When I was researching the meaning of the word un machin yesterday, I came upon a video by an outfit called Français Authentique. They have a YouTube channel with many, many videos, largely about learning French as it is spoken informally among friends and family. I listened to an hour’s worth of them during my morning walk today and really enjoyed them.
As far as I can tell, it’s a one-man operation that Johan Tekfak has been running for 10 years. On the website he sells self-published educational materials (audio recordings, written exercises, etc.) as well as live group classes run over video conference. He seems to be in the process of expanding to a larger online education platform, that integrates social media, discussion forums and interactive exercises.
But the YouTube channel is what interests me today. It offers several hundred short videos, all in French, ranging in length from one to twenty minutes. The ones I’ve watched are from two playlists, Vidéos courtes and T’as 5 minutes? Each video in these lists reviews the proper usages of a handful of words or expressions. They’re also available as Podcats. I plan to listen to a whole bunch more — good lightweight listening to accompany walks.
Here’s some of the expressions that I’ve heard presented. From the “Shorts” series:
- piger is a familiar way of saying comprendre, “to understand”. «Je n’ai rien pigé» = I’m totally lost.
- c’est du lourd means “that’s awesome”, “that’s high quality”.
- s’éclater means “enjoy immensely” or “take great pleasure in”. It has nothing to do with éclater, which is “to explode”.
- Allez! is an ordinary conjugation of the verb “to go”, but the video calls out four significations of this interjection: “Go team!”; “C’mon say yes”; “I’m sick of this. Let’s go already.”; “We’re ready to depart, off we go”.
- c’est enfantin means “that’s child’s play”, simple, easy.
- courir sur le haricot is a slang expression that means to annoy, or aggravate (énerver, ennuyer, agacer, embêter). The key to understanding the origin is that haricot is an antiquated word for the big toe. So this is “stepping [running] on your toe[s]”. The conjugation is tricky: «Tu me cours sur le haricot» – the possessive is done as a direct object of the verb, not a change of the article on le haricot.
- que dalle is slang term that means “absolutely nothing at all”.
- je suis vert means …
- être mal barré means …
- avoir les yeux plus grand que … is
- ça calle means …
- c’est tiré par les cheveux means ….
And from the 5 minutes series:
- en effet is ….
- il s’agit de … means
- ça me gave is
- au cas ou is
- cependant, toutefois, néanmoins, pourtant, …