(Untitled)

[marlo]

I learned two new French words from Monica last night, both of which mean roughly the same thing: truc and machin. They both mean something like "thing" or "thingy".

It came up because we were talking about the cedille and nobody knew what it was called except me. Monica (who speaks fluent French because her family is Belgian) said she always

Comments

[yogurtrifle]

Truc is fantastic, but I overuse it because my vocabulary really could be better.

"Erm, eh... c'est le truc vert. Euuuhhh... c'est un boite."
"Bac de recyclag?"
"Yes. THAT."

[marlo]

I remember an acquaintance in college forgetting the word "sink". (English is her first language.) "You know... the place where you wash your hands?" It became a running joke.

[yogurtrifle]

I can imagine you flailing and pointing, so that made me giggle. Also one of my fav examples of me doing it in English was when I desperately wanted a blue bedsheet, but I couldn't remember the word "sheet", so I described it as a "skinny blanket. It's blue. A thin, skinny blanket."

SHEETS ARE SKINNY BLANKETS.

[marlo]

Monica said one of her friends heard her refer to the toaster as the "truc", so for the longest time her friend thought that was the French word for toaster. Which became very confusing because it's used so frequently. :P

What is "bac"? Man, I've used French so rarely since high school, I'm soooo rusty. Did you take in school, or is your family French-speaking?

[twinstar67]

It's "bin", more or less. "Bac de recyclage" would be "recycling bin".

[yogurtrifle]

I took French in elementary- and high-school and when I was younger my grandfather, who spoke multiple languages fluently, used to converse with me in French and gave me lots of French novels to read.