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Even if you've lived in France for years, there are some French phrases and expressions that might still catch you out. Here are a just a few of the many that we often get wrong.

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Du coup This filler phrase meaning something like "so" or "therefore" pops up in French conversation similarly to how "like" peppers the speech of an American teenager. This word isn't used with nearly the same frequency as "sorry" in English. Adieu Say this to a French person and you're wishing them a final farewell, as in you'll never see them again. This tricky little word consistently stumps French learners because it can mean two opposite things - either "more" or "none", depending on whether you pronounce the 's' or not pronouncing the s means "more".

French phrases that language learners just don't get - The Local

They should say instead: But the problem is there are far more than 17 confusing phrases in French. Can you name any more? Sign up for our free Today in France newsletter. Get notified about breaking news on The Local. Popular articles Bare-breasted 'Mariannes' confront police at Paris protest French police warn the government: France can draw breath but the story of the gilets jaunes is far from over France's 'yellow vest' protests calmer on decisive weekend.

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Related articles The language you'll need for a Christmas in France. This term is consistently translated by Claire Jacobson as English descent. This is precisely the point that I wished to convey in my condensed criticism: As evidence that Claire Jacobson's translation is, broadly speaking, correct,. I would ask the reader to consult pages of Anthropologie structurale Had she used the English term filiation rather than descent in her translation the result would have been nonsense. In English anthropological usage a child is equally filiated to both parents and it makes no sense to write of a society being characterised by patrilineal or matrilineal filiation.


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Correspondingly, in the English usage, descent is a meaningful concept only in the context of systems of unilineal descent. In such a context it makes sense to talk, in the manner of Fortes, of "complementary filiation". Where descent is patrilineal a child is linked by complementary filiation to its mother; where descent is matrilineal a child is linked by complementary filiation to its father.

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But in both these cases the child is linked by filiation equally to both parents. Thus to say, as in Claire Jacobson's text, that the "social organization of the Trobriand Islanders of Melanesia is characterized by matrilineal descent" makes sense; to have said that it is "characterized by matrilineal filiation" would have been nonsense.

The issue is not just a matter of mistranslation or Anglo-Saxon obtuseness.