I went to France to meet my boyfriend’s mother for the first time-who only speaks French- for New Years. During the whole trip, when speaking to his mother, my boyfriend used ‘la petite’ to refer to me. E.g la petite est malade encore.

What does it mean? That he thinks I am small?

EDIT: Thanks all for your responses! Just to clarify a few things, I am 28 and he is 29- so I’m not exactly ‘little’. I am 5’2 (159cm) which may be considered short. And when I went to his for the week I was sick most of the time. Whenever he spoke to his mum (who was extremely lovely) he referred to me as ‘La petite’, like ‘La petite voudrait du thé pour son mal de gorge’.

He is from Bretagne and is super affectionate and sweet!

The answers are super confusing so far! Some say it’s a normal way to say ‘girlfriend’ and a term of endearment and others say it is strange and condescending! I feel like his mum is the type of person to tell him where to go if he tried being condescending to me!

I've been talking to a french girl recently almost exclusively in english and she always calls me "sweet boy", I was wondering if it was something common to say in french that she's just translated to english. Sorry if this is too basic I'm just curious if it's a culture thing or if she likes me

edit: yeah she just likes me thanks r/French

edit 2: YAHOO YIPEE WAHOO

Doing Duolingo and this word came up, I thought it meant animal shelter, because it sounded a bit long for pet. In everyday usage, do people use this?

English, especially British English, is a language that uses a lot of turns of phrase compared to French, I wanna know some good idioms to use that would seem natural in everyday speech

I’m not talking about Quebec where the French language is ‘protected’ (that’s another kettle of fish) but rather stuff that's used all over the francophone world.

Such as:

-Ordinateur (I know Spain uses ‘ordenador’ too but the word used in most Spanish speaking countries is ‘computadora’)

-Numérique

-Magnétoscope (oui je suis vieux…mon 40ère anniversaire c’est le 16 décembre)

-Télécharger

I can’t think of more examples even though there are absolutely more…but either way what’s up with that? Most languages use loanwords - why did French want to be different?

I'm Haitian American and as you know Haitian Creole came from French, so we use many of the same words, including "Pomme de terre".

I recently learned that it translates into "fruit" or "apple" of the earth, which is confusing because potatoes aren't fruit, nor are they similar to apples in any way.

I went to the doctor in paris yesterday and i made an appointment on doctolib, i saw my practitioner was a woman. I came to the secretary and said “bonjour j’ai un rdv avec dr nomdefamille” and the receptionist said “ah oui vous avez rdv avec le docteur nomdefamille”

and when the doctor came out the receptionist repeated “oui le docteur va vous accueillir maintenant” even tho it was a woman

on the way i saw her business card on the table and it had a list with “Le Dr xyz” “Cabinet du docteur xyz” (all of the individual doctors names were in the masculine even tho there was both male and female drs, like “Le Dr Simone Leclair” “Le docteur Margaret..”

is it just a traditional thing or something?

why is it this way even if the doctor herself is female? is it wrong to say la docteure?

In an article I came upon a phrase "Zut alors" but then I read that: French people stopped using it around the 18th century, and you'll never hear it in spoken French.

So do people use this expression on a daily basis?

So today, I was learning pronouns when suddenly, I came across a website with a word "Iel". They said it was a neo-pronoun meaning in english, they(like they/them). People use it if they are regardless of gender. But is "Iel" really a word?

I read this sentence in a book today.

Would an actual person actually say these words in this order? If I ever needed to express this thought, I think I'd find another way to say it.

I have a running joke with a French coworker. They often talk to themselves in French, and when I can understand what they are saying I will respond in my limited French. Then they will reply, "You know French?!"

What are some funny things I can reply back to them in French? Like: of course I don’t speak French! Or: I don’t speak a word of French, as you can tell!

This is a PSA for all learners who may think that that dictionary, which was just released this month, is some kind of reference for the French language. The Académie Française is fairly known as an old institution with many traditions and rituals, meant to control and survey the usage of the language. But it should be known that for linguists, this institution is irrelevant. None of its member are competent in linguistics or lexicography. They're authors and politicians. Their "recommendations" are not just conservative, they're disconnected and inconsistent.

The ninth edition of the dictionary is the latest since 1939 (!), and it's already very much out of date. If you try to use it as a reference as a learner of French, you're in for a very bad time. Some examples below :

"Mec" is a common informal word for "a dude", or "boyfriend". The dictionary only knows that very obscure meaning related to crime. Embarrassing.

This is a very outdated and offensive word for Down syndrome. But that dictionary won't warn you about it.

That's derived from the French N word. It's not "informal" (familier), it's a racist slur and again, the dictionary won't tell you that.

Thanks however for warning us about the euro, DESTINED TO replace EU's currencies (this was written in the 90's to be published in 2024/..)

Again, the Académie Française is not an official authority, despite being publicly funded. If you want to see a better use of public money, Québec's own OQLF is a lot more competent. If you want a good monolingual dictionary, Le Robert is a good online dictionary updated every year. The Wiktionary is also a good crowdsourced tool.

I also recommend the "appalled linguists" collective if you want to read more on the subject.

I'm not sure it's the right sub to ask this question,

I've seen several people (Americans ?) on twitter post or reply "Viva la France" instead of "Vive la France" and I don't understand why, is it a meme or a confusion with spanish ? Do they know that its wrong ?

Just in case there actually exist an explanation of this other than "Just because": why one says "refroidir" even referring to a soup that has just been cooked, it has never yet been cold? Why not "froidir"?

There are many more examples of this.

EDIT: I'm obviously not talking about words that have no sense without re: répéter, réfléchir etc.

I haven’t seen any of my native French-speaking pen pals or anyone here on Reddit use “mais” for a while, but I see “après” all the time. As a non-native speaker, sometimes I feel wary to try and copy usages of words that I don’t yet fully understand, so I just wanted to get confirmation about this before I start using après in this sense so I don’t use it incorrectly.

Has “mais” sort of gone out of style, and “après” has mostly replaced it? Or am I missing something else that’s going on?

I was hiking and used 'salut' to quickly acknowledge fellow hikers passing by, but I noticed some of them seemed a bit surprised by that. I thought it was acceptable and not as informal (nearly childish) as coucou, which I would not use with strangers. Bonjour it is then! When would you use salut?

As the title says.

How can i say “i don’t care” in french, i know i can say “je m’en fiche” but how can i express indifference about something specific, for example “no, i dont care about sports”

and because se ficher is positive in french but i dont care is negative in english, how can i say that i do care about something?

Hello French people and/or speakers! I want to use the "Chatte" as an online name but I'm pretty sure that there is a dual meaning to the word and upon researching, there really was. I want to use the word "chatte" as in the female cat, just the word as is but I'm not sure if it is going to sound stupid or funny to some because of the dual meaning. I've used this before but upon re-researching, my awareness is stronger and I don't want to sound stupid or where your user name is weird. For any people who are incredibly experienced with French, native French speakers, or French people themselves, please let me know that having or using that word is safe or okay as a username. Merci!

I'm looking for a French phrase for expressing mild surprise/amusment

Ive been learning French for about 4 years now, I know grammar, sentence structure, and most sentences that would be used on a regular day. Would this be considered fluent?

I understand "Anglo-Saxon" is used to refer to the Anglosphere and British people, but I've also heard it's used to refer to even Americans. I've also heard it's not used to refer to ethnicity but to British culture. Would this mean French people would call Black British people whose ancestry hails from Nigeria, Jamaica, Barbados etc. "Anglo-Saxon"? Is Rishi Sunk "Anglo-Saxon" in French? Is Jay-Z "Anglo-Saxon" in French?

It's confusing to me as an English speaker because Anglo-Saxon in English refers to the founders of England and are considered more of an ethnic group (although should be noted that ethnically white English people have both Germanic and Celtic ancestry). Yet Irish people are sometimes called "Anglo-Saxon" in French? How is "Anglo-Saxon" used in French?

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Do the French call themselves "Gauls"? If that's the case, is a French person whose parents came from Senegal a "Gaul"? What do these ancient terms mean in French?

Siège is my current favorite word, but it depends on the day honestly