Well there’s no need for that!!
I like the signing off phrases, not least because they (usually) elicit a smile and a response in return - good to use with people in shops or people who are busy and (to me) they imply more of a recognition of the other person than just au revoir.
bonne journée
bonne soirée
bon fin de journée
bon après-midi
bonne continuation
It’s odd how I happily accept (and support) the use of ‘bonne journée’ yet if anyone dares say ‘have a nice day now’ to me I have to breathe deeply and count to ten to avoid visiting an act of great physical violence upon them.
Actually I do have a Belgium accent after living there for 12-years and it is ma femme who gives me the worst grief. It is the other way around when it comes to German.
I can’t remember when/why but I’ve learnt to respond with ‘et vous/toi également’ to such parting phrases.
They just get it in the neck, as in “coup de lapin”
Coup de lapin = the rabbit hit you (improbable but grammatically that’s what it is)
Coup du lapin = hitting someone as if they were a rabbit
I rather avoid all the sayings that are a bit sad about animals but I wait all year for sweltering days in summer when I can use, “Je transpire des carottes!”
You are correct it should be coup du lapin as in the English whiplash.
Good response, we are what we are and what we’ve become. Live and let live and show a lot more tolerance would work Xx
Our great friend Christine, now languishing with cancer in hospital, understands and speaks French fluently. That is that whereas my poor immediate comprehension impedes my response, she seems to think in French and rattles off a reply straight away.
But, it is a universal truth with everyone who knows her, that her accent is atrocious. Even I wince when hearing it, even she knows how famous she is, and I know several French people who have some English, plead with her to switch to her own language in conversation.
Her husband speaks English but is not alway easy to understand and, as I visit him for news every Thursday, our conversation is a strange melange, he speaking English and me, French.
This last Thursday he wanted me to come for a meal with another friend but to make sure I understood he phoned Christine and got her to ring me.
We are meeting at 12.30 today.
Maybe add blonde?
I did get several laughs at times when I stated: Je suis désolé pour mon français poubelle
I’m not surprised: poubelle is feminin!
And the word has a (perhaps) surprising etymology.
Language is a living thing and changes all the time. Time and place matters. There are plenty of words and terms that it is sometimes better to understand than to use oneself. France is connected to Europe and we can often hear the odd foreign word dropped into French conversation. I think that TV and films supply a lot of these.
I enjoy hearing the Arabic words used amongst French speaking young people in France today. “Chouf” for a quick look; “chouiya” little bit; and my favourite, “yalla!” to hurry companions along, or just exclaim OK. I hesitate to use them myself out of concern that someone hearing may think I am mocking.
Strangely, I do use random Chinese words and quite a few Italian words out loud that are deliciously onomatopoeic. Mainly because there just isn’t so apt a translation in French or English. For some reason I do not fear these will give offence here in France.
Isn’t that verlan?
Entirely against French custom and practice, but entirely within my own (I’d sooner arrive half an hour early than 5 minutes late) I turned up at Laurent’s house at 1225, something that he emphasised with approval to Christine on the phone, but we had to wait until 1315 before Michael troubled the door with his knock.
Laurent was getting very fidgetty that his other English friend should keep us so long from our soup.
Verlan would be “Zella!”
I can see a lot of confusion in the café
That’s the Perigord 45!
We were introduced to “le quart d’heure de politesse” early on in our stay here. A neighbour invited us to a party and being typically British we turned up a minute or two early. There was no one home not even the neighbours who invited us. Then 15 minutes later people started turning up.
When we moved to our current home we were invited to the mayors New Year “verre d’amity” meeting. To show that we were getting well integrated we arrived (politely) 15 minutes late. The mayor however was a stickler for time keeping and we walked into the salle des fetes (knowing nobody) in the middle of his speech where he had just welcomed us to the village, observed that we had not bothered to turn up and moved on to other things.
Like most of our French cockups, it turned to a positive and broke the ice with everybody, having a good laugh at our expense.