Les étagères

n. – shelves
Les stagieres
n. – interns
I think you can see why I would mix up these two words and have been doing so lately when discussing our new apartment. We had the entrepreneur (the much prettier French description for handy man) come to the apartment to help us with some work. He kindly put up some shelving in the kitchen to maximize space. It’s a “cuisine Americaine” which again means open, but let that not be confused with large or grand!

In describing the work the entrepreneur had done, I kept confusing the word for shelves with the word for interns so as you can imagine, I got many a strange look indeed. Other words I have to think about are “épais” for thick, “épée” for sword (although I don’t use that all that often) and “épicé” for spicy.

Expressions can also be amusing when translating things literally. I always think of my friend Marie who used to say “great minds meet” in English rather than “great minds think alike” because the former is how it’s said in French “les grands esprits se rencontrent.”

There are many other examples. In English, we say “the straw that broke the camel’s back.” In French, they say “ la goute d’eau qui a fait déborder le vase” or “the drop of water that made the vase overflow.” Where we say, “you can’t have your cake and eat it, too,” they say “on peut pas avoir le beurre, l’argent du beurre et le sourire de la crémière” or “you can’t have the butter, the money from the butter and the smile from the milk maiden.” After all just look at what happened to Marie-Antoinette when she said let them eat cake. I think that may have been around the same time that the milk maidens disappeared as well.

“Avoir la pêche or “to have the peach” means you feel good, but “ne pas être dans son assiette” or "not to be in your plate" means you don’t feel good. Of course it doesn’t surprise me that feelings of well being are connected with food. On that subject, here you “take” something from the menu when ordering rather than “having” something. And if you want to ask someone if they want to “try” what you’re having, you use the word “goûter” for “taste.”

One last subtle difference to leave you with for now is that between “on” and “in” when it comes to planes, buses or trains for example. Once it was explained that the French use “in” it made so much sense to me. And ever since then when I hear someone say they were on the plane, I can only conjure up a hilarious visual!

“On” is a word better used for the relationship between the placement of things and shelves, but certainly don’t put anything on the interns.