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french argot and colloquialisms


idun
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 I have friends in France who are highly educated and write french beautifully, and yet, for all they could, they do not speak french in a 'pure' form, whether they ever do, ie at work, I have no idea.  As they use slang words like everyone else when I see them.

 I admit since we have left and the french language has moved on, sometimes I simply do not know what some odd word or expression means and have to ask. If I was there, I daresay I would have just picked it up in passing. And I suppose that was the good thing about us only having french tv for so many years, that I could not only hear some of the argot,  but I suppose see it in context.

So how good are you with french slang and do you use it???

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idun wrote : So how good are you with french slang and do you use it???

No, not really .. colloquialisms yes. Eg I use 'aprèm' for après-midi because everyone does and 'pas de souci' or 'pas de problème' often.

'OK' you hear everywhere and 'A+' is written all the time.

Will have to look at my French WhatsApps to check for others.

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In my early days working in France, back in the distant 60s, French friends discouraged me from using much slang - though they may well have been using the expressions themselves. So I have stuck with things at the level of "chouette", "mince!", "dingue", "génial", "casse-pieds" which seemed to be acceptable to them.

I must say, if you hear foreigners using really "gros mots" in English, it can sound shocking, so maybe I understand where my French friends were coming from.
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Loiseau wrote : So I have stuck with things at the level of "chouette", "mince!", "dingue", "génial", "casse-pieds" ...

'Ras-le-bol' is one that confused my other half, along with 'chouette' .. he asked me why a passerby thought his construction in the garden was 'owly' .. so I explained.

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There is always a distinction between understanding such language and actively using it.
There is also the question of the appropriate register for a particular situation.

'casse-pieds' would be more acceptable than 'casse-coui**s' ...

There is also the fact that young peoples' language can sound rather sad in the mouth of older people.

I could say "je kiff"  or "Wesh" but I don"t [:D]

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Here en pleine campagne, you have no choice but to slip into argot and slang[:P]

I was teased a lot for "speaking proper" when I first arrived here in the Dordogne.  Now, the opposite is true, I need to mind my language when I am speaking to, for example, the specialists in the hospital, the pharmacien, etc.  After all, I don't want to sound like an oik[:-))]

The French do seem to swear a lot.  If anyone saw the docu on TV called "Brexit, the inside story", you might be a bit disconcerted at the amount of swearing even at the highest level of the political establishment!

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I never got into the colloquialisms etc.
Except for one that I think I've mentioned before "tous les cochonneries" - from my french neighbour describing all the smelly bones etc that her dog brought home as treasures.

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"Wesh" is how I have seen it in textos ...I am not sure that there is a 'real' way...

There is of course a distiction between regional argot such as

simple slang such as several of the example people have quoted

and teenage/immigrant French...a bit the equivalent of 'innit' in English          

Often this plays a part in their exclusion:

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QUOTE. Suein56

"'Ras-le-bol' is one that confused my other half..."

Now, you see, ras-le-bol is one of the expressions I was not "allowed" to say. Yet people use it all the time, and it sounds/looks to me the equivalent of "I've had it up to here", so I just don't get why it is so "bad".

I shal” have to look up yours, Norman; I have never heard them...

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Still getting used to the idea that since I can now post again, I can look again too (so annoying when you see a post you want to reply to, and can't).

Colloquilisms .... well I don't use them very much, as I don't know many (ras-de-bol I learnt in a French lesson before I came here, but have never really had the occasion to use it, except in my mind when doing the tax form!!), so I long ago decided not to bother with them too much.  Even though everyone says I speak good French (well, I don't think I do, but certainly better than many English around here!), but knows I am not French I decided to keep it simple for me, and use the words I know. 

I get the gist when French people use them, along with the rest, but maybe most of our French friends fall in to the better spoken brigade.

And yes, better not to use colloquialisms rather than use them and get them so wrong everybody laughs at you!!

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