Day 1420 (Wednesday) 28th April 2021.
I have decided that I hate the month of April in France! It was overcast again this morning and I expect it to be warm and sunny every day. How can it be warmer in February than it is in April? I was sunbathing in February!
Huw gave me a lift to Saint Jean Cap Ferrat where I spent a pleasant 90 minutes with Christel and Brice. They told me a story about a woman on the beach in Villefranche recently who sitting on her own, there were very few people around and she was miles from another person. She wasn’t wearing a mask and the police approached her and fined her 135€. I really can’t see this, if she’d been close to other people yes but she was alone. She took this matter to court in Nice and the judge agreed with the police and she was fined. This seems very unfair especially when you see young people hanging around in the street not wearing masks and staying out after the 7pm curfew.
God I can’t wait for this to be over – apparently it is definite that we can move more than 10kms from Monday but we’re still waiting to hear if the curfew is going to be extended. Fingers crossed we can go to Geoffrey’s in Antibes on Monday afternoon as I am only working until 1.30pm.
I caught the bus home from Saint Jean and enjoyed a stroll around the Wednesday market in Villefranche – they all make their products look so enticing.
I think it’s the beginning of the strawberry season but they are so expensive, for one punnet it was 8€80
Are these the most maddening words in the French language?
Here's a look at a list of words that will keep learners up at night in cold sweats.
Some of these words are hard to say, some are hard to spell, some are hard to understand… and some have just too many meanings.
Here are some words in French language that have learners tearing their hair out.
Vert/vers/verre/ver/vers
These words are all basically pronounced the same, but they mean wildly different things: Green, direction, glass, worm, and verse.
Plus
What a tricky little word. Depending on how you pronounce it, it can mean two opposite things – either “more” or “none”.
Eg: Il y en a plus (pronouncing the 's') means there is more. Il n'y en a plus ('s' silent) means there isn't any left.
Personne
This also has two opposite meanings: 'no one' and 'someone'. French language expert Camille Chevalier Karfis spells it out:
Il y a une personne dans le café means “There is one person in the coffee shop”.
Il n'y a personne dans le café means “There is no one in the coffee shop”.
Baiser
As a noun, this word means “a kiss”. As a verb (with exactly the same spelling).. well… read the dictionary definition below…
Bien/bon
The words for “good” and “well” can be tricky to master, but in short, bon is usually an adjective to go with a noun while bien is usually an adverb to go with a verb.
“This can be challenging for Americans who tend to say “I am doing good,” when they should say “I am doing well,” says Veronique Savoye, better known as French Girl in Seattle.
Eg: Comment allez-vous? Je vais bien, merci. (I am doing well thank you.) Comment sont les frites? (How are the fries?) Elles sont très bonnes. (They are really good.)
And avoid “Elle est bonne” at all costs, if someone asks how a specific woman is going (as in: How's the wife?). You would be referring to her skills in a specific area that involves lying down. Do not say “Elle est bien” either. What you want is “Elle va bien.”
99 (and basically any number above 69)
The French have an unusual way of putting numbers together, as we have written about in detail here.
After sixty-nine, funny things start to happen because the French don't have a separate word for seventy, or eighty, or even ninety.
Take 77 for example, or rather, ‘sixty-ten-seven' as it would be said in French. And it gets worse. Ninety-nine translates to “four-twenty-ten-nine” or quatre-vingt-dix-neuf Can you imagine the life of salesman trying to sell discount TVs for €99.99?
Qu'est-ce que c'est?
This phrase, which means “What is that/What is it?” is hugely common and easy to pronounce, but notoriously tricky for some to spell. There are just too many similar sounds for it to roll off the pen (or indeed the fingertips for typists). And not only that, it's basically nonsense if you translate it literally:
Plutôt or plus tôt?
Don't worry, the French even seem to struggle with this one (according to the number of Google results that come up in French when searching for this – over 200,000 for the record).
Essentially, the two are homonyms – they sound the same, but are spelled differently and mean different things. Plutôt = rather and plus tôt = earlier.
C'est pas terrible
English speakers can be forgiven for getting confused with the word terrible in French, as saying “c'est pas terrible” actually means something is terrible, rather than isn't, as you would think at first.
Serrurerie
You've probably seen this word before around French cities – it means the place where a locksmith works. But how on earth do you pronounce it? This word topped out list of most unpronounceable French words in 2015, and hence deserves a mention among the most annoying French words.
Reims
This French town is not pronounced Reems, more like Rahnce.
Yes, while we're talking about hard words to pronounce, we can point you in the direction of ten towns across France with essentially unpronounceable names. Topping The Local's list was Reims, followed by Caen, and the Rouen.
Asseoir
The verb “to sit” or “to be seated” is probably the most annoying verb in the French language. For starters, not only is it irregular, but it has two entirely different conjugation forms (one for assoir and the other for asseoir) – and it only gets more complicated from there.
We recommend you only learn how to say “Sit down” and “Can I sit here” and then fake the rest.).
C'est/s'est/ses/ces/sais/sait
Believe it or not, all the words above are pronounced more or less the same – similarly to “say” in English. The definitions of the words are many, and range from “it is” to “to know”.
Beginners to the French language will learn quickly that nothing will really help here except context.
Un hôte, une hôtesse
This word means both guest and host (in masculine and feminine forms respectively). And when you're learning French, it's bound to come up and catch you out when you're least aware.
Fingers crossed a little slip up doesn't see you agreeing to host a dinner party when you thought you were only going to be a guest.
S'introduire
And lastly… as if an introduction in France wasn't a fraught experience already, one of the most two-faced of “false friends” in French is the verb “s'introduire”.
Naturally, you would think it means “to introduce”. It actually means to penetrate, insert or enter. So next time you meet a group of French people and you want to suggest you should all “introduce each other”, the verb you're looking for is “se présenter”.
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