Learn about some embarrassing mistakes in Emily in Paris (and how you can do better).There are other great conversations in that movie as well, but you can use other resources to gain confidence with everyday spoken French, too! This shows that she probably didn’t rehearse that second sentence before calling, but she answers something consistent with her lie (that she actually broke that machine herself, so she can meet the repairman.) Non, mais j’ai l’impression qu’il y a quelque chose qui est coincé. Il y a(= there is) pronounced like “ Ya”.Un truc → Informal French for “ quelque chose” (= something, a thing).Euh → Another very, very common “filler word” that doesn’t mean anything.Ben → Short for Bienor Eh bien(= Well), a “filler word” in spoken French.= Hmm, no, but I think there’s something that’s stuck. “ Euh… (Ben) non, mais j’ai l’impression qu’y a un truc qu’est coincé.” Amélie answers with a second sentence, in a more informal spoken French: Then, the person on the other end of the line asks a question that we can’t hear. It’s a polite, thoughtful sentence: she probably rehearsed that opening sentence in her head, before calling. “ Bonjour, je vous appelle pour…” is a common structure when making a phone call. (By the way: En panne = Hors service = broken, out of order.) = Hi, I’m calling to tell you that one of your booths is out of order. You can practice listening to basic everyday French (and improve your oral comprehension) with conversations from the movie!įor example, when Amélie calls the photobooth company, she starts with:īonjour monsieur, je vous appelle pour vous signaler qu’un de vos appareils est en panne. It’s close to the more well-known accent of Northern France, and it’s associated in the media with a character that’s more down to earth and less sophisticated than snobby Parisians. You can hear it in the way she accentuates “ l’autre timbré, là” (the “im” is a bit more nasalized, and the “là” sounds a bit like “lo”). The actress uses her childhood accent from la Meuse, a rural area between Paris and Germany, to add specificity to her character’s background with only a few lines.Ĭan you hear it? The nasal vowels are a bit more nasal. But these shortcuts also hide something that you can only hear: her slight Eastern French accent. That makes for a real-sounding character. Timbré (= “stamped,” literally) itself is an informal slang word for fou (= crazy).Que l’autre timbré (= than that other crazy guy) becomes “Qu’l’aut’timbré” (impressive eating of vowels!).She conflates Jamais aussi mauvais (= won’t be as bad as) and pas pire que (= not worst than) into the technically grammatically-incorrect, “ jamais aussi pire que” (= “never as worst as”).Je ne sais pas (= I don’t know) becomes “ Je sais pas,” pronounced “ Chais pas”.= Oh dear, I don’t know what the new one will be like, but at least it will never be worse than the other crazy guy, with his tape recorder.įirst, she’s using informal spoken French, eating vowels and using informal vocabulary and grammar: Mon vieux, je sais pas comment sera le nouveau mais en tout cas, ce sera jamais aussi pire que l’autre timbré là, avec son magnétophone. In the clip I included in the video lesson, you can hear her say: The waitress Georgette speaks with her own accent.
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