Saturday, January 07, 2017

French I have learned thanks to Justin Trudeau

Since Trudeau is a politician and talks about politics constantly, there are certain words and phrases he hits on repeatedly, and so I have learned them more quickly than other French words and phrases thanks to watching so many of his videos.

Including...
  • Le class moyenne - the middle class
  • Le chef - leader - the English word chef comes from "chef de cuisine"
  • Pays - country
  • D'abord - firstly 
  • Je trouve - I find
  • Tres content - very happy 
  • Tout a fait - absolutely
  • Besoins - needs
  • Ecoute - listen
  • Combat de box - boxing match
  • Quarante et un - 41 (the age Trudeau was when he boxed Patrick Brazeau)
  • Prochain - next
  • Peut-Être - maybe
  • Tellement - so much
  • Tres tres - according to a French language learning video on Youtube, it is common for francophones to repeat a word for emphasis and Trudeau does this all the time, in French and English. It's much more noticeable, I assume, in English than in French
And then there is Trudeau's favorite phrase. He uses it so much that all you have to do is Google "not in spite of our differences but because of our differences" and the search results will be a whole bunch of speeches by Justin Trudeau.

And he's been using this phrase since at least 2011. He says it, in French, at minute 17:00 of this video shot in May 2011.
Pour moi, la réalité est que le Canada est un pays fort, non pas en dépit de la diversité, mais à cause de a diversité.




It's so hard to understand what French speakers are saying in part because everything is pronounced differently. Take the name Justin for example. In English it's pronounced "JUST-in" but in French they pronounce it "yoos-TAHn" with just the tiniest hint of an "n" sound there at the end. Mon dieu!

Do the French say OMD instead of OMG? I have found no evidence for this yet.