French, as romantic as it is, can be a challenging language to learn if you only have two weeks to go before your trip to Paris. Here are a few sentences that could be good to have up your sleeve (or saved on your phone) if you do happen to face a language barrier—or simply want to practice a bit of French (click the phrases for audio pronunciations): Parlez-vous anglais?= Do you speak English? Pouvez-vous m’aider?= Could you help me? Cest combien?= How much? Je vais prendre...= I will take... (when ordering in a restaurant) Il y a...= There is/there are... Je ne comprends pas.= I don’t understand. Je ne sais pas.= I don’t know. Pas de problème!= No problem! (literal translation) Cest pas grave!= It doesn’t matter. / It’s not important/serious. Cest super!= That’s great! Allez-y.= Go on. (Perfect to use if you’d like to let someone know if it’s okay to pass, etc.) On y va?= Shall we go? Ça marche.= That works. Cest vrai?= It literally means “it’s true” but is often used as a question to keep a conversation going. You can also throw in a pas, making it Cest pas vrai!instead, a grammatically incorrect but familiar way of saying “No way!” You can hear older men carry on a whole conversation by just repeating this little phrase. It really gets the other person going, often replying with Oui oui, cest vrai! Cest sympa.= It’s nice. Bien sûr.= Of course. Cest-à-dire...= I mean... En fait...= In fact... Pas du tout.= Not at all. You might think that French clichés like voliàand oh là là(both in a negative and a good way) are just that, but they’re actually used all the time by French people—even if they’d like to deny this every now and then.
Posted on: Sat, 25 Oct 2014 21:06:06 +0000
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