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Teenage 'slang'


pouyade
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I have been asked by the father of a teenager if I can find out what are the current in vogue teenage slang/ commonly used phrases are in France. His daughter is arriving for a term long exchange trip and would like to know the equivalents of whatever 'like' french teenagers pepper  'like' their sentences with 'like' such as the dreaded 'whatever'  or  'innit' , 'like'.

I'm sure they are not direct equivalents, but I cannot believe similar irritating misuses don't exist!

Pouyade

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Not much help, because I know it is not used everywhere, but my pupils all say things are cher bien rather than très bien.  Really irritating.  They also say quoi, all the time, especially when they are not asking a question, just as punctuation, like innit. 

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[quote user="pouyade"]

I have been asked by the father of a teenager if I can find out what are the current in vogue teenage slang/ commonly used phrases are in France. His daughter is arriving for a term long exchange trip and would like to know the equivalents of whatever 'like' french teenagers pepper  'like' their sentences with 'like' such as the dreaded 'whatever'  or  'innit' , 'like'.

[/quote]

Spending an evening with our lovely neighbours including their delightful 15 year old daughter she used 'vachement' from time to time so I asked what it meant and was told it was a teenage way of saying 'very' as in vachement bien etc. So I tried it out when with older French friends and was told in no uncertain terms that it was much stronger than 'very' and to leave the use of it to teenagers - that'll teach me!!

Sue [Www]

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[quote user="Tourangelle"]I use vachement all the time, (NOT in front of my pupils, I hasten to add!) it is familiar and not brilliant French, but it is not particularly teenage, (I'm 30).  Je cause la France, quoi.[/quote]

At 30 you are still young so can use vachement whenerever and whenever you like; my problem is that, unfortunately, I am quite a lot older than 30 and my friends were trying to be helpful - the words mutton and lamb spring to mind in my case!

Sue [:)]

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I am 48 and use (and hear) Vachement regularly in speech, no-one has ever batted an eyelid, I did ask my prof once (she is 35) who told me it is the familiar use of very.

However when asked by another to give the English translation I said "cowly" which her and her friends have now adopted and I am very proud of!

 

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Christine has reminded me of a pet hate, albeit British language.

Why do TV reporters and so called "experts" that are wheeled in nearly always start an explanation or a reply to a question with the word "obviously"?

If it were so then they would not need to explain.

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Pagnol.

How long do you have?!

As you will recall we were visiting a technical college in Kent to compare their facilities.

After almost a year of communication with a succession of people with grand titles who seemed to stay in the position only long enough to find something better then pass us on to the next incumbent I was getting a little cynical.

Most of the people I spoke to or communicated with gave me the impression that they did not actually know what their college actually did and more seriously had perhaps never met any students, sadly this turned out to be so true!

An itinary was proposed by them together with a very attractive lunch menu to be cooked by the catering students, but worryingly the date they proposed was Good Friday and I was becoming more and more convinced that the latest person had not actually met any of their students. She had suggested role plays in French but could not confirm if any of their students were learning it. Every time I requested specifics i.e. what facilities were in the workshops and what level of French (if any) their students had she would respond I will request this of my colleagues but we never ever got a reply.

Finally Friday 11th of May was proposed, by yet another new name, to my Prof which was confirmed by letter and e-mail. A couple of days before our visit this new person sent an E-mail to say that he would not be hosting us as he was leaving his job in the (some fancy name) department which no longer existed! And that yet another person (with whom I had spoken with early on and who did seem to know what facilities they had and what type of students) would be hosting us.

The content and tone of this letter was like a harbinger of doom to me but my Prof thought I was being overpessimistic, said it was too late to change anything and that we would make the most of the day whatever happened.

So that is exactly what we did! I phoned to say that we had cleared the tunnel and would be on time and the receptionist seemed somewhat confused, when we arrived nobody knew anything about our visit or could get hold of the latest "responsible person" and then the staff started arguing amongst themselves as to who was to blame. As for our party no-one seemed to mind but everybody was very concerned as to whether we were going to get our lunch!

What was ironic was that there must have been 5 staff to very student that day so they rallied around and entertained us for the morning by waiving all their H.S.E. regulations and letting the lads (and one girl) do some welding, rubbing down and paint spraying. The "responsible person finally rolled up at lunch-time together with an understudy who wore a badge of "External Liason Co-ordinator" they both seemed very relaxed and not at all phased by it (after all it was not them that had to cope) and just blamed the recently departed "European Funding Department".

When my Prof asked the "responsible person" what his job was he struggled to answer instead describing all of his previous career at the college and saying that "I don't really have much to do with students now", I asked him where all the students were and he said "we only have one here on Fridays but there are another six on another campus"!

Anyway we ate a hastily prepared lunch of oven fish and oven chips, not quite the gourmet menu proposed to us, and departed for a couple of hours at the McCarthur Glen shopping centre before travelling to Herne Bay, the traffic was very slow through Canterbury so we only had 1/2 hour there before returning and had to eat at a MacDo on the way back to be in time for the crossing, which we missed due to the drivers following the GPS which took them through Dover and then had to wait a further 2 hours.

To finally answer your question the students enjoyed their day and were very well behaved and I felt very proud of them, I wish I could say the same of  English technical college system.

I also did something that I have always wanted to do - walk in to a MacDo and order 40 big mac meals and 40 desserts, the manager asked me somewhat nervously "would we be eating the food outside or on the coach?" and was shocked when I told him that we were all seated, the whole group made less noise than one family with expressive children at the next table. Things became a bit more animated when a group of local teenage girls started flirting with our group and I quite enjoyed doing some of the translation.

We got back very late due to the tunnel and all the students phoned their parents to give them the updated pick up time of 12.30 however as most of them came from quite deprived areas we were not surprised that a couple of the parents failed to turn up and we then had to taker the 2 remaining students home after waiting a very long time.

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It sounds like another typical cock-up we expect from this country, too many chiefs and not enough indians et al!

I have to say that whenever we do the  night crossing to Caen theres invariably a coachload or two of French kids heading home from London having done the  "Madame Tussauds / Buck House / Oxford Street" experience,  all excited and wound-up generally,  but not half the trouble of the similar age-groups of Brit kids doing vice versa.    One trip we did two months ago we had the gross misfortune to have a cabin amidst this spectacularly unruly mob of english children aged about 11 or 12 who spent the remainder of the night running up & down the corridors screaming and shouting, whilst their "teachers" spent it relaxing in the Bar and joining in the cabaret show.  Obviously being in loco parentis of this badly behaved collection of hooligans was not going to ruin their evening's enjoyment, even if the crew asked for help to control them,  so those of us trying to at least relax a little before landing had no chance of any shut-eye.   Cue one cranky husband that morning!   Several parents on board with younger children who were trying to sleep tried to remonstrate with the teachers but were basically ignored because they were being "spoilsports" - or words to that effect.      No wonder then that Brit kids are viewed with such disdain when they are unfairly labelled alongside the likes of this bunch of yobs.

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Pagnol

I will make arrangements to visit the Lycee again so they can tell me what they thought of England, this will take some time as they will have to prepare their answers in previous lessons but it should be interesting to hear their views, after we have overcome their embarrassment of talking in English, which strangely they didn't have with the group of British girls!

I have since found out that the parents that didn't come had both drunk too much, one decided it was too risky, the other fell asleep again and came when rewoken, he had obviously been drinking but had sadly lost his wife 3 months ago, I sympathise with him and his son having lost my mother at the same age and hope that his son doesn,t go off the rails like I did and also gets the same opportunities in life that I finally did, but this is a different country and I fear if he stuffs up college like I did then it will be a lot harder for him.

Reflecting on the state of affairs at the college I told my prof that the lunatics had taken control of the asylum, not that it was a surprise, for even when I was at college it was most working mens dream to land a job as a lecturer closely followed by dreaming of any job within the system that did not involve student contact.

Anyone who has read any of the Wilt books by Tom Sharpe will recognise this trait, I have to say that the majority of the French lecturers that I have met really want to make a difference to the lives of those they teach, however their students are far better behaved and more respectfull than my class of 30 years ago, the raw (student) material is undoubtedly worst but the system of discipline and the goals of and  mutual support between the teaching staff has made the differnce in most cases.

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J.R.

A fascinating recount of your trip.

The lack of professionalism that you encountered at your British hosts was unfortunate, but I guess that could have happened anywhere - or maybe not?  Anyway, a view of 'the other side' for them (the students) I suppose. 

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J.R.

Thank you for such an interesting and detailed account of the day.

My daughter having experienced two colleges in the area as a mature student would not be surprised at your account.

I look forward to hearing what the French teenagers thought of their day out and whether anyone would want to repeat the experience.

The traffic conditions you describe are normal. It doesn't matter what time of day you travel on the roads, its always busy in the overcrowded south east.

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I will speak with my Prof and ask to go back and talk to the students about what they thought of England, what they found different, did they think these things were better, worse or just different; and to get this thread back on track what are their favorite (polite) teenage colloquialisms.

Sadly they will want me to give them some English ones "innit, like, nowotimeen?"

Can anyone suggest some English ones that are not my pet hates like the above?

Something along the lines of.

Boss. Buff. Pants, Minging etc etc.

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[quote user="J.R."]

Can anyone suggest some English ones that are not my pet hates like the above?

Something along the lines of.

Boss. Buff. Pants, Minging etc etc.

[/quote]

How about "butters" = ugly and "long" = boring?

I would just love to know what the French equivalents are for these (and the ones quoted by J.R.).

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[quote user="Spg"]

[quote user="Tourangelle"]I use vachement all the time, (NOT in front of my pupils, I hasten to add!) it is familiar and not brilliant French, but it is not particularly teenage, (I'm 30).  Je cause la France, quoi.[/quote]

At 30 you are still young so can use vachement whenerever and whenever you like; my problem is that, unfortunately, I am quite a lot older than 30 and my friends were trying to be helpful - the words mutton and lamb spring to mind in my case!

Sue [:)]

[/quote]

I talked to my mother in law about this one, she says it is her generation that would think it was too "young", (she is in her early 70s,) and my brother in law who is 44 thinks it started with his generation, the "bof" generation, everything was answered with "bof" (as opposed to the soixantehuitards who cared).  Bof is a great word, even if it means nothing.

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[quote user="Tourangelle"]I talked to my mother in law about this one, she says it is her generation that would think it was too "young", (she is in her early 70s,) and my brother in law who is 44 thinks it started with his generation [/quote]

Yep, I will go with the use of vachement being an age related thing. Your MIL's view is more of less what I figured.

As I said the neighbour's daughter, who uses the word frequently, is 15 and quite a lot of my friends are in the 60 to 70 age range and they would never use it, so they were trying to be kind in deflecting me from its use!

Sue [:)]

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