If a French man says that your baby is a cabbage don’t be offended: it is a term of affection. If your lover “took their foot”, be happy: it means they reached seventh heaven.
But if you are told you have made a meatball then start worrying. You have just blundered. The French language abounds in quirky expressions that have long fuelled the incomprehension that marks Franco-British relations.
To Jean-Loup Chiflet, they are a source of fame and fortune. He has earned iconic status in France with a series of humorous books translating French expressions into literal English, and his popularity says much about the Gallic approach to learning l’anglais. The French do not really want to do it, but since they feel that they must they want the easiest method and a bit of fun at the same time, said Chiflet as he sat on the terrace of a café in Paris.
The publisher-turned-writer — who is probably the most successful, albeit off-beat, English-language teacher in modern French history — was again given star billing in bookshops this week with two new works.
One was a new version of Sky My Husband!, which has already sold more than 350,000 copies since it was published in 1985.
The title is a literal translation of Ciel mon mari which, in effect, means: My God! My husband! The dictionary
contains 285 pages in a similar vein. If someone says that he or she is beurré, for instance, that does not mean that the person has been buttered, which is the literal meaning. They mean that they are sloshed.
The second work was Chiflet’s Guide Farfelu mais Nécessaire de Conversation Anglaise (The Wacky but Necessary Guide to English Conversation). Chiflet said that after years of resistance the French had accepted the need to learn English. “After all, we are more and more isolated, but as we’re lazy we don’t want to tire ourselves in the process,” he said.
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