Bienvenue à un autre édition de Vendredi Français. I haven’t been too keen on picking up French lately, but let’s dive into today’s offering.
My goal is to become fluent in French, hence the reason why I started French Fridays, but lately, I’ve been putting it on the back burner and accept that I’ll just take it in small doses. However, I learned a few phases this week and they’re all to do with how to say ‘You’re welcome’ although I already knew some of them.
After saying “merci beaucoup” the most automatic response that comes to mind is “de rien” which is the most common way to say “you’re welcome”. But we can also say:
Je t’en prie. This form is informal and you can use it with people you’re on “tu” basis with.
Je vous en prie. I learned that when in doubt, use this term for it’s formally friendly and it’s considered more polite than “de rien”.
Pas de quoi/ll n’y a pas de quoi. Like “De rien” it means it’s nothing and it’s casually used in Southern France.
Pas de problème/Pas de souci. No worries. This is considered a slang like the English “no problem”.
Avec plaisir – With pleasure. This is used mainly in Toulouse.
As for “de rien“? It is informal and shouldn’t be used in formal situations. It’s similar to Spanish “de nada” and it literally means “it’s nothing” when someone thanks you for something unimportant.
Here’s a nice fun fact: While we use “s’il vous plait” to say please in French, in Belgium, it means, yeah, you guessed it: “you’re welcome”.
French aside, I managed to watch a football game in Russian last week and I learned that màn màn chī in Chinese means enjoy your meal from Total Drama World Tour.
The things I learn while watching Chris McLean destroy so-call famous dreams. I’ll be talking more about this show in a later post, so over to you now.
What have you learned this week that you’ll love to share? Doesn’t matter what language you’re learning, we’re all here to learn.
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