Bonjour, comment ça va, ça va bien?
So, I don't know if you know, but in Canada, we are taught French.
I was taught French from the time I was eight years old to when I was eighteen, so I studied
French for ten remarkable years.
No.
Can I understand when somebody speaks French to me?
No.
Can I read the cereal ingredients in French?
Yes!
This might be the same for you learning English.
Maybe you learned English in your school and you sat there and go "Why the hell am I ever
And when you get older, you realize: "Oh hey.
English is kind of important now, damn, I should have paid attention in class."
Or you're just watching this video for fun.
So, English is a very peculiar, which means strange language, because we steal words from
We also take words from French.
We also take words from the Greek language.
This is what - one of the reasons our pronunciation is so difficult.
I could say the word now, but it's still really hard.
So, if you speak French or if you learned French, I've got a tip or a technique to help
you learn more English vocabulary, because we have stolen French words.
And you probably know these words already, but again, we have to be careful with our
pronunciation of these words, especially if you're living in the USA.
Because something happens when I cross the border.
For some reason, all hopes of French pronunciation is gone.
Canada's a little better because we have a huge French population, but yeah, I've heard
some really strange things coming from our neighbors in the South.
So, this lesson is to help you remember and learn vocabulary.
And hey, guess what, I'll teach some French at the same time.
You might - not die, you might not die, you might die.
But you might get an invitation, and I'm pretty sure that initiation is also a French word
- from a friend on Facebook or someplace and it might say "RSVP".
And RSVP in French means "Répondez s'il vous plait".
"S'il vous plait" in French means "please" and "respond" means "answer".
I think I was speaking Spanish or something at that point, so.
RSVP actually means hey, please answer me.
But we don't use it like this.
This means tell the person yes or no."
Which is actually, we are responding to the invitation.
So, RSVP: "Répondez s'il vous plait", answer me!
Are you going to come to my fantastic party or not?
I need a yes or a no from you, so answer me.
If I translate this from French - I didn't translate it, I was Google, thank you, Google.
It means "at way", or - I don't know, something about the way.
We use this predominantly for pie or ice cream.
So, you can go to a restaurant and get apple pie a la mode, and for some reason in English,
it doesn't mean on the side, it means you get ice cream.
Wow, we have really stretched that one.
So, a la mode in French - at the way, or on the side.
In English, means "ice cream on the pie".
Crème brûlée means "cream", crème is "cream", and brûlée means "to burn".
So. you go oh, burned crème, awesome.
Did you make a mistake in the kitchen?
Crème brûlée to use is a delicious dessert where they take cream and they burn it, oh yeah.
But it actually makes a beautiful caramel tasting dessert.
Don't worry, I haven't burned your cream.
I made you a wonderful dessert.
These are all food words and I'm getting hungry, damn!
Café means "coffee", au means "with" or "in" and lait means "milk".
So, when you go to your fancy coffee shops and you walk up and go "I want a café au
You're just telling the person, you know what, put some milk in my coffee please, sir.
But you're doing it in French, so you think you're fancy, mmhmm.
Just ask for coffee with milk, please?
It will save you a lot of money at Starbucks, I'm sure too.
Because I'm sure a coffee without milk is free, but a café au lait, whew, five dollars
Because you don't know French.
This next delicious treat is foie gras, foie gras.
Foie means "liver", and I'm sure my pronunciation is bad on that one.
Foie gras to us is a duck liver.
So, apparently, they do terrible things to ducks in France.
They feed the ducks lots of food so the duck is really fat.
And then we kill them and we eat their liver.
Thank you for making your ducks really fat so we can eat them.
Hmm.
I could have some foie gras right now.
This one, wow, this blew my mind!
Look at me, learning with you.
Now, this how we have to be careful when we pronounce things.
I have heard Americans say this.
We say "or derves", we say "or", okay, "derves".
I know it's a terrible way we have changed it because I'm sure it sounds much more eloquent
Please don't say "hore doreves".
So, in French, this means "outside of work".
In English, an hors d'oeuvre is an appetizer.
It's something that, if you're at a party, someone passes you some little things to eat
with a toothpick, you have some wine, it's great.
But in French, it means, I guess "hours outside of work".
So maybe this is like, French people were like, "I'm not working, give me some food!"
Give me some of that duck, I want some of that duck liver, give it to me.
So hor d'oeuvre means outside of work, but we mean it like delicious food.
Cool.
You will see this in many, many, many restaurants.
So, you think your wonderful little restaurant - wow, soup du jour.
Hmm, 17 dollars for soup du jour.
Nah, you're just getting ripped off, aren't you?
It means that particular day, that restaurant opened this pre-packaged soup, put some water
in it, and that's your soup of the day, thank you.
So, we have this, we say, "I've committed a faux pas" and we sound so fancy when we
In French, apparently means "false step" like "woah, I saw a false step there, watch out".
And we mean it to say that we've done something wrong or we've made a mistake.
I made a giant faux pas in my lesson, I must start again.
This is one that, again, I was amazed at.
So, ménage a trois, as you guys might know in English, means sex between three people.
Apparently in French it means "house of three".
So, if you have a mom and a dad and a you, guess what?
You are in a ménage a trois, which sounds really dirty right now because in our bastardization
of the French language, it only means sex.
Wow.
Okay.
As a child, I always loved this one: eau de toilette.
Would you like some eau de toilette?
And then you look at it and go: "eau" means "water", "de" means "of" and "toilette" means
So, I've been actually putting toilet water on myself to make myself smell...what?
So, I've been just going to the toilet and going "Hahaha, look at me, I've got toilet
I don't know how this became - we just call this perfume for us.
It's a lower grade of perfume.
In France they say "parfum", which is beautiful and smells good.
I'm not too sure what happened there.
Marketers are like "Let's take a word in French that's really terrible and make people buy
Let's take, okay, toilet water, hahaha, and make people spend $100 on it and that'll be
funny!"
Thank you, whoever did that, yes!
So, we say in Canada, we say "chaise longue".
In French, I'm sure it's "chaise longue" or something French, lots of French accents.
So, when I was researching this, I was like "No way!"
Because in America, people will say "lounge chair".
Now, a chaise longue, as we say in English, is a chair, but it has room for your feet.
It has room for your legs, so it's a very long chair.
We didn't hurt that word too much.
So, if you're in a house of three, and you're doing a little bit of a ménage a trois, you
can sit on the long chair and you can have some toilet water to make yourself smell nice.
It'll be great, it'll be great, just don't go to France and say these words.
If you speak French, welcome to learning English.