gotta learn them all

tu yeetes

il/elle/on yeet

nous yeetons

vous yeetez

For if you want to make hip young friends.

Disclaimer: French people complain a lot. A lot. Don’t be surprised if 90% of these expressions are complaining.

Non mais oh - say this if someone does something mildly annoying and you want to express your shock and distaste.

Tu me fais chier - (alt. tu me fais chier, là.) literally ‘you make me shit’. means you’re pissing me off.

Carrément - translates to ‘squarely’. Means ‘literally’. If someone tells you something surprising or annoying, you can answer simply “ah carrément.” see: tu me fais carrément chier.

J’hallucine / je rêve - are you annoyed by something? say these.

C’est pas possible - a classic. anything bad happens - c’est pas possible. There is no cheese left? It’s not possible. I’m hallucinating. This is a burden on me that solely I can bear I cannot believe this is happening.

Ça commence à me gaver - I’m starting to get real sick of this. see: Ça commence carrément a me gaver là, putain.

T’es relou - verlan slang for ‘lourd’ meaning someone’s heavy, personality-wise. They’re tedious.

Ça me saoûle / ça me gonfle - similar to gaver, means something’s pissing you off, you’re sick of it.

Grave - totally.

C’est clair - totally/that’s clear. Like ‘claro’ in spanish. “Justine elle est trop relou” “C’est clair. Elle me fait chier.”

J’en ai marre - I’m sick of this.

J’en ai ras le bol - I’m sick of this.

J’en ai ras le cul - I’m sick of this (vulgar).

(J’en ai) Rien à battre - I don’t give a damn.

(J’en ai) Rien à foutre - I don’t give a fuck.

C’est bon, là. -  That’s enough.

Perso, euh, - “Personally,” generally used at the start of a complaining sentence, to express how personal the matter is to you. Perso, euh, c’est bon là. J’en ai ras le cul.

Rôh là - general expression of distaste. Le longer the rôh, the more annoyed you are. Rôôôôôôôôôôôôôôôôôôôôôôôôôôôôh, c’est quoi ce bordel.

C’est quoi ce bordel ? - translates to “what’s this brothel”, means “what’s this shit?!”

C’est de la merde - It’s shit.

C’est une blague ? - Is this a joke?

Idem - ditto

J’ai la dal - I’m hungry

Ça caille - It’s freezing

Ouf - two meanings 1. phew or 2. verlan for “fou”, meaning crazy (as a noun or adjective). “Kévin, c’est un ouf! Il fait du vélo sans casque!” “Ouais carrément, c’était un truc de ouf!”

Kévin - there’s a running joke that all the young delinquents seem to be called Kévin.

Crever - slang for “to die”. Va crever, connard!

Connard/Connasse - c*nt, but a lot less vulgar in french peoples eyes

And finally,

J’ai le seum - I’m angry/frustrated

Tu déconnes ?! - “You’re lying?!”

Boulet - Litterally “Burden”. It’s an insult, it means “Lame”, Oh le boulet !

Bolosser - Verb meaning “Victimiz, persecute someone”. The noun is Boloss which means victim, lame.

Pigeon - Someone who is easy to con

Se faire pécho - Being caught. Pécho is verlan slang for “choper”. It can mean “pick up”. Depend the context.

Miskine - pitiful

A la wannagain or A l’arrache - Doing something without preparation, improvize

A plus ! - Means “bye”, “later”

Les condés, les poulets, les flics, les keufs, les poulaga - slang for policemen

Un zéro-six - a cellphone number (in France, every cellphone number begins by “06″; but recently, there are 07 too)

A la bien - describe a relaxing situation

Aboule - slang for “Give”

J’ai capté - I understood

On se capte plus tard - We meet later

Ma gueule - Affectionnate nickname for close friends

Mange tes morts - “Eat you deads”, an insult

french: :)

english: oh boy

write a diary

literally

just write a diary, it has helped me sooo much and i dare say it has been the most developing thing i’ve done while learning french, nothing else compares

1. you’re exposed to the language daily

2. you quickly see which words are missing from your vocabulary

3. you learn to write about the things you think about a lot

4. learning to actually think in your target language

5. having to look up words and when reading the entry back a couple of days later you can’t even remember which words you didn’t know

6. going back to the earlier entries and seeing all the mistakes and knowing how much better you’ve become

7. when you’ve been writing for a few months and your target language becomes a natural way for expressing yourself

8. when you’ve been writing for a few months and you start seeing the diary writing as a way of self-expression and stressrelief, and the language learning aspect becomes natural and secondary

person: how many languages do you know?

me: well, I speak three languages (English, German, School-French), am able to read pretty well in an additional two (Middle English, Dutch), and I learn more than seven at varying levels, but I can’t say I “know” them yet

person: shit, you speak like 12 languages! 

person: *tells people you speak 12 languages*

Preevet - Hi

Kak dela? - How are you?

Vse horosho - I’m fine.

Spasibo - Thank you

Ti ne nravishsya moemu kotu. Uhodi. - My cat doesn’t like you. Go away.

Mne nujna tvoya odejda, sapogi i motocikl - I need your clothes, your boots and your motorcycle.

cher journal - dear diary

- you can talk about how your day was - this is a great opportunity to apply your knowledge of past tenses. 

How to say that you had a good day -

j’ai passé une très bonne journée

j’ai passé une excellente journée

j’ai passé une belle journée

j’ai eu une merveilleuse journée

j’ai passé une journée fantastique

How to say that you had a bad day -

Je n’ai pas eu une bonne journée

j’ai eu une journée affreuse - a really bad day

j’ai eu une mauvaise journée

j’ai passé une journée difficile 

How to say that you had a busy day - 

j’ai eu une journée des plus occupés

j’ai eu une journée chargée

la journée d’aujourd’hui s’est avérée fort occupée

How to say that you had a quiet/relaxing day - 

j’ai eu une journée tranquille

j’ai passé une journée tranquille

j’ai profité d’une journée de détente

Talking about time -

hier - yesterday

hier soir - last night

hier matin - yesterday morning

hier après-midi - yesterday afternoon

demain - tomorrow

demain matin - tomorrow morning

demain après-midi - tomorrow afternoon

demain soir - tomorrow evening

le lendemain - the next day

cette semaine - this week

la semaine dernière - last week

la semaine prochaine - next week

ce mois-ci - this month

le mois dernier - last month

le mois prochain - next month

cette année - this year

l’année dernière - last year

l’année prochaine - next year

when talking about a coming day e.g. next saturday = samedi prochain/le samedi suivant

To add a dash of drama -

et mon cul, c’est du poulet ? - yeah right!

faire du cinéma - to be a drama queen

j’ai du mal à croire que - I can’t believe that

jai vraiment foiré sur ce coup là - I really stuffed up!

je n’arrive pas à y croire ! - I can’t believe it

je n’en crois pas mes yeux - I can’t believe my eyes

je n’en reviens pas ! - I can’t believe it!

mon cul ! - my arse! (when you don’t believe someone, say if they’ve been lying to you)

Grammar resources yay!

A friend told me about ingenjör’s folder on google drive. 

IT. IS. EXTRA-FUCKING-ORDINARY.

It contains grammar from every language you could possibly think of!

For those of you learning Russian or just curious about it :)

spelling is a mess 

punctuation is even worse: you have to know 76487658 rules and conduct a 10-step linguistic analysis to put proper punctuation marks in a more or less complex sentence

we constantly mix up similar-looking letters in English and Russian on the keyboard

everyone’s New Year resolution is to brush up their English

no one actually says ‘zdrav-stvuj-teh’ (здравствуйте, hello). It’s usually ‘zdras-tu-te’, ‘zdras-te’ (the most common variant), or even ‘dras-te’ (there is a russian meme ‘дратути’ (dra-tu-tee) mocking a way of shortening the word)

in fast speech it’s normal to drop like 10-20% of sounds 

there are quite a few widely used words an expressions originated from criminal argot, presumably left over after mass imprisonment under Stalin 

the common way to address a stranger is мужчина, женщина or девушка (literally ‘man, woman, [young] girl’). Everyone finds it weird and inconvenient, but can’t come up with smth else

Russian swear words sound way ruder than English ones (still almost everyone swears)

quite a lot of English words don’t have well-sounding alternatives in Russian (words like self-consciousness, counterintuitive, rule of thumb will sound strange translated literally)

…but good luck translating 50 shades of meaning of Russian diminutives (кошка, кошечка, киса, кисонька, кисуля, котик, кошак vs cat or kitty)

don’t ask me how Russian works without articles and link verbs, it’s probably just black magic

You see a sentence written in cyrillic. Some of the letters are familiar. You see the meaning shimmering underneath the surface. You almost grasp it, but it slips away. The letters on the page mock you silently. You know this Czech word. You’ve already learnt it in Polish. It is not the same word. It is a grave insult. Your slavic friends are shocked and embarassed for you when they hear you speak it.

There is a sentence in Croatian. There is a sentence in Serbian. There is a sentence in Bosnian. They are all the same sentence.

You have to write about your day in Slovak. You spend the night polishing the draft. You fail your assigment. It’s written in Czech. You don’t know Czech.

P is not what it seems. You have to remember that.

The Croatian sentence does not mean what the Bosnian sentence means. They both mean the same in Serbian.

That word has a diminutive. The diminutive has its own diminutive. The diminutive of the diminutive also has a diminutive. Nobody knows what the final diminutive of a word is. Some say the knowledge had been lost in centuries past and matrioshkas are the echo, the tangible warning left for us to remember. No living creature should hold the means of diminishing something into nonexistence. Others say you may still find some of them in old soviet textbooks, if you dare to look in abandoned schools of Chernobyl.

Someone is speaking to you. Is that a he or a she? You aren’t sure. It’s an abstract concept. Why does it have gender.

You see a word in a dictionary. It has seventeen letters and only one vowel. You close the dictionary very carefully not looking at the phonetic transcription. The shape of it haunts you in your sleep. You wake up face damp with tears, a bitter taste on your tongue. The clock blinks 3:03AM. You do not dare look up that word again.

This word means the same thing in the five slavic languages you’re familiar with. You use it in the sixth one. That word does not exist in this language. It never did. There is now a word-shaped void in the fabric of this language. The natives look at you uneasily. There is a new quality to the silence and your palms start to sweat. H is not H. H is not H. H is not H. H is not H. One day you flip through your dictionary. A page is missing. What was the word? You can’t remember. There is pressure building at the back of your head. The clock blinks 3:03AM.

You write my name is in cyrillic. There are shadows dancing on the walls. They grow longer with each letter you write down. It is not cyrillic you’re using. You keep writing my name is. The shadows now bleed from the tip of your pen. It’s irrelevant. You need to remember the right letters.

N is not N is not N is not N is not N is not N is not N is not N is not N is not N is not N is not… If only you could remember the letters. The letters are important. What was it, that wasn’t N?

There are nine different prefixes you can add to a verb to change its meaning. There are fifty three different suffixes you have to add to a verb to make it work. In the end the only thing left of the original is a vague shape of one of its middle consonants. You can feel the anguish radiating from the verb’s mutialted form. A desperate sob escapes through your clenched teeth. You’re so, so sorry, you didn’t meant to. You didn’t. It doesn’t matter.

You now read a text in Russian. You’ve never learnt Russian. Why are you reading that text? The words burn your eyes, the meaning searing your mind.

this is ReadLang. it is a cute little website that gives you all kinds of texts to read in your learning language.

when you sign in, you go to a dashboard that shares your progress so far. because i have just joined this website today, i’m still working on the opening progress page.

right now, i’m working on finding cool stuff to read in spanish. ReadLang will give you texts in your target language at the level and word count you want! check it out, it is pretty cool.

don’t know a word? click it! ReadLang will define it for you. free accounts will let you get 10 translations per day, but paid accounts ($5 per month) can get unlimited translations per day. you’ll be able to see your translations here:

lastly, there are flashcards. this is a really useful feature. it even charts the amount of studying you did each day.