Merde!

Speaking with actual French people in French is much different than speaking with your fellow Anglophone classmates in a French class. The real, spoken French language is not the stuff you learn in textbooks. And is infinitely more interesting and colorful than the phrases your classmates put together. And the gestures - Oh! The gestures! It's not as much as in Italy, but watching people speak is completely entertaining. When you combine it all, it makes the French that many of us learn very very far from anything that could be perceived as normal, conversational French.

In my excited preparations for moving to Paris, I bought a couple of books that I thought might help me pickup some phrases. In reality, I looked at the books once, but never learned much from them. Learing slang, I'm realizing, is best done over drinks in a bar, listening to people tell their stories.

I had one of the slang books "Merde! The Real French You Were Never Taught at School." on my desk (yeah, real professional, I know. Thought it might be a good conversation starter though.) One of my French colleagues picked it up and was immediately fascinated by all of the catchy English phrases like "I have a frog in my throat" (the French say "I have a cat in my throat"), and "to kick the bucket". So she's borrowing the book for awhile, and we're going to get lunch and teach each other some choice slang. Should be very educational!