“Pas stupid, c’est Français”

That is my French teacher’s favourite saying, when explaining a phrase or word that doesn’t translate easily. It reads, “Not stupid, it is French”. I’ve adopted it as my own.

Anglophones can’t be too judgemental, considering all the peculiarities of our own tongue.

Nonetheless, I think the French have a lot to answer for, considering they believe they are at the forefront of logical thinking. “C’est logic”, is another favourite phrase of “ma prof”.

You would think with half as many words as the English, according to the book I’m reading, learning the language would be simple.

But why, for example, does “I love you” translate to “Je t’aime” (I you love), but “I miss you” change to “Tu me manqué” (You I miss).

Perhaps being the cultural home of philosophers explains some of the peculiarities (to anyone other than a philosopher) of the local tongue. It’s very possible the dozens of people I see in the coffee shops all day are out-of-work linguists.

I heard rumour that other groups of logical thinkers, such as engineers, moved to Germany to design autobahns.

I digress. After more than four weeks of classes, we’ve covered passé compose, future, imperfect, somewhat perfect, silly and the stupid tenses.

Aside from the difficulties of “les faux amis”, which by definition are there to trick you…there are some expressions I’m simply avoiding altogether because I can’t make sense of them. For example, “C’est terrible”. I’ve heard this expression several times, and I’ve been told it could be used to say something is great or terrible, depending on the context.

To top it off, you could say “C’est pas terrible”… bon chance in working out what that means.

Jon