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l'origine de l'expression


mint
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OK, OK, enough amusement already![:D]

Didn't see Clair's post so thanks to Pierre for pointing it out, even though he seems to have a er...penchant for ladies' undergarments...[:P]

Me, I just love your French expressions.  English ones too for that matter ... 

 

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Tied myself up in knots a bit last night when I was telling my neighbours about the new Governor of the Bank of England being a Canadian.  I wanted to use this latest expression in my repertoire.

Hier, j'en ai eu les bras qui en sont tombés....etc.

Didn't have access to Sid's useful conjugaison site and didn't realise when I started speaking that the passé composé of this phrase is going to be so tricky!

Still, don't they say that the more mistakes you make, the more you learn, or something like that?[:$]

Thought I'd mention this so that people who are interested could now post to say they'd have known what to say all along .......[;-)]

See, you can't just be the one asking the questions all the time, sometimes you have to give others a chance to laugh at you and have a snigger at your expense!

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I'm not sure that there IS a difference, id.  I just love the weird picture of someone's arms falling off and they are left with bleeding stumps![:D]

Gory, I know, but some mental pictures are not easily erased, don't you think?

Edit:  I think also that, as well as being powerless to do something as in baisser les bras (I understand, a boxing term), it also means something like, I am completely amazed as in "I don't BELIEVE it!"

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[quote user="sweet 17"]

Tied myself up in knots a bit last night when I was telling my neighbours about the new Governor of the Bank of England being a Canadian.  I wanted to use this latest expression in my repertoire.

Hier, j'en ai eu les bras qui en sont tombés....etc.

[/quote]

Is the first "en" correct in that expression?

I would have used j'en if I were saying that everyones arms were dropping off last night and mine were the first of them to do so.

However its only relatively recently that en has clicked with me and I have the confidence to exploit it, perhaps misplaced?

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AFAIK, the really correct expression would be "J'ai eu les bras qui M'en sont tombés"  - I believe that the "m'en" refers to the cause, the initial reason  why my arms fell off. Something like "in this particular event,  my arms fell off".

I am not the best kind of French teacher there is, as my knowledge and interest in obscure grammatical rules have always quickly reached their limit. Maybe someone who is a bit more "à cheval sur les principes" of ultra-correct grammar can expand further.[:D]

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Very timely: I just heard Jean-Francois Copé on the news (those who are vaguely following the latest UMP psychodrama will know who he is) - he was of course, referring to his arch-rival Francois Fillon, who had done something or other, and he said about this very thing that Fillon had just done: "Les bras m'en sont un peu tombés"

So there you go. Politicians do use that expression.[6]

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