from holy tradition. Or something. But he did set up the Académie Française again after it was taken out of action during the Revolution. The scientific and industrial revolutions added many thousands of words through new dictionaries (Larousse being one of them) and in 1833 primary education became available nationwide, followed by free and compulsory schooling in 1881, sending French out into the country. Schools punished children who spoke any form of dialect in class, effectively and quite literally stamping out regional languages. By the end of the 19th century the French  then was pretty much as it is today.

Today the French language is spoken by around 184 million people (or 2.7% of the world’s population, placing it 11th) and taught on five continents. It’s one of the six official languages and one of the two working languages (the other being English) of the United Nations, still carrying its importance as an international language of diplomacy.

As for France itself, French is finally the language of culture, administration and everyday speech throughout the country – something that hasn’t always been the case. There remain regional differences, some of which are celebrated and promoted*, but overall there is complete understanding from north to south, east to west. Circumstance still has a role to play in French, however, as one person can use the language differently in situations that may require formality or informality, written or spoken, classic or urban French. But the major regional languages have faded away, despite having been in common usage until the 50s. Catalan remains an example of one of the larger regional languages that still survives today.

As you can see, French didn’t pop up over night, but has a rich history full of key figures whose power and influence shaped the way people speak French over their coffee and Gauloise today. Now, I know that wasn’t very brief as blog posts go, but you did just read through 2000 years of history in under a day (I hope) so it was brief in a relative way. Said Einstein.

*”Chez les ch’tis” is a film featuring Danny Boon based in the very north of France where the language is quite particular, he learns swear words and tries to order in “ch’ti”, a form of the Picard language:

Before we start looking at the finer details of French grammar, allow me to briefly explain what we’ll be covering to familiarise you with the concepts.

If your English classes were anything like mine, you won’t have tackled past/present/future tenses too much, nor a lot of other basic language information that French children learn at primary school.

None of this will be hard to understand in the sense that algebra is hard to understand, I promise, but you may be worried that none of it is sticking in your memory. For that I recommend that you look over this list to refresh your memory once every few months and constantly be on the look out for examples of each point when taking in French. In order to help with this, I’ll be linking to each relevant point every time I post some new resources.

When? Tenses
These are how you express when something happened in French and English alike. So the past tense in English is “I said” and not “I’m saying”, which is present tense as it’s something happening in the present.  In French the past and present tenses are very easy to make, it involves remembering word-endings (suffixes) and tagging them on to your words as you speak.

The future tense, “I will say at 10pm” is how you communicate that something is going to happen. There’s a really easy way to do this in French, which you’ll find in the post on future tense, and there’s also a way involving remembering word-endings (suffixes).

Imagine a timeline with past on the left, present in the middle and future on the right. We’ll add a few more tenses to the line in other posts, but the basic line has three tenses on it.

Who? I, you, he…
Posts on how to say who the sentence is referring to can be found in the index. Ways to say I, you, he, she, we, you (plural i.e. ‘you guys’) and they, plus my, your, his, hers, our, theirs. It’s very simple and works just like it does in English. Once you get the hang of saying who you’re talking, reading or hearing about you’ll be able to understand a lot more of the gist of conversations as you can then make educated guesses in your head as to what that friend of your neighbour’s cousin was doing with his aunt twice removed.

Where? Behind you!
Words for positioning things in French can be useful in cases of emergency (for example, “where’s the cake?”) and I will teach these using diagrams and visual examples that help the words stick in your mind. You’ll be giving and taking directions in no time. Or brushing up on what you know already, I’ll try to give you some words you’ve not seen before. As always, if you have any burning questions that won’t stop nagging you, let me know via the comments and I’ll do my best to help out.

Sounds
There are a fixed number of sounds in French and I will teach you them all as quickly and thoroughly as I can – that means I won’t waste time going over K, kicking kuh when the letter works exactly the same in both English and French – I’ll focus on the differences and teach you how to spot and use them.

Vocabulary
There are different sets of vocab for every activity you can think of. Mostly based on the equipment used but also on the actions that equipment carries out. Fishing, fishing rod, hook, catching etc. are terms specific to fishing. If you never need to go fishing in France then we can avoid that vocab set altogether, but some vocabulary is common throughout the language and I’ll put the most common words used on this site for your reference. From making a complex sentence (but, because, therefore) to words used in everyday working and normal life.

Numbers
In order to live or do business in France having a good grasp of numbers is essential. As a tourist they can still be very useful at a simpler level. This site will host the common ways the French language and culture uses numbers and point out the subtle differences between French and English.

This article is due to be extended. Any requests for information can be made in the comments below.