Coquine

The word used the most to describe Manolee by our French friends is "Coquine".

I always thought that this word meant "cute" and not thought much about it. Then one day while I was describing one of her mischievous endeavors, my MIL says, "elle est tres coquine, eh, elle est malicieuse". I stopped short in my tracks and said "malicieuse????" MALICIOUS, my little girl?

Then I started doubting my understanding of the word "coquine". Maybe it doesn't mean cute after all, and all this time when I thought people were paying my little girl a compliment, they were actually saying not such nice things.

I consulted Google.

Coquine, adjectif
Feminin
1. Tres malicieux
2. Vif d'espirit
3. Bandit

Hmmmm. 1. Very malicious. 2. Lively spirit. 3. A bandit!??

My MIL was taken aback that I took affront to the word "malicieuse" and assured me that in French, malicious does not mean a bad thing. Huh? So I had to google that in turn, and it says, "Qui a de la malice" ("One that has malice" - not much better)..... and then it helpfully provides an English definition, which is: "mischievous".

OK I can live with mischievous. That surely describes Manolee to a tee. As for Coquine, I think I will choose to live with the definition #2, Vif d'esprit, because she is that too.

However mischievous and naughty she may be, I can never stay mad at her very long - especially when she provides such lovely notes, as below:

French Diet Tip

According to Readers' Digest (as read via Yahoo!):

You could try fitness guru Valerie Orsoni’s “Le Petit Secret”: “A number of French women wear a ribbon around their waist and underneath their clothes when they go out for dinner. It keeps them conscious of the tummy—particularly if the ribbon starts to feel tighter as the evening goes on!”


Really????

"Est" vs "Et"

Manolee just started first grade and tomorrow she will have her very first dictee - a dictation test. She has one sentence to prepare and I was helping her do so:

"Marou est un chat"

I had trouble enough pronouncing Marou, because in French the R takes a sort of an "h" sound before the actual "r" sound, and then there is that "ou" sound, which is not straightforward for me, especially preceded by an "r". But Manolee took it in stride and wrote it down correctly.

When I got to the second one, the word whose pronunciation I had utmost confidence in getting it correctly, Manolee looked up and said, "Maman, it's not "et", it's "est".

To me, "et" and "est" sound exactly alike. I asked her to repeat what she thought was the distinction. Twice. Three times. I still did not hear it. I asked Hanaya to say those two words for me and I heard an ever slight difference but not enough for me to really pick up.

Manolee rolls her eyes.

I don't really care that I can't pronounce things correctly, there is only so much I can do about it. But in all these years speaking French with French people, not one person spoke up to correct my mistake, which is astounding! And unlike when I say "deux ans" and people think I'm saying "douze ans" - it has created no big misunderstanding.

Nonetheless, I will have to rely heavily on my 6 year-old to catch my mistakes and endeavor to help me correct them (rolling eyes notwithstanding).

French Titles

OK August was a bust, no postings at all - shame on me. Will have to fill in the details about our move and all that at some point. For now, a much more pressing matter to report:

I read a few books this summer and I especially enjoyed the Stieg Larson books, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and The Girl Who Played with Fire.

I was a bit taken aback when I discovered these books on sale locally:


Les Hommes qui N'aiment pas Les Femmes

Translation: Men Who Do Not Like Women

Now how is that a justifiable title for The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo? Of course I get it, the book is about men who abuse women, fine. But why not La Fille Tattooee or La Fille a Tattoo de Dragon? Why do the French have a tendency to make everything so obvious? Similar to the question I had on Movie Title translations, who gets to make these executive decisions?

Should we take a look at the second book, The Girl Who Played with Fire?


In French it's called La Fille qui Revait d'un Bidon d'Essence et d'une Allumette.

Huh? The Girl who Dreamt of a Gas Container and a Match?

Do the French not play with fire? Cannot fathom such a notion?

OK so for the third book, which I have not yet read, which in English is: The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest.

In French:



La Reine dans le Palais des Courants d'Air

Hmmm. The Queen in the Palace of Moving Air, or in the Palace of Air Currents. Maybe I am translating too literally myself, maybe the palais of courants d'airs means something symbolic in French that I am unaware of, or seeing how the French love to state the obvious, maybe there is really an airy palace of some sorts in the book. Nonetheless I am surprised at how the French title is so far from the English title. Do they not get the risk implied with kicking the hornet's nest? Do they not have hornets in France? Could they have replaced it with Bee's Nest?

That makes me wonder, what are these titles in its original language, Swedish? Are we the ones butchering it? I suspect not, but I have been wrong before....

French Originals

A good friend told me the other day that she went to the premiere of a movie called "Dinner with Schmucks". The title sounded vaguely familiar to me, so I asked her what it was about. She uttered maybe 5 words before it hit me - it was a remake of a French movie that I absolutely love, called "Diner de Cons".

This made me think of the countless times when the French were quick to point out to me that a lot of things that, to me, are American are actually French in origin.

I was once flabbergasted and incredulous when we heard Frank Sinatra belt out "My Way" one day, and one of PeeWee's friends turned to me with what resembled panic in his eyes, and asked me, you do know that this song is actually a French song? I of course went, "no way". He was insistent and accused the Old Blue Eyes of stealing a very well known French song called "Comme d'habitude" by a hugely popular (and dead) singer called Claude Francois - huh? I thought this to be evidence that everyday Frenchmen still suffer from illusions of grandeur from the country once being a World Power.

Then came a series of American movies that I actually knew to have been French originally, because I had actually seen them in French a few years before they were adapted by US studios: "Three Men and a Baby", "La Femme Nikita", "Cousins", etc.

Then a month or so ago, I came across an old article in Vanity Fair about the heydays of Disco, and it says that two of the founding members of the Village People were French!! Wow! I sure was impressed!

Give them credit where it's due, I guess. Now I am dying to see Dinner with Schmucks. The Schmuck is played by Steve Carell, and I think he will have a lot to live up to - the original character is played by Jacques Villeret, a very famous (and now dead) actor. Compare the two:

The French one:

The American one:

French signatures

One thing we used to do for a laugh during my early days at Citibank was to whip out the signature books. There used to be these books filled with authorized signatures from major banks around the world. The biggest laughs were reserved for the signatures from French banks.

The French, it appears to me, do not take signatures very seriously. Nobody I know ever signs their full name. Every French adult, at one point or another in life, has created a simple single-stroke personal "emblem". Here are some examples, actual signatures I happened to have lying around on various documents around the house:





See what I mean?

Unexplainable French Grammar Rule: Part II

Hana's not been doing very well in French lately. Up to now, she has been picking things up with remarkable ease, but nowadays I see that not all is intuitive, even to "native" speakers like my daughter.

Her trouble nowadays has to do with imperative sentences - brush your teeth, roll up your sleeves, don't pick out the onions, put away your Nintendo right this minute, turn off the TV before I go ballistic. Actually I cannot blame her for having trouble with this, since although I utter the above imperative sentences multiple times in a given day, I never do so in French.

So I delegated and asked PeeWee to help her study this. He looked at her workbook, then he looked at her study guide book, then he consulted the conjugation bible, the Bescherelle. He was at this for a good 15 minutes without saying a word to Hana. Finally I asked him, what you don't understand either? He looked up all forlorn, and says, it doesn't make any sense!

To hear him utter these words in regards to the French language felt something like a victory to me.

So here is Unexplainable Rule #1 in Imperatives.

When you want to say "Slow down" - for example - to your kid riding a bicycle, you will say "Ralentis" - a straight conjugation of "ralentir" in the familiar "tu" person.

However, if you want to say "Turn right", because the verb "Tourner" ends in "-er", you don't just conjugate and say "Tournes a droite". You drop that "s" and say "tourne a droite".

WTF?

Wait, did I say, for verbs ending in "er"? Well, actually that is also the case for certain verbs (not all, God forbid) ending in "-ir", such as ouvrir, offrir, cueillir and souffrir.

Here is Unexplainable Rule example #2 of what can go wrong, taken from Hana's workbook:

"Le verbe aller ne prend pas de "s" a la 2eme personne du singulier, sauf vas-y"

So "go do your homework" would be "va faire les devoirs", but "go there" is "vas-y"

Why? No explanation. No apologies. All very characteristic of this language.

Note: the title of this post (and an earlier rant) was originally "Stupid French Grammar Rule" - I decided to be a bit less judgmental and changed "Stupid" to "Unexplainable" in the spirit of being more open-minded (in this case, however, being open-minded is accompanied by being open-mouthed at the stupidity of it all)

I say "Ouch", they say "Aie!"

One of my favorite English words is onomatopoeia. I love how it begins with a happy "o" and ends in what to me is sunny Brazilian-sounding "oeia"

Here are some English ones and their French equivalents that I've been hearing:


Yumm --> Miam

Yuck --> Beurk

Ruff ruff (as in dog) --> Ouah Ouah

Oink oink --> Groin groin

Quack quack --> Coin coin

Hey (as in, watch out, watch it, wait a minute) --> He ho (without pronouncing the "h"s, so it becomes eh, oh)

Achoo (as in sneeze) -- > Atchoum

Burp -- > Rot

Bang bang (as in gun) --> Plop plop

Wee woo wee woo (as in siren) --> pin pan pin pan


My all-time onomatopoeia however is in Korean. It is bogul-bogul - it denotes the sound made by a boiling liquid. As far as I know there is no equivalent in either English or French. And that is a shame!

What I learned from Watching the Olympics in France

1. Objectively speaking, France is not a proper powerhouse when it comes to the Olympics. You would think the French recognize this. However, their frustration of not having had a medal since Tuesday (today is Friday) was obvious from tonight's coverage. The presenters kept on going on and on about the medal-less streak and the interviewers in Vancouver questioned coaches and sometimes crying athletes to explain their less than stellar performances. One presenter said that he got an email from a man who wanted to name his just-born son for the next medal winner and that he is left hanging...

2. The French love Canadians! They try to find any and every Canadian that speaks French and they come right out saying things like "we love the way you speak French!", "what a cute accent you people have!". I heard one presenter remark that while the accent is really marked in conversations, French Canadians have no accent whatsoever when they are singing (example given: Celine Dion). Hmmm? I have to say, I myself have serious problems understanding Canadian French.

3. The number one thing you hear repeatedly from announcers: Oh-la-la, oh-la-la (usually in two's). Contrary to what many Americans may think, it's not just women who say oh-la-la. EVERYBODY says it (quite funny, for me at least, to go to an arcade where a bunch of tough looking French teenage boys are crying out oh-la-la!)

4. The number two thing that you hear repeatedly from announcers is "Chapeau!" - - literally, "Hat!" - After a while I figured out that what they mean to say is "Bravo" or "Fantastic". I guess crying out "hat" is short for "I tip my hat off to your amazing performance". Interesting.

The coverage tonight is going on, but they seem absolutely dejected that another night may go by without a French medal... Allez France!

"You want my picture?"

In the US, if you are annoyed that someone is discourteously staring at you, you would aggressively turn to that person and demand, in the most threatening tone you can muster, "what are you looking at?"

I learned that in France, what they say in this very same situation is somewhat less threatening - they say "tu veux ma photo, quoi?" - translation: "what, you want my picture?"

Speaking of, here is a recent one of the girls. You may stare all you want.

Things to do When on Bedrest #5: Find Long-Forgotten Photos

I'm still hanging out at home and today I was actually productive and cleaned out a lot of junk from my computer. I went through various photo files and got rid of a bunch of stuff. In so doing, I came across some pics that I thought I may share with you here.

I'd written previously about English words taken by the French to denote something entirely different, like "sh*t". Well, I came across the following in my neighborhood recently and I was a bit taken aback:

This is a tattoo parlor that opened up not too long ago. The name the store chose for itself is "Breizh Wankers Tattoo". Here is a sign on the door:

Breizh is Breton for someone or something from Brittany. A Breizh Wanker therefore would be a wanker from Brittany. Hmmm.

Granted, "wanker" is not a well known word in the US. I never even heard of it until I went to study in England. In England, however, it is a very often used term, derogatory for sure, and means a male masturbator. I saw a Graham Norton episode once where he gets a hold of the white pages of some US midwest state and he squealed in delight in finding several people last-named Wanker. He then proceeded to call them one by one, just to get the audience laughing as he asks for a Mr Wanker. Gwenyth Paltrow also pronounced the word very convincingly, very often, in her role as a London girl in Sliding Doors.

So I was convinced that either this tattoo parlor owner had no idea what a wanker means in English, or that it means something completely different in French. There is also the possibility of course that he knows exactly what a wanker is, and he is trying to be edgy and ironic, as one might expect tattoo parlor owners to be. Then I came across this, this time on the back window of a car parked near our apartment:

Apparently the Breizh Wanker Krew is a punk band.

If this keeps up, it won't be long until Hana asks me what a wanker is!

French Titles

Browsing the local Fnac for some Xmas gift ideas last week, I was struck by how the French feel the need to elaborate on American TV show titles. Some examples:

24 is called "24 Heures Chrono"

House is called "Docteur House"

Lost is called "Lost: Les Disparus"


Alas, the need to elaborate on the title is not limited to TV shows, as a few minutes of browsing on the DVD aisles revealed:

Brokeback Mountain is "Les Secrets de Brokeback Mountain"

The Crucible is "La Chasse aux Sorcieres" (the Witch Hunt)

Flatliners is "L'Experience Interdite" (Forbidden Experiment)


Curiously, Trainspotting was left to be Trainspotting. So not sure if the title changes are purely due to untranslatable idioms or undecipherable (to the French) symbolisms or what.


Of course, there is also the pressing need to change titles altogether. Examples are plentiful in the DVD aisles:

G-Force became "Mission G"

Terms of Endearment became "Tendres Passions" (not sure if that was an appropriate change)

Kiss the Girls became "The Collectionneur"

Steel Magnolia became "Potins de Femmes"

Mean Girls became "Lolita Malgre Moi"


My all time favorite is how the French translated the movie title "Home Alone" (yes, the one featuring Macaulay Caulkin - where is he these days??) - the title here for that is:

"Maman, J'ai Rate l'Avion!"

Literal translation: "Mom, I missed the plane!"

Don't you love it!?

French Spaces

When we were a long-distance couple, I used to find PeeWee's emails exceedingly cute. No capital letters whatsoever and quirky placements of spaces that left me with the impression that he was totally unaccustomed to typing. For example, he would write:

i had great fun hanging out with my friends ,you know them ,at bars tonight. we were so drunk ! you remember jean ?

It was all I could do to suppress all urges to print out the emails and whip out my red pen for correcting his use of spaces around punctuations. I often had the same urge when I got emails from French friends, who, similarly, seemed not to be schooled in this topic.

So imagine the astonishment I felt when Hana came home with a corrected test - she had been tested on writing on keyboards. Her teacher stressed in red that there must be a space before a question mark. I told Hana that this must be wrong. Her standard response to me when I say that these days is "google it, maman"

So I did, and this is what I found.

"Pour les points d'interrogation, d'exclamation et le point-virgule [typographie européenne] : une espace avant et une espace après." - meaning, for question marks, exclamation points and semi-colons, a space before and a space after.

Whoa! Whaddayaknow!? But why???? Do other languagues have different punctuation/space rules too? I know the Spanish put an inverted question mark before the questioning sentence; the French also use commas instead periods for decimals. However I had no idea about the use of spaces; all this time I was attributing that to carelessness or sloppiness. I've been corrected once again!

French Fillers

Fillers, as in, you know, ah, what people say when, uh, they don't really know where, like, they want to go with what they want to say, you know? Or, like, they need, well, more time to gather their thoughts?

Of course the French have their own fillers and they drive me CRAZY sometimes.

Hana has gotten into saying "eh bah" quite a bit, quite often. So if I ask her, "what did you learn in Science today?", she would start with, "Eh bah, we learned, bah, stuff like bones and the, eh bah, the reproductive systems" (yes, as a side, she is at that stage of learning already. Sigh)

She now seems not to be able to speak in French without the aid of "eh bahs". Whenever I tell her, "pls repeat without the eh bahs", her eyes start rolling and I know any day now she will start to ignore me when I say that. Thankfully she doesn't carry this into English. She doesn't actually use any fillers in English - maybe because much of the English she hears comes from scripted TV shows?

That said, Hana does not YET use another French filler that I personally find annoying, if only because I think I would never say it because it doesn't sound right coming from me, a foreigner. And that is "quoi" - that people add at the end of an affirmative or declarative sentence. For example, "c'est completement dingue, qoui" - "it's totally crazy or what" (I guess). Or "Je suis rentre vers 13 heures, quoi" - "I got home around 1pm, right?" - People add "quoi" at the end of sentences so often and this confused me first. I kinda felt like they were challenging me to dispute them, "quoi" being "what", as in "what, do you not believe what I'm saying?" or other similarly hostile end to a sentence.

I'll know I am speaking French like a native when I feel comfortable using these fillers myself!

Gourmande

There are some English words for which there are absolutely no equivalents in French. One I've tried and tried to find the translation for is the word "wedgie" - a quick fun English word describing the back part of one's underwear being pinched between one's butt cheeks. Alas, there is no French word to describe this notion, which amazes me. You know how the Eskimos have like thousands of words for snow? Well, if you extend that rationale and see that the word "wedgie" does not exist in French, well, does that mean the French have never ever experienced this rather annoying but temporary (though sometimes recurring) and ultimately harmless situation?

Likewise, there are some French words for which there are no direct equivalents in English. "Gourmande" is one. You can say that Manolee is "gourmande" because she loves to eat. When you see someone taking third and fourth helpings of dessert, for example, that person would sheepishly look at you and say, "eh, je suis gourmande, eh?". You hear parents say, not altogether disapprovingly, "ma fille est plutot gourmande". Gourmande is not greedy - I thought it was, but it's not, because the English word "greedy" has a slight (or more than slight) negative connotation. Gourmande, as far as I can tell, does not have a negative connotation. A touch of apologetic tinge, perhaps, but it is not bad or rude to call somebody gourmande. You can call food items gourmande as well, if it's elaborately prepared and/or presented - which is why I had to chuckle when I found this on a restaurant menu the other day (see the second item):

Stupid French Grammar Rule: Part I

I rant about this quite often and it made me think that it may be entirely possible to create a blog devoted to this topic. So many rules and then... so many exceptions - with no rhyme or reason.

Part I of this series then:

Plurals of Nouns ending in -au, -eau, -eu

This is what Hana's textbook says:

Nouns that end in -au, -eau, and -eu take an "x" in plural forms.

Examples:

le rideau/les rideaux

le bateau/les bateaux

un cheveu/des cheveux

Exceptions:

The words pneu, bleu and landau take an "s" in plural.

In fact, there are four additional words that take an "s" instead of an "x", but they are not exactly everyday words. These are sarrau, unau, lieu (a type of fish; watch out, if you are talking about Lieu as in a place, it still takes an "x" in plural!), and emeu.

No explanations on why these 7 words forgo the rule and end in an "s" instead. If there are only 7 words, why not just make it easy for everyone and just make them take an "x" instead of an "s"?? Wouldn't that be simpler and easier for everybody? What does the Academie Francaise do exactly, could they not issue a mandate on this matter?

In the meantime, Hana will just have to remember which ones are the exceptions. The French language sure is quite taxing on one's memory!

Back in Rennes...

Coming back is much easier when it is not raining. Also making the return easier are the Easy Macs and the Swedish Fish (running low on the latter already now!) - the Bendaroos made the trip, the unbreakable pitcher did not. Neither did the Nesquick Strawberry milk powder (though I think that is a good thing).

Meanwhile, these are the signs I am greeted with every which way I turn:




The French are STILL on vacation. The August holidays are no cliches, people really take them. I guess in Paris it is less so, because it is more tourism-focused, but here in Rennes, lots of stores close for the entire month. I still don't get it. How do they all manage to pay 12 months' rent on 11 months' income??

To Flush or Not to Flush

Overheard the other night, Hana shouting at her cousin Leah: "Don't flush the toilet"

Leah: "What?"
Hana: "Don't flush the toilet!"
L: "Why?"
H:"If you are just going to pee, don't flush because I'm going right after you"

I didn't see Leah's face directly but I could just picture it getting a bit scrunched up, wondering why her French cousin would ask NOT TO FLUSH the toilet, thereby overtly breaking a sacred, always-abiding groundrule of a US household - to ALWAYS flush the toilet!

I have personally always trained my kids to always flush the toilet. To do otherwise would be - well, so French! You see, one of the horrors of French living that I faced early on is that they do not always flush the toilet. And they are proud of it. When I first faced the murky waters one morning, PeeWee told me that he didn't want to wake me up during the night. I told him rather flippantly that I wake up ANYWAY if he gets up to go to the toilet, so the flushing sound would be the least of my nuisances. He learned his lesson (he used to be so easily trainable!) and has now adopted the American way of flushing every time.

Now, after this episode with PeeWee, I assumed that it was a one-time thing with him and him only. Boy was I in for a surprise when his parents paid us a visit. I woke up to find, yes, murky waters again. I of course immediately confronted PeeWee. He sheepishly replied that his parents didn't want to wake us. I told him in no uncertain terms that to be awakened in the middle of the night by the flushing is music to my ears compared to waking up to find a non-clean toilet in the morning. I'm not sure what he relayed back to his parents, but I think something got lost in translation because this was a recurring theme during their many visits.

When I spent some time at PeeWee's parents' house, I woke up in the morning to find the toilet - well, used - and I laid out a big sigh, resigning myself to these quirks of the Merlet side of the family.

Then I was in for a shock. We had a friend of PeeWee's come visit and lo and behold, the same thing happened. I knew the guy pretty well so I asked him to explain himself and he said, "I didn't want to wake you up". A second visitor, a female this time, did the same thing and offered up the same explanation. I was at a loss. When I visited my good friend M in Paris, she said her (French) husband never flushes at night either. Then recently, I was talking with a mom friend at drop-off, and she said she had to rush home because she had to wait for the plumber and it's a real shame that her toilet decided to break down in the morning because it is already full from all the night time output.

HELLO?

Are you as stunned as I was? Do you find yourself asking -how can an entire population of a developed country be programmed to never flush the toilet in the night time? Was there like a national civic campaign urging people not to flush after, say, 9pm? Did they spin it as an economical energy conservation effort? Or just a common Gallic courtesy effort?

I wonder what the French say of us - "I couldn't believe it when I was awaken at 1am by Rae flushing her toilet! Can you believe it?" Us - wasteful, disrespecting Americans, flushing just like that, so nonchalantly, so carelessly - the nerve!

Now the fact that Hana was exhibiting that Frenchness is a bit of a mystery to me. I always ask her to flush the toilet, but clearly someone has told her it's okay for a toilet to receive two (or more?? gasp!) different outputs before flushing. I wonder if that someone is PeeWee, asserting his Frenchness on the sly. Hmmmm,...

French (baby) butts

Slow month for posting... Been in the US for the last two weeks and have not had time to post anything. The month of July is a big blur - the end of school, weekend trip to Paris to meet up with friends, getting ready for the Big Trip - then getting here, going almost straight to NJ to my friend M's house where the girls had been signed up for camp for the last two weeks... am back at my parents' house in Queens and am just exhausted beyond belief. Feeding and washing up the girls tonight seemed such an endeavor!!

Anyway, the girls were at camp that was run at this fancy club in NJ and one of the things that I noticed was the ubiquitous signs asking, no, demanding that members ensure that infants and toddlers wear swim diapers AND plastic diaper pants on top. This is, according to the signs, for the health, hygiene and safety of all club members, and clearly directed unprepared members to the club store for purchasing the required items. Looking around the resort-looking outdoor pool, the American toddlers playing around all seemed to have huge butts, with their wet swim diapers and the plastic pants barely covering them.

Such a contrast to the pools in France - I have yet to be in one which demands that kids wear swim diapers. The result: very svelte French baby butts in the pool - but god knows what goes on in the pool!!! And I know all those kids cannot be toilet-trained!

On that disturbing note, I take leave now and will be back when I am feeling less lethargic and more rested!

French Cursing (otherwise known as Big Words)

One skill I have not yet developed in French is the ability to curse. Ability to curse someone out, to be precise. Now, I don't usually curse people out in English either, but when I have strong adverse feelings I like to be able to express them, if only under my breath or behind someone's back. When I curse in French, I think I just sound ridiculous. 'Tis a pity, because I have had lots of missed opportunities, especially with people who do not curb their dogs or act like they are doing you a huge favor when in fact they are just performing a job that they are paid for. I practice, but it's not easy because the French have a particular way of cursing.

I do love it when the French curse. I love it because they just don't seem to be satisfied with just one swear word. Americans or the English can be very expressive with just one word, usually the F-word or the S- word. The French however usually string a few of them together when they are pissed off, which is new to me - so PeeWee, for example, would say something like "putain fait chier bordel de merde c'est pas vrai!" - which is actually like 4 curse words strung together, accentuated by the final "c'est pas vrai" ("it's not true")

What really is amusing to me is that the French actually say that last part a lot. I would say something like, "Manolee woke up again at 4 in the morning" and they would say to me "c'est pas vrai". Or I would say something like "the teachers are going on strike again Tuesday" and they would say "c'est pas vrai". And I always have this urge to say, why are you saying it's not true? It's true! It's absolutely true! Why would I lie? Or when I hear someone absolutely devastated, for example, because they have misplaced their wallet, and they say "c'est pas vrai!" - I just want to say to them "face it, sista, it's true! Shit happens!"

The kids call curse words "les gros mots" - direct translation: "Big Words". You would hear a mom in the playground admonishing her kid "do not say those big words" - but to me, "big words" sound like those multi-syllable SAT words that a kid should be congratulated for using in everyday context. So when Hana came home one day and said, oh so-and-so said a big word and was sent to the principal - my reaction to her was: "c'est pas vrai!"