On her Facebook page, singer Lisa LeBlanc recently posted the update in the first image related to the show on the plaines d’Abraham in Québec. You can click on all the images in this post to see a larger version.
Remember, Lisa LeBlanc was born in New Brunswick, in a place called Rosaireville. She was born in 1990.
The French in this entry is how Lisa LeBlanc uses it as a francophone from New Brunswick, not Québec. More specifically, this variety of language is called Chiac.
In her update, she comments on the size of the stage:
Si jamais tu veux faire ton jogging, t’as juste à courir d’un boute à l’autre du stage des plaines une couple de fois pi tu seras all good. #cecittecesthuge
If you ever wanna go jogging, you just have to run a couple times from one end of the stage to the other on the Plains and you’re all good. #itshuge
Learn the expression si jamais. This is used all time. It means “if ever.” Si jamais tu veux parler, je suis là. Si jamais t’as besoin d’aide, appelle-moi.
Lisa didn’t write bout, she wrote boute. This pronunciation of bout is something you’ll hear often in colloquial French. Courir d’un boute à l’autre du stage.
She called the stage le stage, which is pronounced like its English equivalent. Note that if you pronounce stage as a French word, it refers to on-the-job training offered by educational institutions.
Une couple de fois? A couple times! This expression isn’t borrowed from English, despite appearances. It’s the other way round: English got the expression from French. You’ll hear couple pronounced colloquially as coupe.
What about the hastag? If we pull it apart, we get cecitte, c’est huge. Cecitte means “this,” like ceci. (Compare to ici and icitte.)
Lisa uses two more borrowings from English: c’est huge and tu seras all good. Both huge and all good are pronounced like their English equivalents.
I wanted to take another look at Lisa’s use of cecitte, so I did a search on Google for examples.
In the results, I came across more examples of cecitte from none other than Lisa LeBlanc herself!
In the second image, Lisa writes:
Well, cecitte, ça vient de blower ma mind.
Well, this just blew my mind.
You gotta love Lisa’s French!
Apart from another example of cecitte, we’ve also got blower ma mind.
La mind is pronounced like its English equivalent, and so is blower but then transformed into an -er verb (sounds like blow + é).
Hold on, we’re not done…
Here’s one more example from Lisa where she uses cecitte again, this time in a tweet:
Trouver cecitte. Être vraiment contente. YES.
Finding this. Being really happy. YES.
Lisa has written this tweet in a style typical of the updates on Facebook and Twitter.
It’s not unusual to hear francophones say YES! when happy about something.
Apprendre le français de Rosaireville sur OffQc. YES!
