We all know about Le Weekend and maybe know about how annoyed our neighbours get across the Channel, so that they try to stop the use of English words in French. Here are a few of the expressions they use from a recent article in the BBC.

Maybe you know of some more - or even the other way round like garage and chauffeur and bon appetit. After all we have no English expression in English for "enjoy your food" - the whilst the Germans, Italian and even the Dutch (who have no cuisine - another French word - at all) have expressions.

1. Technology terms like le spam or le hardware and le software

2. "les baked beans"...pronounced back -ed beans

3. "no-ow" - know how instead of savoir faire

4. faire du shopping and le booze-cruising

5. Le snack bar est ouvert - for the buffet is open...lol

6. C'est le must....for its de rigeur

7. Luncher - as in luncher vous avec moi

8. talkie walkie is you've guessed it ...walkie talkie

9. footing - a made up word for jogger

10. Le snowboard - instead of la planche a neige

11. Geeker - some one who does geeky things like playing video games

So come on girls lets

faire du shopping as je t'adore les chaussures - tres fashion and look for le smoking (a dinner jacket) whilst discussing le no-ow and eating les backed beans avec salmon pavement (pave de saumon)

Have fun and I look forward to some additions

hugs

Pauline xxxx

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22636888

What about Le Weekend, that's been around in France for years....

Read the first few words Amy ...you are getting as old as me....lol

hugs

Pauline xxx

PS Le Rosbif doesnt count

La T-fille! XXX

le big sausage......is another phrase I've heard exclaimed across the back seat of a Citroen outside Toulouse! and a Citroen of course means a lemon of a car! XXX

Le big sausage is a term French T girls use for German admirers - I believe that English ones have not enough protein in their sausage. P xxx

Love it, i used to work where i met French tourists...purism and Francais are not necessarily the same eh?

Some French men are very keen on La quickie! ...... and your right P about the German sausage or le grande schnitzel as they say in Pinner.....I've always admired many a German gentleman's meat and potatoes.....while he grabs my bereit Gesäß XXX

Je ne sais quoi - they have it, do we?
xxxxx

le pi ador xxxx

There must be loads & loads - football, cricket, rugby, pub, parking, email, living (ie living room), buget, best-seller,
I'm secretary of our local Twinning Association and our members have become quite expert at using English words that are the same in France (makes life easier!) eg most words ending in -ion and -age (there are quite a few other endings as well) mean the same but that is because they were originally French (I forget the exact figure but at least 40% of English words were borrowed from the French from the Conquest onwards.

..I got cut off there - probably going on too long!. Also, blazer, barman, & camping - the tent variety and not what some of us could be accused of!

Pauline thinks there isn't an English expression for "enjoy your food". Unfortunately there is - "Enjoy" which seems to be spreading all over the place. To me this sounds like an instruction and annoys me intensely! It's the same with that awful US expression seemingly used at every check-out: "Have a nice day". Yet another instruction that gets up my nose and frequently I have replied "No thank you, I'm going to enjoy having a thoroughly miserable one". The look on the assistants' faces then helps me to have a nice day!

"Enjoy"......now that makes the mind boggle.

Just because we don't have a word it doesn't mean that we don't have a cuisine. We do, especially on a local level.

Ooop here no-one at the check out in Asda ( which is after all owned by Wal Mart) would ever dream of wishing me a nice day.

In drab mode they say ...allreet chuck...and in Pauline mode..."how are you today sweetie?" They chat with me a lot and paying takes time ...but here on the northern side of manchester they really seem to like people...and food.

P xx

<blockquote><strong><a href="/se4/profile/pauline">Pauline Smith</a> said:</strong><br />Read the first few words Amy ...you are getting as old as me....lol

hugs

Pauline xxx

PS Le Rosbif doesnt count</blockquote><br />

I thought the Frogs referred to us as Les Rosbifs? xxx

They do indeed call us Les Rosbifs - but its not really an English word in French...like le weekend or le snowboard - and its not a term of affection.

Well all the French people i have known saw it as an insult - like us calling them froggies??? Not a scathing insult - that would require them to refer to the English unfair use of archers against knights at the battle of Crecy...lol

Pauline xxx

Hence the 'V' sign, specifically designed to upset the French (if the French captured an English archer they would chop off one or more of his fingers so he could never draw a bow again. The V sign was used to show that the owner of the fingers was still dangerous and to remind the French of their utter humiliation at Agincourt by a very much smaller English force). Strangely (or is it?) our village's French 'twins' say they have never heard of Agincourt !

'Strike' seems to be a common french word today that our unions used far from sparingly yesterday.

We need not have expressions to enjoy cuisine as we have many to express drinking after which we tend to be fairly silent devouring any kind of foodstuff without a care for taste, substance or source.

I believe we're less fussy when it comes to the essentials like food, water and clothing - something we in the western world take for granted.

If expressions are cool then we all could do better with taking up ones that raise awareness.