The French Language

1000 billion or one trillion? It's the same thing, but it depends who you ask. In any case they are gigantic numbers. While reading an article recently in the French press where the budgets are flying through the roof again I saw the figure 1000 milliard and wondered why the journalist used that method for writing the figure, why not use trillion. In any case they are gigantic numbers. Well come to find out the French, the British (who finally agree on something with the French) and most of the rest of the world have different words than the U.S. (nothing new here, especially when it comes to measurement) for expressing these giant numbers. To try to understand the terms here is a list of them. As you will note the system for naming numbers used in the U.S. is not as logical as that used in other countries (like Great Britain, France, and Germany). In these countries, a billion - bi meaning two and -llion referring to million - logically has twice as many zeros as a million, …

French Acronyms are an invasive species! But an integral part of the French language.

Can you decipher this text full of usual French Acronyms?

Marie-France, a French lady, citizen of the RF, lives in IdF. She commutes daily via the RER, STIF and the RATP to the center of Paris where she runs a PME SARL. She learned her business acumen at INSEAD. She deals daily with TVA, PVs, CFE, CVAE, the CNIL, the RGPD, but luckily she doesn’t miss deadlines and thus does not receive many LRAR.

When she goes on vacation to PACA, her favorite region, she takes the SNCF, a TGV or TER. She dreams of visiting the TAAF, as well as the DROM-COM to walk the famous GR on Ile de la Réunion. To get there she’ll fly from one of the ADP, probably CDG. She plays the FDJ lottery and the PMU once in a while hoping to win big to finance her trip. She also has a PEL and a PEA to save money. She shops at the FNAC or the BHV where she pays with her CB.

M…

We have never had so much new vocabulary come into play in a month. Many of the words can be used in both French and English, but there are a few cases where it is better not to mix them up. Here's a selection of what we have noted. Do you speak the covid? Do you know the French nuances? Here's a novlangue Covid Vocabulary list.

Rona, Coco or Kid Corona – nicknames for the coronavirus. It is important to name things when trying to deal with it. Naming things is a way to domesticate and control a situation. Americans use Quarn as a nickname for pour quarantine and the French Confifi for confinement.

La Covid-19 - Le Corona Virus - Watch out for the difference in genders! The Academie française - guardians of the language have decided that La Covid-19 is feminin because it is an acronym which stems from "maladie" a noun which is feminin. Le corona virus is "masculin" because the noun virus is masculin. Read more directly from the horse's …

This would have been my annual Paris Marathon article. Marathon postponed (we hope--i.e., as opposed totally ash-canned for 2020). My local chocolate-shop is closed. We are allowed to shop for only basic necessities (achats [purchases] de première nécessité). Isn’t chocolate a basic necessity? We are authorized to go out and run, albeit for only an hour per day. If we had an older, fatter president who had an older, fatter prime minister who had an older, fatter health minister, that number would be zero hours per day. This generation of leaders knows that depriving exercise addicts of their workouts in addition to their general mobility would put them over the edge. We (the media, scholars, doomsdayers, fortunetellers, your grandmother) have for years been predicting that Planet Earth will be brought to its knees by terrorism, natural disaster, trade war, real war. It is being brought to its knees by a microscopic organism that has be…

Hints for Newcomers – Hindsights for Old-Timers

Franglais or Linguistic Stockholm Syndrome

by Shari Leslie Segall

Did I just say that? Did I? Wow! Our frequently appearing Hints-and-Hindsights are addressed to expats on a vast continuum ranging from the adventurers who arrived this morning with a backpack; no job; no apartment; no contacts; rudimentary, if any, French; and a healthy share of radiant optimism, to the hardy souls--whose numbers are, sadly, dwindling--who came to fight World War II, married a French demoiselle and never left. While this installment concerns the middle- and long-timers, you newcomers would do well to pay heed, as, whether you want it to or not, this will be your fate before long! Per http://www.linguisticsociety.org/resource/faq-how-do-we-learn-language, “By the time [a] child enters kindergarten, he or she will have acquired the vast majority of the rules and sounds of [his or her native] lang…