Category: French Language

Uniquely Louisiana French (and English!)

Posted on by Stephanie Dodaro

Uniquely Louisiana French, and Part Two of Louisiana English à la française!

In the exciting follow-up to my article from last year, I want to share some of the things that I have recently  learned are “uniquely Louisiana French” expressions.  As may already be evident by now, we speak a bit differently here, even in the way we use English.  However, some of our French expressions are also unique to this area and not used anywhere else in the French-speaking world, which by the way is big, involving over 40 countries!

Français à la Louisianaise

Café du Monde by Chelsea Audibert on Unsplash

Last time, I mentioned our use of a 19th century word, banquette, which here is the sidewalk, and now the French of L’hexagone use differently (the meaning now refers to a small bench).  Yet another expression that we use, that no one outside of New Orleans uses, is vieux carré, meaning “old square”.  We call the old historical part of our city, the downtown area, this way, even though it is more like a rectangle really, a set of original streets laid out in a grid pattern, 14 by 8 blocks, a configuration which hasn’t changed since 1725.  It is a logical way to call the area, and yet we equate it with meaning “the old city” or “the historical district”.  That does not quite work the same way in Europe, where old, historical cities were built in a different way, with more winding roads and starbursts.  If we were to use this term with French speakers in Europe or elsewhere, they will likely wonder what we mean by it.  

Another (possibly) obvious New Orleaneanism is our motto: Laissez les bons temps rouler.  This is a likely translation, from English into French this time.  We say “let the good times roll” in English, but in fact this is not a sentence one would likely say in French.  For as my dear Philippe says, “good times don’t ‘roll’ in French”.  Refer back to Part One of this series, times “pass” in French.  We can “passer un bon temps”, but not roll it.  It had never occured to me after all these years in Louisiana that this would not be possible to say in French. Imagine my surprise!

English “New Orleans Style”

Moving on to more English expressions that are unique to New Orleans, and possibly with French roots, there is the very colorful way that we order our sandwiches.  Here in New Orleans, we order our sandwiches “dressed”, which means served with lettuce, tomato and mayonnaise.  I always wondered why non-locals looked perplexed at the question.  Does no one else out there order their sandwiches dressed?  (Please tell me in the comments section below!) If not, what do they say, then, when they want all the usual stuff on it?  After much research and discussion with French speakers, we came to the conclusion that there is a culinary equivalent, “habiller” (to dress), used when preparing poultry or other things, by removing innards, feathers, etc.  It would seem that the idea is to “dress it up”, in other words, “make it pretty”.  It sounds like a logical conclusion to me; although, I doubt that the French order their sandwiches “habillés”.  

Photo by Bruce Warrington on Unsplash

A student of mine once asked me if there was some French correlation to the expression used locally for putting away the dishes, which here is “save the dishes”.  I think it is possible that it could have come either from the translation of  “garder” (to keep or save, for example “garder la  maison”, to take care of the house) or from “ménager” (“to keep, save, manage” as in “ménager son bien” manage or conserve one’s fortune”).  Le ménage is the household, and let us not forget that faire le ménage means to clean or sweep or tidy the household.  I can not say for sure where the Louisiana expression came from, but I hope some of my readers can shed some light on this for me.

When we want to say “over there”, in Louisiana we say “up the road” as in “my friend lives up the road a bit.”  It is more or less the same in French, en haut de la rue.  Additionally, when we want to say “that day or week in the past”, we say “that week there” just like in French, ce jour-là, cette semaine-là, (literally that day there, that week there).

There’s one that I cannot determine yet, but may add an update here if I can get some information from those of you who are locals out there.  In French to say the day of the week, it is either aujourd’hui c’est.. (today is..) and the name of the day of the week, or nous sommes… and the day.  This last one translates as “we are… “,  as in “We are Monday.”  Do any Louisiana locals say that?  I have a feeling that it is something that may be said here, but I cannot be sure. 

This last one was recently brought to my attention (Thanks, Faye!).  When we “pass by your house” here in Louisiana, we may also say that we are not “going to get down”. That is our way of saying that we are coming by to see you, but not getting out of the car.  That also comes directly from the French who use the verb descendre (literally: to descend, go down) to say “get out of (a car or bus)”.

I love the charming, colorful way that people speak here.  It is like its own foreign language in America, centered on this little tiny space in the deep South, on this tropical island, the northernmost city of the Caribbean.  French is so integrated into our daily lives here that we are not always even aware of it. When I have pointed out some of the similarities in the way we speak here to the French my students are learning, they are often amazed. It is in our blood, in our lifestyles, and it is a vital part of our identity. 

Vieux Carré street sign
by Naveen Venkatesan on Unsplash

If there is anything to add, please write to me in the comments.  If you have any questions about local Louisiana expressions that you think might be of French origin, also please write me here and I can look into it for you!

Louisiana English à la française!

Posted on by Stephanie Dodaro

Here in New Orleans we have a very particular way of life, from our mannerisms, customs to even our way of talking. Some of our expressions may seem bizarre or even foreign to those outside of the city.  Because of my long experience studying French, I have slowly come to realize that the reason for this must be the French influence on the city. Some of these expressions seem to be a direct translation of the French, and the locals using these expressions may not even be aware of it. I have in fact pointed this out to some of my students who seem genuinely surprised that the expression in French is more or less exactly what we say here in English. This could possibly be explained by the fact that generations separate the native French speaking inhabitants from the citizens of Louisiana today. French was officially banned from public schools and government buildings in 1916. It took awhile for English to take over and during that time, many French speakers were probably translating.

Joan of Arc Maid of Orleans in the French Quarter, gift from France
Photo by Morgan Hjelm on Unsplash

In Louisiana, for example, a popular expression is “making groceries”.  It is what we do if we go grocery shopping, yet no one else in America will “make groceries” when going out shopping.  This is easily explained by the fact that faire les courses in French is “to do errands or go shopping” because faire in French is both “make or do”.  

However, there are many more examples than that, especially involving the verb passer, to pass or spend.  Here you will often hear people say they “pass a good time”, not the more common “have a good time”, most probably because the expression in French is almost exactly the same, passer un bon moment.  They might also say variations, like passer un bon week-end, passer une bonne soirée.  People here might also “pass by your house”, meaning to come see you.  This too is a literal translation of the expression passer te voir (come to see you).  In other uses for the verb passer, people in Louisiana will also “pass the vacuum” when cleaning the house, which seems to come directly from the expression in French passer l’aspirateur.

One final “frenchified” way of speaking that is common in Louisiana is the use of pronouns, especially repeated ones for emphasis.  It is very common to hear people say things like “Me, I like it me.” As in, “I like me some gumbo, me”, or even “Him and me, we go there often.”  I suspect that this is a hold-over from French which is a language that uses repeated words, not vocal stress, to emphasize words or to clarify who the subject is. Therefore, the French might say, “Moi, je l’aime bien.” (Me, I like it/him a lot.) Or “Lui et moi, nous y allons souvent.” (Literally “him and me”, in order to say “he and I, we go there often.”)

Finally, a very unique Louisiana term that we use here is banquette, which is used to refer to the sidewalks here, where the French would use the more modern term trottoir, meaning pavement.  This may seem like a uniquely Louisiana French term that the French outside of Louisiana do not use at all.  There are quite a few of those examples as well. However, this is a very different situation, as it is more a case of 19th century French still being used in New Orleans.  In my 1877 edition of a French-English dictionary from Cassell & Co., a banquette was a “footway of a road”.  That would actually make a lot of sense for its day, since sidewalks were not paved in New Orleans at the time. It was more likely a slightly raised side of the road alongside of the houses.  

There may be many more examples of this that I have not yet come across. I do believe that our French roots run deep here, and that while French was almost wiped out here one hundred years ago, it never really went away.  It went underground for a while and has reemerged stronger than ever. French words are a part of our daily lives, in the naming of streets, buildings, magazines, foods, shops, social organizations and so on. Additionally, much of that French-ness is also a part of the way we express ourselves, even while in English.  

This is a work in progress, so stay posted to receive updates to this article. If anyone has more expressions to share, I would love to read your comments below.

Vocabulary for Discussing Literature in French

Posted on by Stephanie Dodaro

Voici des mots clefs pour parler de la littérature.

Here are some key words for talking about literature.

During my thirty years of speaking French, any time that I had to speak about a topic or subject that was new to me, I would be frustrated to discover all the holes in my vocabulary.  For example, if you have ever had the experience of needing to talk about literature in French, you may have come to realize that you lacked a certain specific vocabulary.

For students wanting to participate in a book club or to study literature to improve their language skills, this list might be of interest to you.  I put together a list of words and expressions that were needed for the conversations I would have during courses in which we discussed books and short stories.  Below are some expressions that you may find handy or essential in order to more easily discuss what you read (or even films you see) in French.

If you are interested in a Book Club course, please see my page on courses offered for details.

Expressions:

Il s’agit de…  = It’s about…

Traiter de = Concerns, deal with, to be about

L’histoire a eu lieu… = The story took place…

Cela m’a fait penser à… = It made me think about..

Ce livre parle de…  = This book talks about..

Tu as raison/ tort… = You are right/ wrong..

Je ne m’y attendais pas… = I did not expect that…

Je me rends compte que… = I realize that…

À mon avis – In my opinion..

Je suis en train de lire… = I am in the middle of reading, I am reading…

Ce livre m’intéresse parce que… = This book interests me because…

Je suis intéressé(e) par ce livre parce que… = I am interested in this book because…

La langue de l’écrivain est (élégante, riche, poétique, …) = The language of the writer is (elegant, rich, poetic…)

Langage haut en couleur, langage imagé = Colorful language

Vocabulary:

Genre = The style, type (of literature)

Roman historique, roman noir, roman d’aventure, une autobiographie = Historical novel, mystery novel, adventure novel, autobiography

Un récit, une histoire = A story

Le personnage principale, le/la protagoniste, le héros du livre = The main character, the protagonist, the hero of the book

Le lecteur = The reader

La lecture = Reading

L’auteur(e), l’écrivain(e) = The author, writer

Le dénouement, la résolution, la révélation ou catastrophe, la conclusion = Falling action

Le conflit, l’apogée, le moment décisif = Climax

La présentation, l’introduction, l’entrée en jeux = Exposition, introduction

Le déroulement, l’enchaînement, la progression de l’action, le développement de l’action, l’évolution du conflit, le point culminant = Rising action

le noeud, la péripétie = The entanglement, twists and turns

Le narrateur, la narratrice (omniscient)= The narrator (omniscient)

L’antagoniste, l’adversaire = The antagonist, the adversary, the enemy

Les personnages secondaires = Supporting characters

Le décor, la scène = The setting, scenery, the scene

L’intrigue = The plot

Le complot = The conspiracy

Une oeuvre = One or several works by an author

Un oeuvre = Describing the ensemble of works for a writer

Un recueil (de nouvelles, de poésie) = A collection (of stories, of poetry)

Le thème =The theme

Albert Camus’ The Stranger

Posted on by Stephanie Dodaro

The Stranger, by Albert Camus

I recently discovered the book Looking for the Stranger by Alice Kaplan and started reading it at the same time as rereading The Stranger in preparation for a discussion with a student. It was through this combination of books that I was really able to look more deeply at the themes of the book and the personality of the main character. The Stranger, read by so many students in school, has as Kaplan says become a sort of “rite of passage” (Kaplan, 2). It sparks debate on all sides and leaves us wondering why we sympathize with the main character, wondering why he does not fight for his life, or for that matter even defend himself?

The Stranger is a classic and in my opinion a novel that everyone must read. You can read it simply for face-value, as a book about a man who seems disconnected from his world, and as events unfold he is lead closer and closer to the murder of a man on the beach. However, I think questions will come up that will cause the reader to delve more deeply into why. Why do the events unfold in a way that lead him to kill a man on the beach, why in this moment is he prompted to do something so extreme, and yet with such coldness? Why is he so disconnected from everyone and everything, his mother, his job, his friends, even his girlfriend? Why does he not respond to the violence he sees around him, only to then shoot a man completely unprovoked?

Kaplan says something that I have often heard said by another favorite writer of mine, Dany Laferrière,  in a similar way. She says that “books have a life. They come to life as you read them, and they stay alive long after you’ve turned the last page.” Oh, how I know that is true! The Stranger will do just that to you. In fact, the more I read this book, the more I feel it with me every day. Camus’ philosophy, often mislabeled as Existentialist, is in fact Absurdist. He sees men as all being condemned to death, all in their own time, of course. He says that as humans we are somewhat meaningless in the world. Meursault, the main character in The Stranger, says that we cannot change our lives. That basically describes our main character’s attitude before his own life. He is indifferent to his own life, saying, for example, to his girlfriend that he supposes that he does not love her, and that it does not make any difference, that it is all the same to him, but that if she wanted him to marry her, he would. He refuses to give way to the expectations of society, has no ambition to better his job at work, basically refusing a promotion and never justifying himself.

Camus uses the first person singular to tell his story, thus putting the words and thoughts directly into the mouth of his narrator. This gives us a strange feeling of distance between us and the writer, all while creating a strange relationship between us and the character. In my opinion it might be why by the end, we have a kind of sympathy for him, even while we basically know exactly what happened on that beach. By the end of the book, I wanted him to fight for himself, to let his lawyer try to save him. But eventually Meursault more or less condemned himself by saying “the sun made me do it.”

The question remains, of what exactly was Meursault convicted, putting his mother in a nursing home, or killing a man on the beach? At the trial, the victim was never mentioned, and the majority of the questions to him were related to his mother’s placement in a home, his lack of showing sadness, his behavior before the casket (drinking coffee, smoking and sleeping) and the relationship he began with Marie soon after his mother’s burial. Additionally, throughout the days following the death of his mother, he repeats phrases like “it’s not my fault” or that he felt guilty. Guilt over what? Did he feel guilty for abandoning his mother, or did he feel as if her placement in a home was what prompted her death, which of course we know is not true since we know she had a fiancé while there.

If anyone here is dying, it is Meursault, whose life seems empty. We see his slow Sundays where he sits on his balcony watching Life roll by. We know he has no passion about his job, or even for his girlfriend. He has no pets, no hobbies except bathing either at a pool or a beach. He eats at the same restaurant, and when not there will cook something simple like boiled potatoes. There is no spice or joy in his life from what we can see. He is a stranger to his life. Interestingly enough, talking about strangers, most of Camus’ characters are strangers to us, too. We never know Meursault’s first name, nor the name of the Arab that he shoots, nor the name of his neighbor’s girlfriend, la Mauresque. We never even know his mother’s name.
By the time we finish the book, maybe we can come to fully understand Camus’ philosophy, just like Meursault does at the end.
A truly stunning read, thought-provoking and moving. It gets better with age, and with every subsequent read! 5 stars indeed.

**** This title also available as a Book Club selection.  See my Services page for details.****

Le Monde est Son Langage

Posted on by Stephanie Dodaro

The newly published book by Alain Mabanckou, Le Monde est Mon Langage, is a tour of the French-speaking world in a series of essays. His travels take him all throughout the world meeting, occasionally by chance, French speakers and writers in the most unlikely of places, discussing literature, politics, francophonie, and the history of French literature as it appears in various places all over the world.

In his captivating introduction he explains how this autobiographie capricieuse came about.  He himself became a writer, not because he had to leave his native country, but because writing helped him to look at his world differently. Having lived on three continents, he says that he discovered this world through this point-of-view français. This is a book about the relationships that he has created with the people that he has met in his travels, calling them “ambassadors”, many of whom write in a language other than their native language, that same language that Mabanckou has adopted for his writing.  French does not belong only to the French, but is spoken the world over.  Many of the writers he will meet and write about are multi-national, multi-lingual and write in search of identity or on the theme of exile.

 

Chapter one begins in Paris where he meets the writer Le Clésio for a conference and remembers his relationship with him over the years.  Le Clésio, whose mother is from France, father from Mauritius but Breton by birth, now lives in New Mexico.  Their philosophical discussions on writing and language are fascinating and inspiring. These discussions set the tone for the book, and I especially enjoyed envisioning these two great men of literature strolling through the gardens of Paris while in deep discussion.   As the first and longest chapter, it seems to me that this one was indeed the most important.  His next stop is to my beloved New Orleans and a meeting with a man who claims to have roots with the Haitian hero Toussaint Louverture!

 

One of the many reasons why I find this book fascinating and captivating is, as I have said above, when he and his friends discuss topics such as the purpose of language, art, writing, poetry, whether poetry is dead, how poets are the guardians of the language and how a single language cannot define the world. These philosophical discussions are for me so thought-provoking and precious.  I read slowly and carefully, taking notes and occasionally putting it down just to contemplate.

 

Quite often the chapters in the book read like a biography with references to the most significant works produced by these writers and the impact their work has had on the literature of the region and the Francophone world. Some people may see them as dry, but to me they are always eye-opening, create great discussions and sometimes have sparked my interest in a certain writer or his work.  There are many chapters in which discussions will range from créolité, antillanité, the créolisation of Europe, to identity and exile, in the works of such authors as Edouard Glissant, Camara Laye, and Gary Victor, just to name a few.

 

Another of my favorite chapters is the one on Montreal with Dany Laferrière and his friend Rodney Saint-Éloi. It is partially a story,  partially an interview.  I have appreciated Dany’s humor and use of metaphor ever since I first discovered his work.  Even in this short chapter, his charm and humor come through.  Mabanckou, a long-time friend of Dany’s, clearly knows how to capture his essence.

 

It is clear through his writing that the French language is precious to him, and that writing this book is like a love letter to les lettres françaises, French literature, all of it from everywhere in the world.  For someone whose exposure to French literature outside of France is limited, this book is a great starting point.  For the great bibliophile, this is also an important work to add to your shelves.  Mabanckou’s defense of poetry, his pure belief in the importance of literature to move and inspire people will resonate with those passionate about language, as it has with me.

 

I have used it with students as a book club selection, with chapter by chapter discussion questions.

***Book available as a French Book Club Course, See my Services page***

Language Learning Never Ends

Posted on by Stephanie Dodaro

At some point in one’s language learning, it seems as if there is nothing left to learn, yet fluency still has not been attained. However, never forget that there is always more to a language than vocabulary and grammar.  There is the way that it is used everyday in that descriptive, poetic, idiomatic way that just never seems to be taught in school.  I have studied French for thirty years.  Granted, not all of that time has been spent in school.  Many of those years were outside the classroom, in my many travels to France and Francophone countries, through my many subscriptions to magazines and newspapers, in all of my reading and through all of the movies and news programs I have enjoyed since finishing school.  Yet there were times when I still felt my French was grammatically hyper-correct, that kind of “book French” for which my friends mocked me, yet not colloquial. I had never mastered the idiom.

 

Thanks to the Alliance Francaise, I discovered  Claude Duneton’s La puce à l’oreille: anthologie des expressions populaires avec leur origine. Perfect! It was just what I needed. I highly recommend this for the advanced French language student who is looking for a deeper understanding of the language and where certain expressions come from and why the French express things in certain ways.

This is not your typical book of idioms. A typical book of idioms will give a student a list of idioms and the meanings as best translated in English.  On occasion, however, after discussion with a native speaker, I have determined some of the “translations” in such books to be inaccurate, not quite grasping the original meaning, or just not quite the equivalent. Understandably, it is very difficult to translate some popular expressions.  Yet a simple “dictionary” of idioms does not make for easy memorization, either.  This book by Duneton reads like stories.  They are memorable stories, about the history of certain expressions, tracing their origins back to old French words with the occasional or eventual change of meaning that sometimes takes place. It was so memorable that maybe a few months later, at a film showing at the Alliance Francaise, I heard one of the characters using several of these expressions in the movie, and I did not need to make use of the subtitles to catch the meaning.  That might not have happened had I not just recently read this book.

 

A fairly common idiom that a student might even learn at school would be something like tomber en panne.  We learn this to mean “break down”, but what is a panne and why does it have to fall?  We will learn from Duneton that this is a nautical term and the fascinating story of what panne means.  Some of these expressions are very old and rarely used, but not too many.  I regularly come across some of these in books, even in ones that I have read even recently, like tenir le haut du pavé or se mettre sur son trente et un. You will also learn the origin of an expression which is very common even in English, le cordon bleu.  Putting the cart before the horse (which in French comes to: mettre la charrue avant les boeufs) may have its origins in old French labor idioms.  These are clearly explained in this book, and now I know them when I see them.  It makes my reading that much more enjoyable.

Another unexpected outcome and welcome realization is discovering why we say in French grand-mère without the extra e on grand.  Mère is feminine, why is grand not in the feminine form? Grand at the time was invariable and took masculine and feminine nouns.  There are other gems that we will learn here, like why ouvrier means worker, but ouvert means open, literally open for work.  Yet, there are words for work and those are now travail and travailler which used to mean “torture”.  I find this fascinating!

 

I cannot sufficiently sing the praises of this work.  You will simply have to discover it for yourselves. It is most definitely for the very advanced French reader, and you will certainly need a very good dictionary if you want to search for some of the words used that are simply not so common in French today.  Despite the difficulty of the text itself and the sources cited in old French, I do highly recommend it for anyone who wants a more fuller experience and glimpse into the highly colorful colloquial French.  We never stop learning a language.  It is a life-long experience.  I find it very exciting to learn new words or phrases, and common expressions, especially the colorful ones!  Vive le français!