Here’s another example sentence taken from 1000, which has 1000 examples of things you can hear people say in French conversations in Québec:

C’est n’importe quoi!
That’s nonsense! Whatever!

This expression isn’t limited to the French of Québec.

It can also be shortened to just:

N’importe quoi!
Nonsense!

The final e of n’importe is pronounced, so n’importe has three syllables (n’im/por/te).

Tu dis n’importe quoi.
You’re saying nonsense.

Écoute-les pas, i’ disent n’importe quoi.
Don’t listen to them, they’re saying nonsense.

You’ll remember that the Québécois pronounce the letter d like dz before the French i sound, so disent from the example above sounds like dziz.

If you want to make your French sound more Québécois, you’ll definitely want to adopt this dz sound. It’s described in the 1000 PDF along with all the example sentences. You can buy it here.

In this post, I’m going to describe an offcois study method you can implement right away to learn the 1000 examples of Québécois French from the OffQc guide called 1000. (Offcois means offqc-ish.) This method is for dedicated and serious learners; it’ll require work of you and sticking to a routine.

Each page of the 1000 guide contains five examples of use. With the method described here, you’ll work on one page per day, for a total of 200 days.

Here’s what to do:

Your day will be divided up into five blocks of time. The five blocks are:

• dawn to 08:59
• 09:00 to 12:59
• 13:00 to 16:59
• 17:00 to 20:59
• 21:00 to midnight

At some point during the first block of time, you’ll read the first example sentence on the page and accompanying notes. Understand the example sentence, then repeat it to yourself several times until it sticks in your head. Repeat the sentence silently to yourself or aloud whenever you can for the remainder of the block of time — as you brush your teeth, as you wait for the bus, etc.

In the second block, you’ll learn the second sentence and repeat it silently to yourself or aloud for the remainder of the time in the block. You’ll do the same thing for the rest of the sentences and blocks of time.

• dawn to 08:59, example sentence #1 on the page
• 09:00 to 12:59, example sentence #2 on the page
• 13:00 to 16:59, example sentence #3 on the page
• 17:00 to 20:59, example sentence #4 on the page
• 21:00 to midnight, example sentence #5 on the page

It would be best to start at the beginning of each block of time so that you have as much time as possible to let the example sentence stay present in your mind. If you do it just before the block ends, it’ll defeat the purpose, so start as early as possible within the block.

If you miss a block, you’ll need to make up for it as soon as possible. For example, let’s say it’s 10:00 (second block of time) and you still haven’t done the sentence from the first block. In this case, you’ll need to learn sentence #1 and sentence #2 together, and repeat them both to yourself or aloud for the remainder of the second block.

Obviously, the more blocks you miss, the more difficult this exercise will become, so try to keep up. If you’ve missed the entire day and it’s now 21:00, you’ll have to do 5 sentences all at once and repeat them silently to yourself or aloud for the remainder of the block of time.

You must complete the day’s five sentences before midnight. Don’t learn new sentences between midnight and dawn. If you want to study French in that period of time, review older stuff or work on something else.

This routine will give you 200 days of work, which is good, and it will allow you to keep examples of French present in your mind all day long. You can even do this while you’re at work and nobody has to know.

This is the minimum you can do with this method. If you want to do even more because you’re especially motivated and serious, here are things you can do to reinforce what you’re learning:

— After you learn an example sentence, you can listen to several minutes worth of French (or as much as you can manage): radio, TV, real conversation, etc. The more colloquial the language the better. This way you will incorporate listening practice into your routine, which is excellent. You’ll hear the example sentences come up during your listening practice, so this will reinforce things;

— As you repeat the example sentence to yourself, you can add alternate versions to yourself alongside it. For example, you can change the nouns in the sentence to different ones, change the verb tenses, etc. Be sure to repeat the original sentence as a minimum, though. The alternate versions are extra;

— Try to find a way to use the sentence in a live situation during your block of time with someone who speaks French;

— Try to create a dialogue in your head or aloud that uses the example sentence;

— Before you go to bed, reread all the example sentences you learned that day;

— When you wake up in the morning, reread all the example sentences from the day before;

— As you listen to French, if you hear something you’ve come across before in 1000, make a note of the example. You can create a list of these usages and dedicate even more time to learning them because they’re high frequency.

Remember, learning French is a long-term endeavour. This method will give you 200 days of material to work with. If you’re regular and devoted in your efforts and do it over a long enough period of time, you’ll achieve what you set out to do (i.e., become a fluent speaker of French and more specifically of Québécois French).

You can get started with this method today. Even if you’ve read through a lot of 1000 already, you can use this method to go back over older stuff and review.

You can buy 1000 here and start the offcois study method #1 now.

Say aloud the French word for milk.

It’s lait, right?

Now, how did you pronounce it? Did it sound like lé or lè?

If we transcribe lé into IPA, we get [le].
If we transcribe lè into IPA, we get [lɛ].

Do you hear the difference between the two sounds?

Say these French words aloud: mes, chez, tes, né. All these words use é. They can be transcribed in IPA as [me], [ʃe], [te], [ne]. In IPA, [e] sounds like é.

Now say these French words aloud: belle, fesse, messe, net. All these words use è. They can be transcribed in IPA as [bɛl], [fɛs], [mɛs], [nɛt]. In IPA, [ɛ] sounds like è. Listen carefully to sound made by [ɛ]. Say belle again, but this time, hold the [ɛ] sound longer: bèèèèèèèèèèlle.

Now try this: say belle, but instead of pronouncing it correctly as [bɛl], mispronounce it intentionally as [bel], or as though it were written bél. Do you hear a distinct difference now between [bɛl] and [bel]?

Isolate [e] and say it on its own a few times: é, é, é, é, é.

How about [ɛ] now — can you isolate it and say it on its own? è, è, è, è, è.

Think about the English word meh. You know, it’s that word often used to show your indifference towards something, especially online. Meh. Meh, meh, meh. Does the vowel sound in meh sound more like [e] or [ɛ] to you?

We started this post by looking at the French word lait, and I asked you how you pronounced it — as [le] or [lɛ].

If we look up lait in the Usito dictionary, we see it transcribed in IPA. Here’s what we see:

Lait is transcribed as [lɛ]. Does that match or mismatch how you pronounce it?

In a television show called Mensonges, a character who plays an investigator said to another character:

Pis? Ça avance-tu mon enquête?

In this question, we’ve got an example of tu being used to ask a yes-no question.

pis?
so? well? and?

ça avance
it’s advancing, moving forward

ça avance-tu?
is it advancing?, moving forward?

mon enquête
my investigation

Remember, the tu in this question can be understood as meaning yes or no? (and not you). It’s used to ask yes-no questions in an informal way in spoken French. Ça avance-[oui ou non], mon enquête?

Pis is a contraction of puis. It sounds as if it were written pi.

Pis? Ça avance-tu mon enquête?
So? Is my investigation moving forward?
So? Is my investigation going well?

This yes-no tu is placed after the conjugated verb.

Tu veux-tu?
Do you want to?

Ça se peut-tu?
Is that possible?

In tenses like the past tense, where there’s an auxiliary and a past participle, tu is placed after the auxiliary.

J’ai-tu dit ça?
Did I say that?

Tu is used to ask yes-no questions. You can’t use it with quand, pourquoi, qui, etc. For example, you can’t ask pourquoi tu fais-tu ça? because that’s not a yes-no question. You’d ask pourquoi tu fais ça? instead.

Can you turn these into yes-no questions with tu?

1. T’aimes ça.
2. On a besoin de ça.
3. T’as peur.

Answers
1. T’aimes-tu ça?
2. On a-tu besoin de ça?
3. T’as-tu peur?

There are many more examples of yes-no questions using tu in the downloadable OffQc books.

On his TV show, Ricardo said this about something he had just cooked in front of his TV audience:

Ça, pour moi, là, c’est vraiment super.

What’s the là doing in there?

This là doesn’t mean there. We might be able to translate it instead as well in this example.

Ça, pour moi, là, c’est vraiment super.
This [what I made], to me, well, it’s really great.

As you listen to French, you’ll be hearing là used very frequently like this. It often comes at the end of statements, but not always — in the example above, it’s in the middle.

Ben, je sais pas, là.
Well, I dunno.

Faque qu’est-ce qu’on fait, là?
So what’re we gonna do then?

Moi là, j’aime pas ça.
Yeah well, me, I don’t like that.

Ben, c’est comme tu veux, là.
Well, whatever you want.

You’ll probably want to resist the urge to find a direct equivalent into English. The more you listen to spoken French, the less mysterious this use of là will seem to you — and you’ll probably want to start using it yourself!

This là is a very characteristic feature of the French spoken in Québec, so don’t be afraid to try popping it in every once in a while into your own French. Your Québécois listeners will love it. :-D

Check out this movie title:

Guibord s’en va-t-en guerre

The expression used here is s’en aller en guerre, to go to war. Il s’en va means he goes, he’s going.

Why is there a t in there between va and en? How come it’s not Guibord s’en va en guerre instead here?

That t in the title is called un t euphonique; it’s there to provide a buffer between the vowel sound of va and that of en. In fact, you’re already familiar with this concept: it occurs in a-t-il…?, pense-t-elle, etc. Instead of a il…?, which is hard to say, a t gets inserted, for example: a-t-il vraiment dit ça?, and not a il vraiment dit ça?

A while ago, you saw how t’es un (you’re a) might get pronounced as t’es-t-un. That’s the t euphonique again. T’es-t-un chien. You’re a dog.

The funny thing about the t euphonique, though, is that sometimes it’s considered entirely correct and required (like in a-t-il…?), but other times it’s not, like in t’es-t-un. In t’es-t-un, the t euphonique is informal, but some people might consider it outright incorrect.

The movie title Guibord s’en va-t-en guerre is inspired by a song called Marlbrough s’en va-t-en guerre, which also uses the t euphonique.

You’ve seen before how the expression va-t’en! means go away! Don’t confuse the t in va-t’en! for the t in Guibord s’en va-t-en guerre. This t isn’t performing the same role each time.

s’en aller
il s’en va
Guibord s’en va en guerre
Guibord s’en va-t-en guerre
The underlined t here is the t euphonique, acting as a buffer between vowels.

s’en aller
tu t’en vas
va-t’en!
The underlined t’ here comes from the reflexive verb s’en aller in its second-person singular imperative form. This explains why we write va-t’en!, and not va-t-en!

On television, a speaker used a French version of the expression “no double dipping!”

This expression is sometimes used half in jest at parties amongst invitees to remind themselves not to dip their chip twice into a shared bowl of sauce.

Here’s what she said:

• Pas de double trempette!
  No double dipping!

Then, in a televised ad, a second speaker told listeners to take advantage of incredible bargains at a certain store.

He said:

• Profitez d’incroyables aubaines!
  Take advantage of incredible bargains!

Aubaine is a feminine noun meaning bargain.

Finally, a third speaker used an informal pronunciation when he said in an interview:

• Dans le cas de c’te travail-là
  In the case of this job
  As far as this job goes

What’s c’te?

Informally, both ce and cette might be pronounced c’te. It sounds like te with an s on the front of it (s’te).

The informally pronounced c’te travail-là, then, means ce travail-là.

1. Pas de double trempette!
2. Profitez d’incroyables aubaines!
3. Dans le cas de c’te travail-là

Here’s more French as spoken by Ricardo.

As he was preparing a dish before his televised audience, he said to go easy on the salt when adding it to his preparation. His exact words were:

Mollo sur le sel.
Easy on the salt.

Use normal French stress when pronouncing mollo (i.e., on final syllable). Mollo means gently, with moderation.

At the same time that he said mollo sur le sel, he also said:

On se garde une p’tite gêne.
We’ll hold off, we’ll hold back, let’s show some restraint, etc.

This was Ricardo’s way of insisting further on not using too much salt.

You’ve seen the expression se garder une petite gêne before when a TELUS advertising campaign linked it to pulling out one’s penis at inopportune moments.

Ricardo also uses this expression a lot:

Grosso modo.
More or less.

Use normal French stress when pronouncing grosso modo (i.e., on final syllables). Grosso modo means more or less, approximately.

Ricardo uses this expression when the amount of an ingredient to be added doesn’t need to be exact, just approximate. For example: une cuillère à soupe, grosso modo, a tablespoon, more or less.

The expression grosso modo can be used in any kind of conversation where you want to say more or less, not just when talking about cooking.

Whenever Ricardo wants to stress that preparing something in a certain way is very important, he often says:

C’est ben important.
It’s really important.

Ben is an informal, spoken contraction of bien; it sounds like the French word bain. Ben important sounds like bain n’important.

1. Mollo sur le sel.
2. On se garde une p’tite gêne.
3. Grosso modo.
4. C’est ben important.

On TV, a speaker said:

en plus de ça

I don’t remember the whole of what he said, but we can imagine an example like this:

J’ai voyagé partout et, en plus de ça, j’ai été payé pour me déplacer.
I travelled everywhere and, what’s more, I was paid to travel.

When the speaker said en plus de ça, he used an informal pronunciation. What he said in fact sounded like this:

en plus de t’ça

If you want to try to pronounce it yourself to hear how it sounds, here’s how to do it:

First, say de aloud. Now say de with a t sound on the end of it. Now add ça after that. That gets you de t’ça.

Now you can say en plus de t’ça, where plus sounds like plu.

This informal pronunciation of de ça as de t’ça isn’t uncommon at all. You’ll hear it frequently in informal conversations. It can occur whenever de ça is used, and not just in the expression en plus de ça.

That said, you don’t need to adopt de t’ça yourself (de ça is always acceptable, even in informal conversations), but do learn to recognise it.

There’s an ad running on Radio-Canada where the speaker says:

Y’a ben trop d’stock.

Maybe you’re getting used to seeing these informal contractions and recognise this as meaning:

Il y a bien trop de stock.

What you might be less sure of though is the word stock.

Although stock can mean stock (as in merchandise), it was used here instead in the general sense of stuff. This is an informal, conversational usage.

Y’a ben trop d’stock.
There’s way too much stuff.

Y’a ben trop d’stock dans ta valise.
There’s way too much stuff in your suitcase.

To pronounce trop d’stock, first say trop. Now put a d sound on the end of trop (like tro’d’). Now add the word stock. Trop d’stock has two syllables.

Remember, ben sounds like the French word bain.

In fact, we’ve seen this use of stock before. In an earlier post, Louis (from Les Parent) is helping his teenaged son with his homework, but his son is having trouble doing it.

Louis doesn’t see why his son shouldn’t understand his homework because it’s below his grade level. He gets frustrated with his son and tells him that what they’re working on is du stock de troisième année, grade three stuff.

During a conversation, someone said:

[bla bla bla bla bla]… et là, mon téléphone sonne.

You’ll find it really useful to learn how to use là like this. It means then here. (This is not the same là that you read about recently in #1029.)

When you’re recounting past events in a conversation, you can use the expressions et là or, more informally, pis là the way English says and then. In the example above, the verb is in the present tense, but it’s understood that the events occurred in the past.

[bla bla bla bla bla]… et là, mon téléphone sonne.
[blah blah blah blah blah]… and then, my phone rang.

Et là and pis là both mean the same thing. Pis là sounds as if it were written pi là. Pis is a spoken contraction of puis.

You can also say là on its own without et or pis before it.

I grabbed a handful of usages that have appeared on OffQc since post #1000 and put them in a cloud. Can you explain to yourself how each one might be used? You can click on the image for a larger version.

At a store, I heard one employee ask another the equivalent of this in French:

Does he have his card?

Can you guess how the employee might’ve said it? She said it in an informal way, without using est-ce que.

Here’s what the employee said:

Y’a-tu sa carte?

In this question, y’a-tu means does he have?, has he got?

Here’s why:

Il a sa carte means he has his card. But, in colloquial language, it’s more likely to be pronounced y’a sa carte. (This is because the final L sound of il is very frequently not pronounced: i’ a sa carte.) Then, by putting tu after the verb, we turn y’a sa carte into an informally asked yes-no question: y’a-tu sa carte? (Remember, this tu doesn’t mean you.)

In other questions, y’a-tu can mean is there?, are there?

Y’a-tu un problème?
Is there a problem?

This time, though, y’a is an informal pronunciation of il y a, not il a. This informal pronunciation occurs because the il of il y a is losing its L sound again: i’ y a. Then, by putting tu after the verb again, we create an informally asked yes-no question: y’a-tu?, is there?, are there?

I thought this was interesting: McDonalds has a new dish — smoked meat poutine in English, or poutine au smoked meat in French. (See screenshots below.) Both terms are half English, half French, using the same words.

French version:

English version:

What’s also interesting is the use of italics in the French version’s description (and lack thereof in the English version), which tells us something interesting about how speakers of each language view borrowed words.

In the French version’s description (click on the image to read it; it’s in the blue section), smoked meat is in italics because the term comes from English. Bouffe, meaning food, is also in italics because it’s an informal usage.

When you go to the English version’s description, maybe you’d likewise expect poutine to be in italics because it comes from French — except it’s not. It’s treated like any other English word.

The use of italics on smoked meat in French isn’t really surprising — words borrowed from English are frequently put in italics. But this does tell us something important about how words borrowed from English are viewed. By using italics, we’re being reminded that such words fall outside of what’s considered to be “French.”

It’s as if the author or translator is saying to readers, “yes, this is the way it’s said — smoked meat — but we probably shouldn’t say it that way, so we’ll need italics here to signal that.”

What about the italics on bouffe? Italics here are more surprising. Bouffe is a French word — informal, yes, but not borrowed from English. Bouffe and smoked meat, though, get the same treatment: italics. This tells us something as well about how informal words are viewed, at least by the author or translator of this text. If bouffe was put in italics, we can probably assume that words like pogner, capoter, niaiser, etc., would’ve been as well, had they been used.

The English version doesn’t use any italics in the description. In fact, it would seem downright odd to see poutine put in italics in the English version, wouldn’t it?

As for informal words, there aren’t any in the English text equivalent to bouffe, but let’s imagine for a minute that an informal word really had been used: yummy, let’s say. If this word had been used, do you think it would’ve been put in italics?

zervice? oufert?

The advert on the back of this Montréal bus says that parts and service is open until 11:30… well, sort of:

Zervice et pièces oufert jusqu’à 23 h 30

Can you guess why service and ouvert are spelled zervice and oufert?

In the Québécois French guide 1000, there’s an example question (#8) that reads:

Ça s’peut-tu?
Can that be? Is that possible?

We’ll come back to this question in a minute; let’s back up and look first at the verb se pouvoir.

Se pouvoir means être possible, to be possible.

Ça se peut.
= C’est possible.
= That’s possible.

If you say ça se peut exactly as written, it has three syllables: ça / se / peut. But se can lose its vowel sound in regular speech, so you’re much more likely to hear this pronounced with two syllables instead as: ça s’peut. To say this, just put the s sound on the end of ça, then say peut. (It sounds like sass peu).

Let’s say now that we want to ask is that possible?, i.e., turn ça s’peut into a yes-no question. Of course, you can put est-ce que in front of it and that would work (est-ce que ça s’peut?), but there’s a different way frequently used in regular conversations that you’ll want to know — it uses tu.

Ça s’peut.
Ça s’peut-tu?
That’s possible.
Is that possible?

Remember, this tu doesn’t mean you. All it does is transform ça s’peut into a yes-no question in an informal way. This tu means the same thing as est-ce que, but whereas est-ce que is put before the subject, tu is placed after the verb.

The question ça s’peut-tu? has three syllables: ça s’ / peut / tu. (It sounds like sass peu tu. But maybe you’ll remember that the letter t before the French u sound in fact sounds like ts in Québécois French [like the ts in the English word cats], so, more accurately, we can say it sounds like sass peu tsu.)

In a conversation yesterday, I heard someone say:

Ça s’peut très bien.
That may very well be.
That’s entirely possible.

He could’ve said this after having been asked ça s’peut-tu?, for example.

The next time you want to say c’est possible in a conversation, for a change use ça s’peut instead. There’s nothing wrong with c’est possible, of course, but ça s’peut is used so frequently that you can be using it too. You can incorporate the informally asked ça s’peut-tu? into your usage as well, and surprise your listeners with your natural-sounding French.

If you want to read more about what’s in the Québécois French guide 1000, that’s here. If you want to buy and download it right now, that’s here.

I heard someone say this on the radio recently:

On est en tabarnouche!

What does it mean?

The expression être en tabarnak is a vulgar expression meaning to be pissed off. Tabarnak is a swear word; to tone down the vulgarity of it, someone might say tabarnouche instead. The person who said the quote above didn’t want to swear on the radio, so she used tabarnouche instead:

On est en tabarnouche!
We’re peeved! (i.e., angry)

Of course, if you didn’t want to tone it down at all and wanted to swear, it would be:

On est en tabarnak!
We’re pissed off! (i.e., angry)

Check how you’re pronouncing on est en:

The liaison occurs twice in on est en, so in reality it sounds like on n’é t’en. Remember, with the liaison, it’s really the following word whose pronunciation is affected, not the first. In on est en, the pronunciation of on doesn’t change; it’s the pronunciation of est that changes — it’s pronounced né. Similarly, en is in fact pronounced t’en.

Put a pause where you see a slash below to make sure you’re saying it right:

on / n’é / t’en

In the photo taken inside a supermarket, we read:

Joyeuse Halloween!
Happy Halloween!

Halloween is a feminine noun. The initial h isn’t pronounced.

Here’s a list of Halloween expressions and vocabulary in French, as used in Québec.

à l’Halloween
on Halloween

passer l’Halloween
to go trick-or-treating

passer de maison en maison
to go from house to house

fêter, célébrer l’Halloween
to celebrate Halloween

décorer la maison
to decorate the house

un costume d’Halloween
Halloween costume

se déguiser en vampire
to dress up as a vampire

ramasser des bonbons
to collect treats

donner de bonnes friandises
to give good candies

un suçon (sucker, lollipop), une tablette/barre de chocolat (chocolat bar), de la gomme à mâcher (chewing gum), un caramel (caramel), de la réglisse (liquorice), un petit sac de chips (small bag of chips)

une petite banque de l’UNICEF
a little UNICEF money box

un squelette (skeleton), une sorcière (witch), une citrouille (pumpkin), un vampire (vampire), un fantôme (ghost), une toile d’araignée (spider web), une princesse (princess), un clown (clown), un loup-garou (werewolf), un cimetière (cemetery)

sonner à la porte
sonner aux portes
to ring the doorbell
to ring doorbells

cogner, frapper à la porte
cogner, frapper aux portes
to knock on the door
to knock on doors

vider, découper et décorer une citrouille
to clean out, carve and decorate a pumpkin

Des bonbons, s’il vous plaît!
Halloweeeeen!
Joyeuse Halloween!
Trick or treat!

I took a look at some of the search terms visitors have used recently to land on OffQc via Google. In this post, I’ll try to provide the answers these visitors were looking for.

The search terms (in blue) are reproduced here exactly as the visitor spelled them in Google.

GOOGLE SEARCH TERMS #1:
french canadian pronunciation of the word “pet” (fart)

The French word for fart is un pet. What I think you were probably wondering is whether or not the t on the end of pet is pronounced. The answer is yes. You’ll hear pet pronounced pètt in Québec.

GOOGLE SEARCH TERMS #2:
le mot quebecois away la

The word you’re looking for is enweille or aweille. (The weille part sounds like the English word way. Other spellings are used as well, like awèye and enwèye.) Saying enweille! to someone is a way of motivating that person (as in you can do it!) or telling that person to get a move on, to hurry up (as in come on!).

For example, a coach might say enweille! to his players to encourage them (i.e., let’s go, you can do it!), or an angry parent might say it to his dillydallying child (i.e., come on, let’s go, move it!).

The expression let’s go! is also used in French, and it might be used alongside enweille:

Enweille, let’s go, let’s go!
You can do it, let’s go, let’s go!

Enweille, let’s go, let’s go!
Hurry up, let’s go, let’s go!

The Google searcher also wrote la in his search terms, which is of course là. Là can be used with enweille for emphasis: Enweille, là!

GOOGLE SEARCH TERMS #3:
meaning je capote

Je capote can mean either I love it! (when happy) or I’m flipping out! (when angry).

For example, if someone’s really excited about something (winning a prize, for example), that person might say je capote! (I love it! This is so awesome!). A person who’s really angry about something might also say je capote! (I’m flipping out! I’m freaking out!).

The spontaneously used pronunciation is in fact j’capote, which sounds like ch’capote. 

GOOGLE SEARCH TERMS #4:
expression prendre une brosse

The Québécois expression prendre une brosse means to get drunk, wasted, sloshed, etc. A variation on this expression is virer une brosse.

GOOGLE SEARCH TERMS #5
tu es fine in English

Tu es fine literally means you’re nice, you’re kind. It can also be translated as that’s kind of you. Fine is the feminine form. The masculine form is fin.

Remember, tu es contracts to t’es in regular speech (sounds like té), so you’ll hear it said spontaneously as t’es fine (for a woman) and t’es fin (for a man).

Other ways you can hear it said are: t’es ben fine, t’es ben fin and t’es don’ ben fine, t’es don’ ben fin. Ben sounds like the French word bain; it’s a contraction of bien. Ben fine and ben fin mean very kind, very nice. Don’ (from donc) adds even more emphasis. T’es don’ ben fine! (to a woman) You’re really kind! You’re really nice! That’s so very kind of you!

GOOGLE SEARCH TERMS #6
capoti bain bain raide

What you want is capoter ben ben raide. Here’s the verb capoter again. Capoter ben raide means to totally flip out (in anger), to flip out big time, to totally lose it, etc.

Again, ben is a contraction of bien; it sounds like the French word bain. It means really here, and it can be repeated for emphasis. Raide literally means stiff, but it’s used here to reinforce, like ben.

J’ai capoté ben raide!
I totally flipped out! I totally lost it! I lost it big time!

GOOGLE SEARCH TERMS #7
en calvaire québécois

In a recent post, we saw that être en tabarnak is a vulgar way of saying to be angry, similar to the English to be pissed off. Être en calvaire means the same thing. If you’re en calvaire, then you’re pissed off.

En calvaire can also be used as a rude reinforcer, like a vulgar version of the word très. (This goes for en tabarnak as well.) I’ fait chaud en calvaire, for example, means it’s really goddamn hot out.

In entry #1040, we saw a common expression underused by learners of French: ça se peut. It means that’s possible.

In today’s post, let’s look at another common expression learners of French tend not to use.

This week, I returned an item I’d bought at a store. As the cashier was processing the return, she asked me to sign a form and to write in a reason for the return. She explained it didn’t really matter what the reason was; I just needed to write in anything. She said:

Ça prend juste une raison.
You just need (to provide) a reason.

Ça prend is used frequently in spoken language, but it’s usually not taught to learners of French. You’ve probably learned il faut, but not ça prend. They mean the same thing.

Pour magasiner en ligne, ça prend une carte de crédit.
You need a credit card to shop online.

Pour aller en Turquie, ça prend un billet d’avion.
You need a plane ticket to go to Turkey.

Ça prend literally means it takes (it takes a credit card; it takes a plane ticket), which is sometimes used in English too:

Ça prend du guts pour apprendre le français.
It takes guts to learn French.