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I have heard this on the bus in Montreal several times before. The person wants to thank the bus driver but it comes out in a hilarious way!!! Very funny
I lived in Nantes in college with my girlfriend's parents. One night as Madame went to bed I said " á tout á l'huere! " I meant to say "see you tomorrow" but everyone was shocked that I said "I'll see you in just a bit."
My sister was doing her residency as a physician at McGill Hospital in Montreal. McGill is an English university, so most of her patients were anglophones, but one day she was treating an older francophone fellow with heart trouble. My sister's French is fairly good, but she gave up trying to use it after that day. She wanted to ask him how far he could go before getting out of breath, but she said, "Combien de vierges pouvez-vous faire avant de perdre l'haleine?" He nearly (literally) died of laughter.
I love these faux amis between English and French. I was a jeune fille au pair in France in my teens. I had had a haircut that was too short and I hated it. Finally, though, my hair had grown enough to scrape it back into a ponytail. Delighted, I bounced into the kitchen, where the grandmother of the family was drinking coffee. She was very nice but very refined and 'comme il faut'. 'Voyez, Madame!' I said, excitedly. 'J'ai un cul de cheval!!!' She just pissed herself laughing. Finally, she managed to tell me that I actually had 'une queue de cheval' and not - as I had told her - a horse's ass!
You guys should never be afraid To speak french, most of us LOVE hear you speaking french. Really !!!! It's sooooo charming !!!!!! And these kind of mistakes are really funny by the way and we are understanding... Unless you are dealing with bad people 🤷🏻♀️. Lot of love from Paris😘
Merci 'beau cul', that's hilarious. Reminds me of a double meaning for the expression 'gosses'. In France it means young children. In Québec it means 'testicles', really not the same!
My wife told me how when she first moved to France that they had a problem with the water, it was running cold even though the pipes seemed to be warm. When the landlord came over she explained using her best guess, ''l'eau est froide, mais mes pipes sont chaudes." Great consolation I guess!!
At school, I wrote in an essay, "Mes parent m'allowent á faire ce que je veux". So... I made up the verb "allower" meaning "allow" and then I conjugated it hahaha
Fun fact : "they Allow me" comes from old French "ils m' allouent" which mainly means the same thing. (The verb Allouer is still in use today but you're most likely gonna see it in official paperwork).
I was in France talking to some friends of my husband (they're all french) and I was telling a story and was trying to say, "j'etais seule" which means "I was alone" but instead I said, "J'etais saoul" which means "I was drunk!" LOL ... we had a good laugh at that one. One good thing about making mistakes like that, you probably never make the mistake again! :)
I remember when I was a teenager during a home-stay program in Normandie, my home-stay sisters and I took a train out to Rouen. we sat in a booth area and they were talking really fast that I could hardly keep up with the conversation. Then they started talking about some guy and I caught the words, "C'est un connard!" and I asked, "He's a duck?" LOL
I'm argentinian and many spanish speakers like miself don't make any difference between the v and the b (we pronounce both like b), so it's very commun to pronounce vite like bite :)
Like a Spanish friend, studying French in Tours (where I went to university) who said while she was TOTALLY drunk that she had never seen that person, : "Non, je ne l'ai jamais BUE!"
The Frenchman I was dating at the time, while living in Paris many years ago, invited me to have dinner at his parents' home. At the end of the meal, his mother asked if I wanted anymore to eat and I responded "Non, merci, je suis pleine." At first, they looked a little shocked, but then laughed realizing it was a language thing. What I should have said is "Merci, mais j'ai bien mange' Apparently, by telling them "je suis pleine" I was saying I was pregnant! I've also learned "pleine" is used more when talking about animals. Mistakes can be very funny! I really enjoyed this topic. So glad I discovered your channel!
dans le même sujet un ami aux usa est reçu dans la famille de sa copine. A la fin du repas on lui demande s'il veut autre chose il veut répondre qu'il a assez mangé et dit: Thanks I am really fed up. Ca a jeté un froid...
When I was in a one-on-one French oral exam in my university, I didn't understand what the prof asked. So to make her repeat the question, I said "quoi?" but she didn't repeat the question and just stared at me weirdly. After the exam, I told my French friends about it and they said I should've said "comment?" instead because "quoi?" might not be too respectful in the setting. I learned me lesson after LOL
My first time in Paris, I was dining at a restaurant and was speaking with a very friendly and accommodating server who was happy to practice with me. At the end of the meal, I accidentally said “Je suis fini” instead of “J’ai fini” or “J’ai terminé” (I’m dead/done for instead of I’m finished) and we had a very good laugh over it when he explained my mistake.
1. Love your videos, and you guys are adorable. 2. Once, in France, a waiter asked if I were finished with my meal. I responded, "Oui, je suis fini." He laughed.
Right answer was "Oui, j'ai fini merci ." To finish someone in slang, "finir quelqu'un" could have ... and yes again it's always about that ... a sexual connotation ... it's like "To come".
Really funny ! Let's be kind with people learning our language. As a French, when I'm abroad I'm always happy to speak in English with other people but I'm even happier to speak with them in my mother-tongue and to hear how they bring life to it. What a pleasure to exchange with someone from Lebanon or from Africa in French. But I find that a lot of French are too impatient with foreign French-learning/speaking people and they correct them instead of listening to what they're saying, which is most of the time perfectly comprehensible.
Not a mistake I made and not an English-to-French mistake, but once at a party a young woman from Canada was relating how she had to take her cat to the veterinarian for a skin condition which required its fur to be shaved for treatment. The woman very innocently declared, "Ma chate est toute rasée!" Two guys from France just busted out laughing when they heard that.
A true story: it is common in the USA to see coffees mugsbor shirts and things saying, "Kiss me, I'm Irish" or some other nationality. This gets extended then to other things. So a group of 8-year-olds in Wisconsin who were studying French were going to visit France with their school. The father of one of the kids owned a printing shop that also put words on t-shirts and he made t-shirts for all the kids in the group that were supposed to say, "Kiss me, I speak French," but instead he put "Baisez-moi, je parle français." So naturally the teachers had to decline the gift.
I don't speak French but working with a number of French employees I kinda understand at most times though I couldn't reproduce any of those sounds. During one weekend we had a cook-off. The only non French attended was a Vietnamese who was study French. She claimed she her dish could last a a few days without refrigeration and proudly announced that there's no 'preservative' in it. It was like a magic word. Half burst out laughing, the other half cringed. We found later the word meant contraceptives in French.
I was going to make the same point. For instance, had she said, "I am sorry for my tardiness," that would have been completely correct, if a little old-fashioned sounding.
It's the origin of the word. When you strike a good blow you get a lot of (whatever you're getting). coup in fact means à part of something (like in the couper is making parts).
When I was living in Paris, we took a holiday to Provence. I was having dinner with some friends and I was talking about how fresh the food was. So I was saying something along the lines of the food was fresh and didn’t have preservatives. Well I learned that the word was conservateur not preservatif. I was saying the food had no condoms 😂
I remember once in Boulogne Sur Mer, I asked at the tourist information "Avez-vous un plan de la ville s'il vous plaît, avec tous les rues"?, the man behind the counter angrily replied with a frown "Toutes les rue!!!". He is the only person that I have met in France who has reacted angrily to an error that I have made.
I was telling a story about when my then girlfriend and I got together (became a couple), but I didn’t know the verb, so I took a guess and said « quand on s’est accouplé ». I learned quickly this means « when we mated » or something that only animals do.
In Spanish (I'm from Peru) we have the 'advantage' of having 2 verbs instead of one: SER-ESTAR (être). We can say: "Tu madre ES buena" (nice, gentille) and "Tu madre ESTÁ buena" (similar vulgar meaning as in French). 😊
One more example on OI/UI. Many watch collectors regularly confuse between DUBOIS and DUBUIS. Both names exist in the watch industry (e. g. Roger Dubuis and Dubois-Dépraz), and both are very often mixed...
Living in the McGill ghetto in Montreal where there are a lot of international students, I saw a posting which says "CHATTE PERDUE" and picture of a. Cat.
Recently in one my French class, I was trying to say “I forgot” but I said “je me suis oubliée”, because I was trying to translate from Italian ( my mothertongue) to French which apparently resulted in “I forgot about myself”
Your lessons have helped me SO much! Please keep going, they are amazing! Love hearing your thoughts on politics and life in France also, thank you so much from Australia! :)
In Julia Child’s autobiography she talks about her sister coming to visit her in Paris and making lots of amusing errors. Her sister went to get hair haircut and wanted to know if they were going to shampoo her hair first. Instead, she said “voulez vous couper les chevaux avant ou après le champignon? “ Cut her horses before or after the mushroom? My favorite was when someone crashed into the back of her car. She must have figured that the French verb for crash was the same as English. She also chose the wrong noun for the back of her car. She told the police that the man “ a craché dans ma derrière “ (spit in her butt) My worst error was after a trip to Paris when I asked my French teacher if it was an insult to call someone a duck. She wanted to know why I was asking. I told her that I saw someone on roller skates run into a pedestrian who called him a “canard.” She explained that it was likely she used a more vulgar term that had an o instead of an a.
Several years ago, I was taking a Spanish lady who worked for us to Chatillon-en-Bazois in the Nièvre. She began talking about "la mère de Mitterand" and suggested she lived in the town. She had totally mixed up Chatillon and Château Chinon where Mitterand had been "maire". She also gave us long story one day about "la surdité". Nobody could understand what she was talking about. It turned out she meant "la sécurité sociale". One evening, an English friend who was an English assistant in a French lycée, on the lights going out, ran out into the corridor and shouted "c'est peut-être une fusée" instead of "un fusible".
I moved from Paris to Montréal when I was 13. So my accent is more French than Canadian. On a trip back to Paris I was visiting a long time friend. We stopped at a chemisier and I explained that I wanted a shirt that I could wear at work and then later, take off my tie for a cinq à sept and the shirt would still look good. My friend (a woman) and the clerk were astonished. In Montréal, a cinq à sept is an apéro or « after work ». In Paris, I learned that it is an encounter with one’s mistress.
My teacher is sending us to you for semester. I'm already loving this as French is my fourth language under my belt... I find it so hard to speak but can read and listen with understanding decently. I took a semester of French previously and hated it. I learned Spanish before French and almost every class period I was yelled at for speaking Spanish by mistake. The worst was 'to sleep' and if I recall correctly any number but especially the 60 numbers.... I hope this year is not as embarrassing for me. I honestly do not look forward to speaking in front of everyone still but I do feel a little better after this video.
I studied a paltry four years of French, and have found myself in maybe a half dozen situations where I had to use it, and now I'm afraid I may have spewed all kinds of suggestive filth at my inerlocutors.
As a Belgian American who always lived in Belgium, I can tell you we never say "baiser" for a kiss. This meaning is only on really old books. To kiss use the verb "embrasser" or "faire un bisou".
I have to protest on that. My only contact with the French language has always been through the Eurovision song contest. So in 1991 from the song of Luxembourg "Un baiser vole'" we learnt that the title meant "A stolen kiss". So I've known forever that baiser=kiss, as simple as that. Now I learn that there is a major danger in this. Rotten. I protest.
My student teacher, at dinner with his host family, explained the difference between a French tart and an American pie by telling the guests at table that an American pie was covered with a "crotte" , dog poop, instead of "croùte", crust. His fellow diners quickly recovered from the shock as they realized his mistake!
In university, our French prof was meeting some students early in the morning. I was running late, somewhat disheveled, and prof asked me, tu as mal aux cheveux?, to which I replied, Où ça? whilst patting done my hair, thinking that it was sticking up and a mess. Prof got a big laugh from that, because he was asking if I was hungover, and not saying I have bad hair. Learned that expression quick.
@@Street_French avoir mal aux cheveux. He told me it means, to not feel well after a night of drinking, be hung over. That's what I've always thought it meant. Maybe it's an older expression?
Someone asked me where the public restroom was. I wanted to tell her to go up the stairs and turn right, so I said, "Montez l'escalier et roulez á droite."
Je suis maintenant retraité, mais il y a une dizaine d'années, j'intègre une équipe internationale dans mon entreprise. Mi français, mi allemands dont le responsable (Salut Klauss) qui revenait de quelques années passées en Angleterre. Il me présente à l'équipe et pense, je suppose, à la phrase "I'd like to introduce Gilles" et c'est devenu "J'aime bien introduire Gilles". Les français présents s'en souviennent encore. Un MDR généralisé qui a fait parlé de lui dans toute l'entreprise. "Beau" souvenir de ma vie professionnelle.
Oh my god I finally figured out why a French woman I know always purposely says merci beaucoup with the "u" sound instead of the "ou" sound and always has a little smirk as she says it. It confused me because she's french so obviously she should know the difference between the sounds, but she's always saying it to us Americans who likely wouldn't always be able to tell the difference. I knew something was up but I didn't understand it until now. 😂
I had no comb for my hair while travelling by train: at the busy kiosk (Montréal) I asked in French for a beigne noir. I insisted after he said in French, we don't sell 'doughnuts' . I pointed to the black comb behind him and he rolled his eyes: "Ten cents". (And go away !).
ow haha that's a funny mistake ^^ and you know rolling your eyes in France is not always negative and giving attitude. it can also mean "aaah ok" kind of like a relief to find the solution to a problem. but I don't know the person who worked at the store, maybe they were stressed out and weren't super nice
Quand ma femme (Slovène) apprenait le Français, elle confondait souvent les verbes "atteindre" et "attendre" ou "attendre" et "entendre". Ce qui lui a value quelque situations amusantes comme entendre la lumière.
I was in the lab in france and wanted to know if there were preservatives to keep my sample fresh, so I asked if I could have a préservatif (just guessing it would be right). The person looked really shocked and wanted to know why I wanted to put a condom in my sample. (Preservative is conservateur in French).
I arrived in France at the transition to nouveaux francs. Hey everyone spoke in anciens francs. And somehow every thing cost cinq cent francs. Numbers are hard anyway but I was expecting cinQ cent. So while this was not a mistake per se. It took me a long time to be able know they were saying 500 francs. This must sound like VERY old news. And I don’t think in the 1960s “baiser” had taken on its current meaning.
I'm from the USA, living in France and while working at a restaurant, the 'plat du jour' was 'manchons de canard', but I said 'manchons de conards'! Oui, je voudrais le manchons de conards'. Everyone was laughing and now it is an ongoing joke. Trè drole! For non-French speakers, manchon de canards are duck legs, specifically the drumstick part of the leg, the word 'conard' means 'bastard', so todays special is 'legs of the bastards'
So mine isn't quite so embarrassing to me now, more slightly funny. When I first went to Paris as a "somewhat-French speaking" teen, I went to a fast food restaurant and attempted to order lunch for myself and my parents. I was trying *so hard* not to come off like the typical Brit speaking stilted French in a British accent, so I remembered that I needed to 'slur' my words together, because that's what they do in France. So my "Je voudrais deux hamburgers, s'il vous plaît" came out more like "Je voudrais deuze-hamburgers, s'il vous plaît", and I was pretty happy with myself for a split second. The young girl at the checkout however gave me a double-take and said " *Douze* hamburgers??!" incredulously, and instantly deflated my ego, and I had to clarify "Deux hamburgers" and hold up two fingers, just to be sure that she didn't think I was being *very* greedy. Everything as a teen is awkward and mortifying at the best of times, so being thought of potentially as a greedy pig wasn't especially what I was hoping for :P
I am currently learning french and honestly this woke up my anxiety again. The pronunciation differences are very slight almost unnoticeable. Yet you might get in trouble for changing the sound of a vowel. What a language!
My au pair family had a dog. He could be dangerous with strangers. One night, I brought a friend home. The dog went crazy and barked threateningly at her. The son of the family tied the dog's leash to a tree so that he couldn't attack her. After she had left, the dog was still barking full force. I was scared to release him, so I asked the son if he would do so. I couldn't remember the right word for release, though, so I ended up saying, 'Est-ce que tu peux débrancher le chien, s'il te plaît?' which means 'Can you unplug the dog?'
My favourite mistake by a student was in Rio de Janeiro where my student wanted to say, "The trainee [female] has a master's degree." He thought that like in Brazilian Portuguese he could use the English word "trainee" but he of course pronounced it à la française and told me "La traînée a une maîtresse." My eyes just bugged out of my head.
I arrived at One Fighter Wing RCAF in 1960 at the age of 12 with no French. My school friend and I were exploring gardens with rock walls near Longuyon. As we climbed down into a plot an elderly woman all dressed in black approached us. She looked at my friend and said something as she reached for his wrist. He pulled away and she croaked out 'quelle heure est-il' again. I said, she says you're going to 'jail' and we both ran off.
Au début de mon séjour en France j'ai dit à une collègue: "Je crois que vous êtes trempée." Elle m'a répondu: "J'espère que non!" J'avais voulu dire: "Je crois que vous vous trompez." Depuis, je n'ai plus jamais fait cette erreur!
Another confusion is between nasal sounds. An American girl saw ducks in the park and said to me, "Regarde les CONNARDS!" And people going to a "cancer" and dying of "concert".
On my year in France as a student, I was getting used to using the subjunctive, unfortunately I was pronouncing ‘il faut que je fasse’ as ‘il faut que je fesse’... It took some a while for someone to point out what I’d been saying...
I went to France on a Rotary Scholarship so I was staying with families not in hotels. The first family-the guy was an optometrist. So I decided to say something that showed I understood like “oh a doctor of eyes.” Instead of “les yeux 👀” I said “les oeufs 🍳. “ They laughed for like 10 minutes before explaining to me what I did. I’ll never confuse the two again! 🤪
So I teach English in middle school in France and I made a mistake with 6e. I wanted to ask a kid if she wanted to try and I looked at her and asked: "Tu pus ?" instead of "Tu peux ?" The class of 12 year olds died and the little girl turned bright red. I realized my mistake immediately and apologized, then we all had a good laugh.
I'm just learning french, but I can speak at an intermediate level in Spanish. When I went to Spain after high school for the summer, I wanted to tell a friend that I was so embarrassed (about another grammar/wording error), so I told him that I was "muy embarazada", guessing at the adjective. I got a big laugh and an explanation that I was probably not pregnant and needed to use "ponerse el rojo" (to put on the red) instead!! I really did put on the red!!
I started learning french 30 years ago from books (no internet for pronounciation at the time, i came to france as an au pair to perfect my french, then go on to work and live here pemanantly. In my first year here my bank messed up and took loads of charges off of my account, so i had to go sort it out. As you know, in english we pronounce all of the last letters of words, so i asked in my beginners french why were there so many strawberries on my account? "pourquoi il y a beaucoup de fraises sur mon compte"? fraises / strawberries, thinking that frais in plural would need the es at the end, but frais is already plural, my husband was next to me laughing like a lunatic when the bank clerk went to sort the mess out, to this day he will tell this story to anyone with half an ear !!
Merci de telles explications! En étudiant le français, j'avais remarqué des quantificateurs utilisés pour exprimer une grande quantité d'objets, d'animaux, de groupes ethniques, etc. Par exemple, "beaucoup, plusieurs, de nombreux, bien de, énormément de, etc". Est-ce qu'ils sont les mêmes ou est-ce qu'ils sont différents?
When I went to France to visit my french penpal and her family I would always said “Ah oui j’entends” but I wanted to say “Ah oui je comprends”. The reason I made this mistake is because in Spanish (my first language) the word “to understand” is “entender” so I was translating from Spanish. So when I understood something I would always said “yes i hear” 😂 I literally said this so much but my french family never corrected me! 😂
There are francophone regions that use it that way. My wife who is from Gabon uses it exactly in that way. It's in fact a very old form and the french tought in Africa is in a lot of cases very old fashioned. A lot of teaching material are still based on books going back to colonial times.
a great embarrassing story - knew an American who'd been in France long enough to speak rather well who was helping another American who was rather new to France and the language..... this newbie got a sore throat and wanted a throat lozenge..... The more experienced speaker saw the opportunity to help his young friend learn some French, take care of himself and have some fun with him so he "talked" the new guy through what he should ask for at the Pharmacy..... He said, "what is the word for 'throat'?" - "Gorge....."; "what is something that is a help or support?" - "Soutien" - "So, you can say - J'ai besoin d'un soutien-gorge"..... I can only imagine what the person at the pharmacy must have thought and how embarrassed this young guy was that he had asked for a bra!
During my junior year abroad I was fed a huge meal. I didn't want to eat more, so I said, "Je suis pleine." It was literally a translation of "I am full," but in French it implies "I am pregnant." When the family with whom I was staying stopped laughing, they told me to say, "Jai assez mange'," meaning "I have eaten enough." Then they explained why what I said was inappropriate.
My old French was shocked when a classmate pronounced "quand" like "con." To my untrained ears, they sounded exactly the same, and I couldn't understand why he was suddenly so perturbed.
"Non, merci, je suis pleine" is not wrong, not even awkward. "pleine" means gravid only for animals and noone would take it that way in the context of a meal.
Before I moved to France to become an English assistant at a school, my supervisor at the school suggested I send an email to the principal to introduce myself. I meant to say « j’ai hâte de vous rencontrer » but I accidentally said « j’ai honte de vous rencontrer » ! 🤣 I found out later that my email got spammed and he never actually read it anyway, so it was all good!
"bonne" in French, is nowadays short for "Bonne à baiser" (good to puck, if you follow me). Since it's such a basic word, the historical meaning is closer to the English one. By the way, did you know French speaking Belgians also have a hard time discriminating between "ou" and "u". If a bear is running towards you, do you "enfuis" (run for your life, flee) or "enfouis" (burrow, burry yourself )? "beuh" is shortened verlan for "beuh-er" (meaning "herbe", litterally weed). Be aware that "baiser" meaning also evolved. Molière (probably most famous historical French playwright) said something along the lines of "Ma fille, viens me baiser" which meant "my daughter, come kiss me", but nowadays it means "to duck" (if you don't get it by now, too bad for you)
I came from Middle East to US to do my Masters degree in French Studies. As I was used to French more than English, it was really hard for me to switch or to translate from French to English. Once I was talking to a Francophone friend telling that “Ma mère va à la piscine tous les jours” when a non Francophone friend came in and I translated spontaneously my sentence to English saying “My mum goes to piscine every day.” 😰😰😰😰😰
All the students were asked to respond to the question why are you here((studying French at the Alliance Francaise) . I wanted to say to have mastery of the French language and instead it sounded like “ for my mistress.”
My wife came in france from israel 9 years ago speaking no french at all. She told me some funny stories about mistakes she made at the beginning of learning french : she went to one of her male friend and wanted to announce that she would like to bake him a cake for his birthday, so she told him she wanted to make him a treat, but unfortunately, "faire une gaterie" (making a treat) commonly refers to ... oral sex ... Let's say his friend looked her weird and asked for clarification, which solved the misunderstanding in a big burst of laughter ^^
In Normandy I found a rock with a bullet hole in it, presumably from the second world war, lazily calqued my thought and proudly announced, "j'ai trouvé un caillou qui a un trou de balle dans lui." Riotous laughter ensued all around. I found out later what I had actually said.
There's the preservative / préservatif faux ami, which I've seen people gaffe a couple times.. An American girl at a bakery telling the guy at the counter "j'aime le pain français, c'est fait sans préservatifs.." That observation amused him.
I was once traveling to France and I had to take an Iberian flight so obviously, everyone was speaking Spanish(a language I can only somewhat understand but not speak). Anyway flash forward and I was looking for housing with the university I was going to and I told them that I have a cat with me but instead of saying, “J’ai une chatte.” I said, “J’ai un gâteau.” They were understandably very confused.
