10 most frequent French expressions

Memories of my Erasmus in Lille

Two years ago I spent four months in France as Erasmus student. I studied French at school, but I didn’t employ it for many years, until I reached the beautiful Lille. Speaking French everyday, I learnt many frequent expressions, and I decided to share some of them with you.

1. At the top of the list you cannot expect anything else than du coup. I heard it every single day! No matter if in the middle of a sentence, or to join two of them: du coup seems to be like a black pair of shoes: it suits with everything. If I guessed right, it means “so”.

2. Now it comes to that expression that I also found myself surprised to employ: en effet. It is quite useful, since its meaning is “in fact, indeed”. As Italian native speaker, this was quite easy to understand and to use since we have in effetti. En effet is employed to prove an explanation to what you’re saying, connecting together two sentences (like a cause and its consequence).

3. You know you’re talking to a French if they have a truc for everything. You don’t remember a word? You don’t remember how that object is called? Then it can be a truc! It can be anything.

4. How about ça va? Person A: ça va? (How are you?)
B: ça va! ça va? (I’m fine! And you?)
A: ça va! (I’m fine!)
This is a real example of conversation. Two words together just have two different meanings. It depends if you ask how is someone’s going or if you reply that everything is ok.

5. Entre guillemets is also quite common. In fact, it means “in inverted commas”. When I was looking for the word guillemets I thought it was written in a different way, since the two L are not pronounced. In French most (but not every) of E without accent are invoiced. I can say that, to pronounce this word correctly, you have to remove LLE (and the ending TS, of course).

6. If a French wants to discuss something briefly or requires something has to be done in short time, then the word brèf is what you need. I heard it from professors who wanted to talk briefly about a topic because they wished to go further with their lesson.

7. Another typical spoken expression is surely tout à fait. Its meaning? “exactly, absolutely”. It is employed to strengthen what you are saying.

8. It can happen you are not really motivated to do something and you want to express your frustration with your friends. How about saying j’ai la flemme? Students may have a flemme for studying, isn’t it?

9. Now it comes to an expression that French told me when they perceived I was worrying too much: ne vous inquitez pas! / ne t’inquiètes pas! It means “don’t worry!”.

10. Last but not least, one of the first expressions I heard in France — which was my fellow until the end of my stay— was: bon courage! It can be translated as “good luck!” but I was a little bit perplexed at the beginning, because in Italian we have similar words. Anyway, I started immediately to understand in which contexts it is suitable. If a friend of yours is going to travel the world, you will wish him/her bon courage for the new adventure.

And now it’s up to you: have you ever been to France and heard these expressions? Or maybe you’ve heard other ones? Share with me your experiences commenting below this post!