Munier - Talk Dirty French : Beyond Merde: The curses, slang, and street lingo you need to Know when you speak francais.

TALK DIRTY FRENCH ALEXIS MUNIER & EMMANUEL TICHELLI
Copyright 2008 by Alexis Munier and Emmanuel Tichelli
All rights reserved.
This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher; exceptions are made for brief excerpts used in published reviews. Published by
Adams Media, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
57 Littlefield Street, Avon, MA 02322
www.adamsmedia.com ISBN-13: 978-1-59869-665-3
ISBN-10: 1-59869-665-3 eISBN: 978-1-44051-544-6 Printed in Canada. J I H G F E D C B A Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
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From a Declaration of Principles jointly adopted by a Committee of the American Bar Association and a Committee of Publishers and Associations Interior photos iStockphoto.com/Norma Zaro and Valerie Loiseleux.
Interior illustrations iStockphoto.com/Matt Knannlein. This book is available at quantity discounts for bulk purchases.
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To my belle-maman paula, whose American
slang i'm just begining to understand. EMMANUEL TICHELLITo my belle-maman Rita, whose French
slang i've understand from the begining. -ALEXIS MUNIER CONTENTS CHAPTER ONE
Blablabla sur largot: The History of French Slang CHAPTER TWO
Laisse tomber!: Forget What Your Uptight French Teacher Taught You CHAPTER THREE
Lorigine du monde: Introductions and Everyday Expressions CHAPTER FOUR
Une tte bien faite: Smart, Stupid, or Just Plain Nuts CHAPTER FIVE
Le roi des cons: Words to Both Flatter and Insult CHAPTER SIX
En route: Time, Transportation, and Other Necessities CHAPTER SEVEN
A table: Food, Glorious Food CHAPTER EIGHT
Les fleurs du mal: Beer Before Liquor... CHAPTER NINE
Joie de vivre: Expressing Your Ups and Downs CHAPTER TEN
Rien quune brique dans le mur: Yes, You Do Need an Education CHAPTER ELEVEN
Pleins les poches: Shake Your Moneymaker CHAPTER TWELVE
Garde ou voleur?: The Wrong Side of the Law CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Toubib or not toubib: Following Doctors Orders CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Guerre et paix: Looking for Trouble and Keeping the Peace CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Cest trop ouf: Life is a Cabaret... or Discotheque... or Brothel CHAPTER SIXTEEN
La belle et la bte I: S/hes Got the Look CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
La belle et la bte II: Looks Arent Everything CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Amour toujours: Love Is a Wonderful Thing CHAPTER NINETEEN
Voulez-vous coucher avec moi, ce soir?: Partners and Their Private Parts CHAPTER TWENTY
Plan Q: Dirty, Dirtier, and Dirtiest French Bibliography
Acknowledgements A big thank you to the French and English speakers who got down and dirty for this book: Vronique Begu, Naomi Yamaguchi, Gregory Bergman, Nadia Cescon, Toby Ernberg, Jacques Bogh, Frdric Heuer, Nicolas Verraires, Frdric Scheidecker, Daniel Frauchiger, Giovanni Moscioni, Shamsa Abdulrasak, Jennifer Sem, Daliha Essoudi, Bruno Voirol, Matthieu Zellweger, Andrs Pasquier, Ismet Terki, Yves Ducrey, and the Tichellis.

We cant forget our language teachers and foreign penpals, who inspired us to continue learning franais and anglais: Genevive Murisier, Laurel Branam, Sarah Niles, Jeffrey Mehlman, Marie-Claude Moix, and Bndicte Breton. Last but not least, thanks to our publisher, Adams Media, and their stellar team including wonder woman Paula Munier, her sidekick Brendan ONeill, editor Katrina Schroeder, and excellent French speaker (though youd never know by his name) copyeditor Chuck Brandstater.
DISCLAIMER All entries come with sample sentences as well
as common use and literal translations with the
exception of the dirtiest of the dirty. Youll know them by
XXX: Too Dirty to Translate. CHAPTER ONE Blablabla sur largot:
The History of French Slang
Dirty French didnt happen overnight. Over the course of nearly 2,000 years, French itself has evolved from Latin into the language it is today.

When Latin-speaking Romans colonized France in the first century BC, their tongue was subject to variations and modifications, the result of both being far from home and interacting with the Celtic tribes in the area. By the time the Roman Empires frontiers collapsed in the fifth century, the Latin spoken in Gaul, as France was then known, was cut off from the Latin spoken in Rome. This separation led to the birth of the French language. But several more recent reasons are behind the evolution of what we call textbook French into what we affectionately know as Dirty French. The French colonial empire, known as la Mtropole, was second only to the British Empire. Into the new territories, the French sent colons, colonists, and bagnards, prisoners, who had been banned from France.

From the New World, they took canne sucre, caf, and exotic fruits, materials like latex and rubber, and ptrole, gas, and minerals. Some French say it was a win-win situation because they brought education, hygiene, and democracy to the New World and civilization to their subjects. The colonial sujets, however, may beg to differ... Colonialism itself had a great influence on Dirty French. Mixed marriages, mtissage, and hybrid cultures brought African and Asian, but mostly North African Arabic, words into the French rpertoire. During the period of colonization, knowledge and language were regularly transferred from one side to the other.

After the French were kicked out of their colonies, les colons came back to la Mtropole with a different cultural and linguistic identity. Their new vocabulaire slowly but surely spread across the nation, reaching the important level of influence it holds today. Finally, English has not skipped France in its worldwide domination (although France is not too pleased about this fact). Many terms, especially technical and drug related, are not Frenchified. They retain their English spellings, but are pronounced with a French accent. Examples include but are not limited to: lafter-shave, le badge, le barbeque, le best-seller, le blue-jean,le blues, le bluff, le box-office, le break, le bridge, lebulldozer, le business, le cake, la call-girl, le cashflow, lecheck-in, le chewing-gum, le club, le cocktail, la cover-girl, lecover-story, le dancing, le design, le discount, le do-it-yourself,le doping, le fan, le fast-food, le feedback, le freezer, legadget, le gangster, le gay, le hall, le handicap, le hold-up, lejogging, linterview, le joker, le kidnapping, le kit, le knock-out,le label, le leader, le look, le manager, le marketing, le must,les news, le parking, le pickpocket, le pipeline, le planning,le playboy, le prime time, le pub, le puzzle, se relaxer, le self-service,