Practical French for Students and Travellers

While I have a relatively advanced grasp of school French, upon taking residence in the Continent I discovered myself in the course of my everyday life called upon to use expressions never formally taught to me. A certain number of these expressions I found myself using quite often, even several times per day. I have compiled a list of practical French phrases for the edification of students of French language and  culture, and also as a handy guide for travellers in the country and its colonial outposts.

SOCIAL SITUATIONS

Écoute, je m’en vais. You know what? I’m gonna go.

Personne ne veut entendre de ton enfance. Nobody wants to hear about your childhood.

En fait, c’est ma propre cravate que tu portes. Mais garde-la. Elle va à toi. Actually, that’s my tie you’re wearing. But keep it. It suits you.

J’arrive pas à croire que tu prenne tout ça! C’était pour partager entre nous quatre! Et bon, voilà, tu saignes sur le canapé. I can’t believe you took all that! It was for the four of us to share! And look, now you’re bleeding all over the couch.

Qui t’a invité? Who invited you?

Lève-toi tout de suite! Mais franchement, quel(le) raseur(euse)! Get up from there this instant! You’re being a real bore.

Où trouve-t-elle cettes chaussures-là? La poubelle? Where did she get those shoes from? Like, a trashcan?

Je gaspillais ma vie en traversant le monde en cherchant mon paix, et je n’ai rien à montrer pour tout ça qu’un corps effondré et une coeur crevée. J’aurais dû prendre l’amour qu’on m’a donné et être content. Mais enfin, c’est trop tard pour tout recommencer. Pourrais-je vous acheter un verre? I wasted my life travelling across the world, trying to find peace, and I have nothing to show for all that but a worn-out body and a broken heart. I should have taken what love I was given and been content with it. But it’s too late now to start over again. Can I buy you a drink?

Quoi de neuf, meufs? What up, drunk sluts?

T’a-t-on déjà dit que tu ressemble d’une jeune Nana Mouskouri? Has anyone ever told you that you look like a young Nana Mouskouri?

Mais quelqu’un enlève ce couteau à elle! Okay, someone get that knife away from her.

Tiens, chez moi j’ai des… euh… pulls hyper-chouettes. Veux-tu venir les voir? Listen, back at my place I have these… uhh… really awesome sweaters. Wanna come see them?

TRAIN TRAVEL

Je suis franchement sur le point de foutre ce bébé par la fênetre. I’m seriously about two seconds from throwing that baby out the window.

On a le droit de regarder, mais on n’a pas le droit de toucher. You may look, but you may not touch.

Pardon, je pourrais pas m’empêcher de rendre compte que vous êtes beaucoup plus attrayante que votre mari. Bonjour. Je m’appelle Alexandre. Excuse me, but I couldn’t help but notice that you are way more attractive than your husband. Hi, my name is Alexander.

Cette poudre-ci, je ne l’ai jamais vu jusqu’ici. Je suis citoyen américain. I’ve never seen that powder before. I am an American citizen..

GENERAL

Bien sûr que je veux t’aimer. Mais c’est pas si simple. Moi j’aime trop ma liberté pour jamais la laisser tomber. Comprenez, je vous en prie. Of course I want to love you. But it’s just not that easy. I love my freedom too much to ever let it go. Please understand.

Moi je ne t’ai pas trahi. C’est toi, toi-même, qui t’as trahi. I never betrayed you. You betrayed yourself.

Même si je reste en vie jusqu’en avant cent ans, je ne viendrai jamais à bout de comprendre pourquoi ce jour fatal je l’ai poussé dans la cage à rhinocéros. Even if I live to be one hundred years old, I’ll never be able to understand why it was I pushed her into the rhinoceros cage on that fateful day.

Je m’en fous d’à quiconque je nuirai! Jamais je ne me reposerai jusqu’à retrouver mon bonheur. I don’t care who I hurt! I’ll never rest until I find my happiness.

Moi je m’excuserai jamais auprès de personne de faire mon propre truc. I ain’t gonna apologize to nobody for doing my own thing.

J’sera roublard jusqu’au bout. Hustla till the day I die.

On Lady GaGa

So I was watching French late-night television a little while ago, and what should I come across but an interview with Lady GaGa!! A popular format for French talk shows is a panel of men and women that chat and banter and often bring guests. Imagine “The View,” only the panelists are all hip 27-to-55-year-olds, and the audience sits around them at all sides, so with every shot you get to see in the background a lot of pretty-looking 20-somethings with fussy hairdos and slack faces. Anyway, so they were interviewing her, with the help of translators. I reproduce the portion of the interview I caught here. (Not verbatim, and the panelists were speaking French, but I promise you the gist and the content are exactly the same–take note how breathtakingly idiotic everything everyone says is.)

PANELIST: […] Okay, so why don’t you address, say, the Iraq War in your lyrics? Why is it all about going to clubs and dancing and stupid stuff like that?

LADY GAGA: I don’t really know anything about the Iraq War. I’m just a New York girl who likes to have fun. I sing about having fun. I have the most wonderful fans. They don’t love me, they love themselves. I really do have the most wonderful fans in the whole wide world. The most wonderful, beautiful fans.

HEAD PANELIST: Let’s see some clips of Lady GaGa’s songs!!!

[Short vido clips of the hooks of some of her most popular songs]

PANELIST: Okay you bitch, try to worm out of this one: I’ve printed off the internet some of the lyrics of your songs. I read now excerpts from “Poker Face” and “Buzz Buzz Buzz.” From “Poker Face”: “Oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh.” Now from “Buzz Buzz Buzz”: “Oh oh oh oh oh oh oh OH oh oh oh oh OH.” [Poorly hiding his self-satisfaction] Your lyrics are so stupid. It’s like all you ever do is say the same thing. [Several panelists snicker].

LADY GAGA [With the same stilted affability she had the whole interview]: Like, what credentials or formal training do you have to even be judging my music critically, is what I’d like to know.

PANELISTS [Gleefully looking at each other]: Fine, I guess we can’t have an intelligent conversation, can we? Fine, I guess we can’t talk then.

HEAD PANELIST: Thank you Lady GaGa for coming!

[And then Lady GaGa gets up and starts distributing clumsy bisous.]

This attitude is exactly the reason French popular culture hasn’t produced anything worthwhile since Ottawan. (If anyone mentions Uffie, I’m flying back to the US and shooting them.)

And if we’re already talking about Lady GaGa, I have something else I’d like to share!!! “Money Honey,” one of the deep tracks in “The Fame,” is a love ballad in which GaGa assures an imaginary sugar-daddy that while she likes the jet-setter lifestyle he’s bankrolling for her fine, his “good kisses” and sexual prowess are actually the reason she’s sticking around. (Though I think she might just be flattering him–GaGa admits that from time to time he “tears [her] to pieces,” which leads one to believe that, whatever it is he’s trying to do, he’s probably not doing it right). One of the lines is “And I enjoy some fine champagne while my girls toast.” Whenever I hear that line, I get the following mental image*:

Lady GaGa sits in a cave wearing one of her preposterous outfits. Her legs are crossed at the thigh, and she is considering the champagne-flute in her hand and taking slow sips. Nearby, an enormous cage full of over-made-up girls is being rotated over a gigantic fire (like, Bugs-Bunny-cartoon-style). All the girls in the cage are whining–I don’t imagine it all word for word, but something along the lines of, “Lady GaGa! Let us out of here! We’re your best friends!” and “I let you use my boutique mascara that I bought when Daddy let me go to Paris and this is how you repay me??!?” But Lady GaGa doesn’t seem to hear the–she just keeps staring placidly at her glass as it flickers in the firelight.

* (I actually do, and it cheers me up every time I hear it).

On D.H. Lawrence’s “The Rainbow”