The wife asked if her husband could have a single room. I explained this, added that there was no need to worry, and asked if they wanted to know anything. The holidaymaker had suffered a mild heart attack and needed a few days in bed. I work in the NHS, and was once called by the hospital manager who knew I spoke French and needed me to translate to a holidaymaker and his wife. I just had the word singe stuck in my head and I wanted to say to him: “This is where we are going to put the tumble dryer”, but it came out as: C’est ici qu’on va mettre le sèche-singe – this is where we are going to put the monkey dryer! The architect tried to keep a straight face but couldn’t stop himself and then I realised what I’d said. Maybe you’re ahead of me already! I had an architect into my kitchen in France. The French for monkey is un singe, the French for laundry is le linge and tumble dryer is un sèche-linge. Using être with chaud implies you’re feeling ‘horny’!
It was only later that I realised that I had said I was hot … for her!Įditor’s note: One to definitely look out for! To say you’re feeling hot, in the context of temperature, you need to use avoir chaud, ie. When I tried to explain to the waitress that I was hot – Je suis chaud – she looked outraged and marched off, refusing to take my order. In France, I popped into a restaurant to cool down as it was boiling hot and I had just been on a bike ride and was sweating like mad.
FAUX PAS EXAMPLE SENTENCES DRIVER
But we arrived in time and I wanted to compliment the driver on his ability to drive under these conditions, so I said Vous chauffez très bien! The driver smiled at me very curiously and afterwards my friends explained that I had told the driver that ‘he heated up very well!’Įditor’s note: To compliment someone on their driving say ‘Vous conduisez très bien’, while le chauffeur is the French word for ‘driver’.
FAUX PAS EXAMPLE SENTENCES FULL
We had little time left before departure and the road was full of snow and very slippery, so I was very worried about whether we could make it.
My pride turned to blushes when I was told that I said we’d never been inserted!Įditor’s note: ‘Non, on ne s’est jamais rencontrés’, ‘Non, nous ne nous sommes jamais rencontrés’ or ‘Non, nous n’avons jamais fait connaissance’ would have been the less embarrassing way to explain that you had never met before!Īfter two weeks of skiing in France, we took a cab to the station to catch our train. When asked whether we’d met before, I answered: Non, on n’est jamais introduit. Remembering the verb introduire, I later found the opportunity to use it to impress a handsome guy who was a friend of a friend. I noticed in the phone box that I was instructed, introduisez votre carte, insert your card. Whilst living in France for a year, I was keen to try out any new words I came across. I have difficulty enough trying to get my tongue round French words but I was determined to say merci beaucoup (thank you very much)… only to find out weeks later that with my slight mispronunciation I was saying beau cul, nice bottom! I then realised that I should have said matelas for ‘mattress’ and not matelot which means ‘sailor’. Some of them burst out laughing and some just stared at me. I nodded and added with a wide grin that the mattress is very firm. One morning my French friends asked me if I had had a good night’s sleep. She should have said: J’ai arrosé la dinde toute la journée.ģ) In bed with a firm sailor: Matelas/Matelot To which her mother-in-law replied with a very straight face: ‘really, I hope the bird was still alive’. When asked by her French-speaking mother-in-law how she managed to get the turkey so brown and well cooked all over she proudly responded J’ai baisé la dinde toute la journée, wanting to say ‘I basted the turkey all day’. My sister had baked the largest Christmas turkey we’d had in several years.
In contemporary French, baiser no longer means ‘to kiss’, but has become a very vulgar word for ‘to make love’ – if you know what I mean!Įditor’s note: Faire une bise à quelqu’un is the correct phrase to use for ‘to give someone a kiss’ or play it safe by using the verb embrasser ‘to kiss’. Upon arriving in France, where I now live, I used to tell people that in my home country, people don’t baise each other as much as French people do. To say ‘I’m finished’, the proper phrase was simply: ‘J’ai fini’. The waiter laughed, and made clear to me, by crossing his hands across his chest and bowing his head, that what I had just said was: ‘I’m going to die’ or ‘I’m finished’ (professionally).
When the waiter approached and asked if I needed anything else, I replied (in my best high school French): Non, merci. French mispronounciations and other humourous mistakes.Īn American in Paris, I was eating in a café.
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