It was suggested by a friend that I share this lesson with my blog readers and therefore, here it is. (C'est ici.) It could be appropriate right now, we all need new and better ways to swear. I still adhere to the "fuck, fuck, fuck" lexicon but there is also some joy in "cocksucking mother fucker" but perhaps I have gone too far for some. If that insults any reader, then you simply don't know me that well.
OK, our lesson for the evening: the word "putain" (french) is used in many different ways, as a swear word or as a word of crappiness, or a word of frustration or even as a word of exclamation. It is pronounced like "poo tah" with a nasal, guttural sound at the end, like an "n" got caught in the back of your throat. In Spanish "puta" means whore, and in French it is pronounced sort of like that but more in the nose. From French it translates into something like "fuck" or "crappy whore" but the French use it like we use "holy shit." Example: "Holy shit, that's an amazing outfit." Or "Holy shit, I so totally have to pee." Or "Holy shit, who are those assbags who voted for Trump?" So the French would use "putain" (accent on the second syllable) instead of "holy shit."
Plus, it's a great swear word all on its own, like Fuck. When you take your car in for some repair work and you get the estimate of what it is going to cost you, or when you go to the grocery store looking for a pint of Hagen Dazs Peppermint Bark ice cream (highly recommended, by the way) and there is none, or you get in the shower and there is no hot water, that's when you can use "putain." You can say out loudly or you can say it under your breath or you can say it in a sad voice, instead of saying "fuck this stupid auto repair shop" or "I hate this stupid market and their lame-ass selection of ice cream" or any other times when fuck would work but you don't want to say that F-word. (Why anyone would not want to say fuck is beyond me, unless, of course, you have small children around, and that's when "putain" is so, so valuable.)
It will eventually make you happy to say it because not many people know what it means. You can be in the line at DMV and instead of saying "fuck fuck, fuck" over and over in a soft voice, you can say "merde, putain, merde, putain" several times (merde means "shit" BTW) and feel OK that you got to swear but offended fewer people. (I, of course, never care if the word "fuck" offends people but I am a crappy person, we all know that. Merde.)
OK, I think that's the end of the French lesson for this evening. Next we will learn about the Passe Compose verbs and how in foreign languages every noun has a gender and the article, the adjective, the verb, the adverb all have to agree with that gender. In French, cars are feminine (la voiture) while the tires (les pneus) on that car are masculine. Your head is feminine (even if you are a man) but ears on that head are masculine (even if you are a female.) And on and on.
Have a lovely day. Soon, I might take this French lesson into the next realm, explaining about rats and president-elects and how they are virtually the same thing.
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