Stories Collected While Living in France
How to Fake French. My friend Meredith, an American living in France for as many years as I have, shared this and I thought it was funny. The clip has four steps on how to fake French, No. # 2 is especially true. Did I ever tell you about the time I had an entire conversation with a French saleswoman by make sounds similar to step NO. # 2. Well I did, and in the end I bought a blouse from her shop.
Loved this! Will share with others….merci!!!
This is so funny! Wish I had seen it before my trip to France, all I kept saying was “uh” “uh” – and nodded with my head tilted to the side. Oh, I laugh now but while I was there I was mortified. C’est la vie!
Loved it ! I hope I get to come back to France to try these tips. I have found hand gestures to be pretty effective and, of course, any attempt at any French seems to be graciously received and appreciated. Oui?
Tres amusing!
Funny girl, you. I love this and will plan to use all five at the same time.
That was funny!
“My friend Meredith, an American living in France for as many tears as I have…”
Paging Dr. Freud.
Funny.
How to say something funny in Polish while speaking French: say the following phrases in French one after another:
my hand
beautiful bed
sweet step
The way they sound in Polish is “My mom’s behind/bum hurts”
I read about this in a memoir of a guy who as a boy had a French governess and kept asking her to say these words during official dinners all the time pretending that he is not sure how to pronounce them and when the governess obliged, everyone killed themselves laughing :-).
I love a good Freudian slip.
Beats “the smell of napalm in the morning.”
Spare me the smoking — merde!
yes, I have mimed to pretend I understood . . .
laugh out loud funny !
The French shrug as an added bonus.
listen, kiddo, this is how i communicate with most people in america now–it’s all they understand.
I’m glad this made you smile 🙂
Just last night we had French friends over for an apéro and once the conversation started coming at me from all sides in loud French, I picked up my wine glass and started sipping real fast like in the video 🙂 The problem is, that after wine sipping, I think I can join in the French conversation and I usually end up saying “n’importe quoi”…
I almost fell on the ground. It’s hilarious! The eating thing might be just a tad excessive, but I’m behind the rest of it.
What a RIOT!! This video is hilarious!! And after having 2 Japanese journalists here last night to interview me and my hubby about our pick for the upcoming New Hampshire state primary I have to confess
“faking it” in Japanese would be far more impossible! Fortunately they spoke fairly good English. I hope your friend gets some kind of award for this super funny film!
By the way…what do those French swear words translate to in English ? 🙂
Oh gosh, this sure was fun! I am so intimidated by languages……makes for insecure travel and going hungry….
I need for my Azorean videographer friend to make an equivalent one for Portuguese, because I’m really good at faking conversation in that language (and they all imagine I’m such a good listener!).
Before my once in a life time trip to Paris years ago I tried my level best to learn some French phrases. Man I have no talent in this area…..anyway I had a conversation……much like the video…..with a sales woman in a beautiful department store. I was interested in purchasing some pots and pans…..I asked her about them and couldn’t understand a thing she said back to me. I imagine she was telling me how much they costs and many of the details about them……she spent about 10 minutes doing so. I just kept agreeing with her, keeping eye contact with her…..and I stared longingly at the pots and pans.
When the conversation was over I was exhausted……..thanks for sharing the video I laughed out loud.
It’s so true. When we were in France we stopped a passerby to ask directions and he proceeded to rattle off all these directions in French. We just stood there nodded and looked very interested. We didn’t understand a word he was saying.
~elaine
I have two more
add very short interjections like “c’est pas vrai” “Non?” “Oui?” “Quand?”
just repeat what the other person just said with an exclamation point or question mark at the end “Trois fois!” “Trois fois?”
:)How funny! Love it!!
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