"J'ai faim !" - Learn French with a joke !

Bonjour à tous ! This latest video I've made is a joke. I hope you like jokes. I do, I already made one when I started this channel, it was about a dog... Remember ?! If you check this first joke video, you'll probably notice that my "teaching technique" has evolved. Hopefully it's a good change :) As always, please give me some feedback, I love it and it allows me to create videos that suit you ! 


I won't be talking long today in this blog post, so here is the video's transcription :

Hello my dear students ! Today’s lesson will be a joke ! No really, a joke, a French joke! I’m going to say the joke, then explain all the vocabulary and slang and stuff, and then give its translation. Let’s go!

- J'ai la dalle !! 

- Ca tombe bien, moi j'ai le ciment ! On fait une terrasse ?

         J’ai la dalle !

“Avoir la dalle” is a slang expression which means “to be hungry”. The correct way to say that you are hungry is “J'ai faim”, but a lot of young people rather say “j'ai la dalle”, which literally translates as “I have the slab” !

         Ca tombe bien !

“Ca tombe bien” is an expression you use when you want to say that something happens at a convenient moment or that it would be helpful for you in some kind of way. If it can help you to understand, the literal translation would be “It falls well”. And in correct English I would translate this as “Well, that’s perfect”.

         Moi j’ai le ciment !

“ciment” means “cement”.

Also, note that the joke says “MOI, j’ai le ciment”.

We put moi in the beginning of our sentences to stress the difference between what our interlocutor says and what we say. It’s a little thing, but it’s important, as it makes the sentence complete, even though we could understand the meaning of the sentence without this moi. In English I feel like you rather insist on the pronoun to stress that difference. For instance, if A and B don’t agree on something : A says “I thinks it’s right”, B says “And I think it’s wrong”, as opposed as …

         On fait une terrasse ?

I don't know if I need to translate to you the word “terrasse”, as it's very similar to the english word for it, which is “terace”! As I said in a previous video, English and French have a lot of words in common, even though their pronunciation is different!

Last thing, “on” is a pronoun which can be used in two different ways.

The first one is to mean we. Indeed, “on” is extremly often used as a more casual way to say “nous”. For instance, grown up, serious people would say a formal “Nous avons faim!”, and kids or friends would say an unformal “On a faim!”. 

The second way to use on is to refer to an undefined person. In English, you use “they”, like in “They say the earth is round”, where “they” refers to no one in specific. The English formulation “to have been told” would also be translated with “on” in French. So when you say “I’ve been told she got fat”, us French say “On m’a dit qu’elle a grossit”.

That’s it for explanations! Now, let’s hear the joke again, and see if you understand it this time!

- J'ai la dalle !! 

- Ca tombe bien, moi j'ai le ciment ! On fait une terrasse ?

For those who still haven’t fully understand the joke, here goes its english translation : 

- I have the slab / I’m hungry

- Well, that’s perfect! I have the cement! Wanna make a terace?

So next time that a French guy tells you “J'ai la dalle !”, smile at him and say “Ca tombe bien, moi j'ai le ciment ! On fait une terasse ?!” 

And that’s it for today’s lesson!

For your homeworks, leave a comment below saying if you did understand the joke after the explanations. And also, tell me what do you want the next lesson to be about!

For more infos on this video and to get its transcription, check the related blog post on my blog.

To see what’s behind the teacher, check my main channel, Chuly Darlyn, forVlogs and beauty videos in English and French!

Also, you can add me as a Friend on Facebook! All links below.

Until next class, bye bye!

TDFG is Back ! / French for Beginners

Finally! After one long year, The Daily French Girl is back! I hope that you guys are still determined to learn French with me J I also want to take advantage of this blog post to thank everyone who subscribed and waited for my return. Your patience will be recompensed!

As you can see, this new video is for beginners. This is because I listen to you, and you told me I was over-rating your French level. That’s why it’s important to give me feedback!

So in this video, I tried to explain everything, while trying to keep the video short and entertaining. Hopefully you’ll like this format. Whether you do or you don’t, please let me know, it’s important in order for me to make videos that suit you and really help you! I will never stress this enough!

You can also ask for a specific subject, and maybe I’ll make a video about it! And remember, my channel is not all about language; it’s also about culture. Why? Because I think that all cultural facts are always interesting and enlightening to learn. And also because I can say from experience that learning about a culture really expands your motivation to learn more about the country, and of course that includes its language! So if you have any request at all, as long  as it’s related to France/French, just let me know =)  

Before I give the video’s transcription, I would like point out two little things :

First thing is that, no, this is not a complete lesson about how to introduce yourself in French. For instance, I don’t mention how to say where you live, or how to talk about your family or activities. But as this video is for REAL beginners, I give quite a good amount of explanations, way more than I normally would. So if you are a real beginner, that’s already a lot of information to take in, for a first lesson. I think that this video is a good compromise in terms of length and content. Hopefully you do too!

Secondly, I say that I explain everything in this video, but you can see that I did not explain literally everything. But if you pay attention, I give really big “clues” for you to understand effortlessly. This is for 2 reasons. First one is, again, to keep the video short! But my second reason is all about method: when you understand something by yourself, you memorize it way easier than if you’re just told how it works. This is what I would call active learning! That’s something I had already intended to do in my first videos, but the clues weren’t big enough. This time I think they are.

And now, here comes the video’s transcription :

Hi guys ! Bonjour à tous !

I’ve noticed in your comments that a lot of you guys were starting French with me, from scratch! Thus, it has been requested that I do a video for real beginners… Here it is!

I am going to put out there my best acting skills to enact a short dialog between two girls who meet for the first time. This will allow you to learn how to introduce yourself!

As always in this channel, I’m only going to use real French expressions that French people really use, which may differ a little bit from the one in your schoolbooks!

This dialog is at normal speed and with French subtitles. I will explain everything throughout the video and you will see the same dialog but with English subtitles at the end of the video. C’est parti !

[dialog with French subtitles]

“ Bonjour, je m’appelle Darlyn !”

Bonjour literally translates as good day, so in the evening you should rather say Bonsoir, good evening.

With time, you will see that the French way of thinking is different than the English one when it comes to building sentences. We have an example of this with “Je m’appelle”, which means “My name is” but literally translates as “I call myself” !

            “Salut, moi c’est Chuly !”

This sentence is a more laid back version of the previous sentence.

Salut is a casual greeting that can be used with friends and family, but not too much with strangers. It’s quite a convenient greeting, because it can be used any time of the day, whether you’re arriving or leaving.

Then, you may know Moi from the famous “Voulez-vous coucher avec moi ?” !

And try to remember c’est as it’s quite common in daily life. It means it’s.

            “Enchantée, t’as quel âge ?”

Enchanté is what you say after someone got introduced to you.

And we have our first question: “T’as quel âge ?”. Note again the different formulation us French have, as this literally translates as “You have which age?” Also, this sentence is very unformal, because t’as is a contraction of tu as, of bit like you’ve and you have. Moreover, although it’s not really respected in daily conversations, the rule when asking a question is to inverse the subject and the verb. Sounds complicated? It’s not! Actually it’s exactly the same as it is in English: you have becomes have you?, and tu as becomes as-tu ?

            “J’ai 25 ans. Et toi ?”

In English, you say that you ARE 25 years OLD. In French, you say that you HAVE 25 years.

You already know the meaning of moi, me. Can you guess the meaning of toi? Yes, you, it means you !

            “Ah ben moi aussi !”

Ah ben is one of those expressions that make you sound instantly like a native French speaker. And it doesn’t really mean anything actually, it’s like saying well.

            “Cool ! Je dois y aller… A+ !”

Cool comes from the English word cool. It has pretty much the same meaning, except that we don’t use it in French to mean cold. As you’ll learn French you will notice that we use quite a few English words in our daily conversations. Isn’t that cool?!

You should learn to say “Je dois y aller” as it comes handy anytime you’ve got to go!

“A plus” is often written A+ and it means “See ya”. Exactly like “See ya” comes from “See you later”, “A plus” comes from “A plus tard”.

            “Ciao !”

Ciao is one of the many ways to say Bye in French, and YES, we stole this one to Italians! If you’d like a more French way to say goodbye, you can also say Au revoir. So now, if you say it slowly you say “au-re-voir”. But if you say it fast like most people do, you say aur-voir.

And that’s if for explanations!

Now, I’m going to show you the dialog again, but with English subtitles this time! But you had all the needed information to understand this dialog without those subtitles, so try to rely on them only when needed.

[Dialog with English subtitles]

And that’s it for today’s lesson !

For your homeworks: go back to the video with French subtitles, at the beginning of the video. Then, after every sentence, pause the video, translate it in English, then repeat it aloud in French trying to get the right pronunciation.

For more infos on this video and to get its transcription, check the related blog post on my blogspot.

To see what’s behing the teacher, check my main channel, Chuly Darlyn, for Vlogs and beauty videos in English and French.

Also, don’t skip class, subscribe, to not miss any video!

You can also follow me on Twitter and add me as a Friend on Facebook.

Bon, ben je dois y aller. A+ !