This fantastic, hybrid word is great for telling someone just how crazy they really are. Okay, so I realize it shouldn’t be translated literally, but you have to admit, just seeing it is priceless. Pay attention, this will be on the midterm. I feel obligated, for the sake of all the French learners out there, to draw this out a little longer. Either term is often used to refer to a native French speaker singing along with English words with which they’re not entirely familiar. Common usage refers to more of an imitation than a sincere attempt, like trying to fudge your way through a song you haven’t memorized the lyrics to, or speaking a “pretend” language by mimicking the accent and vocal mannerisms without using real words.Īnother way to describe this phenomenon is with the expression chanter en yaourt (to sing through yogurt). Literally “to yogurt”-let’s pause for a moment and just savor that.Īll right, literally “to yogurt,” yaourter describes singing or speaking in a language one either doesn’t know very well or has decided to fake in whatever context they’re using it. It makes sense, then, that a flâneur (or flâneuse, for a woman), is someone who spends a good amount of time wandering about. To Baudelaire’s mind, this sort of wandering was perfectly suited to a city like Paris, and he wrote many of his prose poems about doing just this-wandering. Flâner is to wander with no particular destination in mind, people watching, window shopping and basically existing as a city-dweller. This Baudelarian term is perfectly suited to French culture. No time to read Camus, you’re all grown up! 4. Now say it 10 times fast, pass out and wake up for work tomorrow. Smash it all together, though, and you have a French compound noun that sums up the existential quandary of adult life: commute-job-sleep. But this is pretty awesome, too: Métro refers to public transportation, boulot to the slang term for a job and dodo to baby talk for “sleep” (akin to “sleepytime” or “beddy-bye”). I’m sorry this isn’t some new species of exotic bird, because that would be awesome. Something dépaysant is almost other-wordly going on vacation a bit outside of the city, you might find yourself face-to-face with a view of cliffs plunging into a majestic sea that would be very dépaysant indeed. in the south of France might be dépaysant, or giving new friends the bise (greeting them by kissing on the cheek).Īs strange as this may seem, dépaysant is actually usually used with a positive sense. It’s the feeling you get when you’re in a new place and experiencing very new things that make you feel foreign, out of sorts and strange. Seasoned travelers have likely felt the effects of this ailment of the spirit without even knowing it!ĭépaysant, directly translated, means “un-country-ing.” A strange word, to say the least, but one that expresses a sentiment similar to homesickness. You can take not just one new piece of vocabulary from this, but three, because the flexibility of the French language means that the verb caoutchouter equals “to coat with rubber” and the adjective caoutchoutifère equals “rubber-producing.” Now that descriptive word would normally apply to trees, but see if you can shoehorn it into another sentence! 2. Caoutchouc comes from the native South American language Quechua and its word kawchu. Indeed English is the “odd one out” when it comes to this word, because the German Kautschuk and the Spanish caucho have the same origins. This rather extraordinary-looking word means “rubber,” as in the bendy substance we get from trees, and actually has a fairly straightforward history. (Download) 20 Weird French Words You Won’t Believe Exist 1. This blog post is available as a convenient and portable PDF that youĬlick here to get a copy. Try using them in day-to-day conversation! However you choose to look at it, though, some languages are just full of words that can seem strange to a non-native speaker, and French is no exception.Īdvanced learners may be amused to learn some of these words, and anyone with an interest in French will see how some of these words aren’t the cognates their spellings may have you believe they are at first glance. Linguists remain at odds as to whether the language we speak influences how we think or vice versa. Other languages have words for concepts we’ve never even thought of. They say that Innuit have hundreds of words for snow. Janu20 Weird French Words You Won’t Believe Exist! By Elisabeth Cook, Emily Monaco, nicole and tyler Last updated:
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