![]() ![]() Speaking of bears, an unsociable or uncouth person is un ours mal léché, “a badly licked bear.” Don’t hesitate to use it if somebody embarrasses you in a restaurant.Ĭonsidering the influence of French culture and language on English – particularly animal vocabulary and collective nouns – it should come as no surprise that many expressions are identical. And don’t worry about counting chickens before they’ve hatched, but try not to “sell the bear’s skin before it’s been killed,” vendre la peau de l’ours avant de l’avoir tué. ![]() If a Frenchman tells you you’re like “a chicken who’s found a knife,” t’es comme une poule qui a trouvé un couteau, it means you’re very confused. They don’t wait for hell to freeze over but rather for the day “when chickens have teeth” – quand les poules auront des dents. The French do not sleep like logs they “sleep like marmots” ( dormir comme une marmotte). “To give your tongue to the cat,” donner sa langue au chat, might look like “cat got your tongue,” but in fact it means to give up. “When the cat’s away, the mice start to play dance”: Quand le chat est parti, les souris dansent. Similarly you don’t get “a frog in your throat”, you get un chat dans la gorge and neither do you “call a spade a spade”, you appelez un chat un chat. “Don’t wake that sleeping cat” is ne réveillez pas le chat qui dort. And to express outraged disbelief, go no further than Ich glaube, mein Schwein pfeift! (“I believe my pig is whistling!”).įrench animal idioms display a particular predilection to cats. It’s nothing short of porcine prejudice amid these French animal expressions.Īn honorable mention for German pigs, who have made great strides in dispelling the stereotype: Schwein haben, (“to have a pig”) is to be lucky. Not only do the French not trust them with the homemade confiture, you can accuse someone of “eating like a pig” ( manger comme un cochon) or when faced with a real pigsty of a room you might mutter that un cochon n’y retrouverait pas ses petits (“a pig couldn’t find its piglets”). “It’s like giving jam to pigs.”Ĭultural attitudes to animals are embedded in our language, and pigs in particular often seem to get a raw deal. C’est donner de la confiture aux cochons , she sighed sorrowfully, and poured herself another Ricard. I was sitting in a friend’s garden in the south-west of France enjoying some late summer sunshine and she was telling me about how the politicians were going to raise taxes again. I remember vividly the first time I heard one of my favorite French animal idioms. ![]()
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