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Clair, are you paying attention? Useful expressions!


mint
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You know what, G, I have actually found some bed sheets made of hemp, just like you have mentioned.

I don't really need more bedsheets or maybe I do as I have been unable to wash clothes for weeks on account of the rain!

I bought some new, still sous emballage, sheets last year on leboncoin.  They are metis (linen and cotton) and are superbly comfortable.  Also, as they are from some years back, the sizes are extremely generous so that you could tuck them in and they don't work loose. 

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 Chancer, is it a bad thing, this street french?  It is how I learnt most of my french, from people talking and I didn't care if it was bad or good french, because  with my poor 'ear' I needed to understand as much of 'anything' that was being said, that I could. And it has little to do with 'education' more to do with the person

concerned as I know a few highly educated people with good jobs who 'pu tain'

and 'bordel' all the time.

You are now at the tidying up your french stage, aware that there is a more polite way of speaking and that is good, but there was nothing wrong with learning as you did.

I used to see students from the UK in France as part of their french degree course, struggling with every day conversation, because they  had not a clue as to how most people speak. It used to be strange, they would be reading fancy french literature, and yet struggled with the most mundane of things.

One thing for sure, you have put me right off les gens de Picardie.[:D]

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Its a huge region Idun, I live in a tiny tiny part of it, I havnt even travelled very far and wide around where I live although compared to most people here I am an interplanetary traveller.

I only have to go 20km to really see a difference, 50km away in Amiens its really marked and the people from my canton really stand out when they are there and are bien connu, I often now disguise where I live.

And yet I am told that if I thought its bad where I am I should see X,Y,Z,............... - that really scares me.

My young medecin friend I met in the hospital waiting room in Amiens, he was there as a patient also, he had heard me speaking, struggling to find words and no doubt using innapropriate phrases, eventually he asked me if I was English and then we got talking, he told me had he realised I was English he would have spoken to me much earlier but instead had though I was from deep in the countryside, I pushed him on the point and he admitted that he had taken me for a halfwit [:'(]

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While we're here....and, I confess,I'm trying to do some work but my mind's not really in the zone:

Would anyone care to comment on the differences between "demarrer sur les chapeaux de roues" and "demarrer en trombe"

or indeed can you give me another option for getting off to a flying start?

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Thanks, Norman. That was my conclusion, but I was trying to find another option because the context (slap my wrist for not saying) was career progression and I'm probably thinking too deeply about it. However, I'd think of partir en fleche as implying rapid promotion, and I was dredging around for something that translates getting off to a flying start without seeming to suggest the rapid promotion idea. What's your view?

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It's a really tricky one, this. I'm trying to translate something very American (in both language and register) into French without losing the register, because that's what the company is all about. It's all a bit "casual" and against the grain of anything I've come across in French, so I'm struggling to keep the flavour and not make it all bureaucratic and stuffy, but there's a real danger of being a bit too casual if I don't get it right.

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That is a real problem in both directions.

I have concluded that I have to abandon translation for making a version which doesn't shock the sensibilities of the reader, even if it doesn't fully reflect the language of the original.

In other words if the American is very casual the French should be at least not the most pompous possible (and goodness knows French can sound that to English ears) but needn't be as informal as the original.

I found this about Carla Bruni

Carla commence très fort sa "carrière" de première dame 

So..

Il a commencé très fort sa carrière...??

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Another good idea. I've decided to just crack on with the whole thing, annotate with alternatives, and then re-read everything tomorrow to see if it still "works". I don't think I'm in the best frame of mind to be doing this right now, but it's a good challenge!

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  • 1 month later...

Can someone please take pity on me and explain once and for all the following construction that bugs me no end:

Right, I always thought that after pas, you use de.  For example, pas de problème, pas de choix and so on.  It's invariable, isn't it?

But I seem to "know" from somewhere that with an article, you can say un or les etc.

So, for example, you say y a pas UN chat (meaning, there's nobody about) or you say je ne lisais pas LES journaux.

So, just give me the rule for when you use de and when the relevant article.

It would be so good to be able to have confidence in coming straight out with it?[:D]

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No idea about the grammatical rule. But for instance, "pas UN chat" is "not a single cat"

as for "not reading the papers", look it's the same in English, as "ne pas lire les journaux"

same, I think, with your first example, pas de problème or pas de choix - translated in English by "no problem and "no choice".

I might only have demonstrated above that I am so much the wrong person to ask about rules.... I might speak both languages OK, it doesn't mean I know the rules! [:D] You have to play it all by ear ("au pif" or "au feeling" LOL!)

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Thank you!

So, sounds fine, mystery solved.

Can understand loads of stuff now and even the phone no longer holds the same terror as before.  Fortunately, my English vocab is pretty wide so many French words are immediately available.

But I just LOVE all the finer points (NOT that grammar is a finer point and I DON'T lover that!)

I shall be unbearably smug with this partitive article rule and, now that you have explained, it all sounds perfectly logical but I couldn't for the life of me have worked it out for myself [:$]

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Gosh, Sweet, I seem to remember having to chant something at school in relation to the use of "de", but had forgotten the middle bit until this precise moment:

Use de

After a negative

Before an adjective

And after any measure or quantity.

Good to find that all that learning by rote can still be pulled out of the hat!

Angela
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[quote user="Loiseau"]Gosh, Sweet, I seem to remember having to chant something at school in relation to the use of "de", but had forgotten the middle bit until this precise moment:

Use de

After a negative

Before an adjective

And after any measure or quantity.

Good to find that all that learning by rote can still be pulled out of the hat!

Angela[/quote]

Hi Angela, tried to reply yesterday but, since changing to Firefox, it seems that I need to quote the previous post before being able to reply!

Yes, thank you,  I remember your chant from when you gave it to me a few years ago.  Sometimes it's great to have a memory like an elephant's!

However, I believe that this one is different.  It's not straightforward like "il n'y a plus de feu";  it's about when you'd use an article instead of "de".

If you are further interested, ask Betty; who will do one of her explanations in her own unique style![:D]

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  • 2 months later...
If someone is said to be "un vrai numéro", what does that imply?

Is this person good or bad, is this an expression of admiration or condemnation?

I think it's like saying "he's a real card", so mixed feelings maybe?

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[quote user="sweet 17"]If someone is said to be "un vrai numéro", what does that imply?[/quote]

Great fun at the bar, and the subject of many appreciative stories.

 

But you would not, in your right mind, buy a second hand car from this entertaining individual (even with a valid CT).

 

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[quote user="Gengulphus"][quote user="sweet 17"]If someone is said to be "un vrai numéro", what does that imply?[/quote]

Great fun at the bar, and the subject of many appreciative stories.

 

But you would not, in your right mind, buy a second hand car from this entertaining individual (even with a valid CT).

 

[/quote]

Hm...............a spiv then?

I think that is spot on because he is later described as "impossible de lui faire confiance et impossible aussi de lui en vouloir s'il roule."

He is also described by the storyteller in these terms:

Si j'ai besoin de quelque chose d'introuvable, il me le déniche ..........

Describes completely a rogue of a neighbour of mine [:D]  Still, I continue to quite like him!

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[quote user="sweet 17"]"un vrai numéro"…   Describes completely a rogue of a neighbour of mine[/quote]

Finding the right expressions to describe our neighbours is, of course, very important.

I used to find myself at a loss when French visitors were taken aback by the disconcerting antics of my next door neighbour   -  who, though charming and delightful, had lost or perhaps had never had a full grip on reality.

It was my cleaning lady who supplied the DS solution.  Mlle C.  -  disons qu'elle est un peu originale. 

I had not, until then, been aware of this particular refinement of the word original.  But as an ambiguous and not unkind rendering of 'bonkers' it seemed to fit the bill perfectly.

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[quote user="Gengulphus"][quote user="sweet 17"]"un vrai numéro"…   Describes completely a rogue of a neighbour of mine[/quote]

Finding the right expressions to describe our neighbours is, of course, very important.

I used to find myself at a loss when French visitors were taken aback by the disconcerting antics of my next door neighbour   -  who, though charming and delightful, had lost or perhaps had never had a full grip on reality.

It was my cleaning lady who supplied the DS solution.  Mlle C.  -  disons qu'elle est un peu originale. 

I had not, until then, been aware of this particular refinement of the word original.  But as an ambiguous and not unkind rendering of 'bonkers' it seemed to fit the bill perfectly.

[/quote]

Still, it WAS only the one neighbour?

We had a whole family of weirdos and I notice that one other French neighbour plus our doctor said they were "une famille très speciale".  This was in the very early days of our time in France and, since that time, I have thought twice whenever I want to say that something was "special" in the English sense.

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