/ʒanfutʁ/ dJ-ah footrr The d is here to explain that you are suppose to pronounce the J with clicking your tongue to your teeth before, that is, without producing the sound 'd'. Jean stands for John or any very usual name. Foutre means uh... semen. Not a very polite word. A Jean-foutre would be a useless jerk. Totally outdated. The insult is typically used by a well-established, slightly overweigt bourgeois who loses his temper, in a mid-Tewentieth century movie.
'There is no way you are seeing this Jean-foutre again, young lady !'
That's a tough one to pronounce. Try using the sound in 'wrong', take out the wr- and the g. You're close. Then, try putting your lips in the shape of a 'o' and letting the air go through your nose. I know, it's weird. Nasal vowels...
K-on. Make sure to put an explosive K at the beginning, it does half the job.
Con can mean anything from 'idiot' to 'asshole' or 'dumb ass'.
But the actual definition says con means the female sex organ.
It is in the dictionary. I looked it up, I remember quite well, in second grade, with some of my fellow classmates, like everybody else (isn't it precisely what dictionaries are for anyway?). I remember feeling disappointed. What did that have to do with our good old insult, that we hear everywhere ? Why on earth would it be an insult ? Nobody uses the many words that exist to describe the male anatomy in French as in insult, do they ? (Though, you could say someone is con comme une bite, literally, 'dumb as a dick' which comes out as redundant way to make the gender issue even. But I didn't know that back then ; my bad words skills came to me later).
Still, it has continuously puzzled me. It's probably a question of time, I thought afterwards. Bad words do age, and they get milder and milder with time. The meaning that's still in the dictionary hasn't been used in decades, and the world that was once as shocking as your c-word slowly became a familiar friend that everybody uses.
We use it a lot : 'What a con, this one !'
- and occasionally apply it to ourselves : 'What a con, I forgot the milk again !'
- we can feminize it : conne K-oh-nnuh 'What a conne, I forgot the milk !' (which is ironic again, considering the etymology)
- or use it with a suffix : connard (m), connasse (f), without really altering the meaning. Only it makes it a little more aggressive. 'That was a red light, connard !' (note that the last d is silent)
Occasionally used by the highest moral authorities (though not without a good deal of media turmoil), like in Casse toi alors, pauv'con, namely, 'Beat it then, you asshole'. The famous sentence, which has since turned into a gimmick, was uttered in public and in front of the cameras by Nicolas Sarkozy, then serving as president of our beautiful republic, and directed to a guy who aggressively refused to shake his hand.
Frenzy. The English word actually comes from the French one. And the French one comes from ancient Greek, where it used to mean an 'inflammation of the mind'. In ancient French and in medicine it was sometimes spelled phrénésie. So... frenzy is the same word as frénésie, you might say. You would be right.But it'so much more efficient ! I like the acceleration of frenzy better, it's more, well... it's more frantic. (and not frénétique frray-nay-tee-k : by the time you finish to even pronounce that, any frénésie would bewell ahead of you) That is the sad truth, French can be clumsy sometimes. Apparently we are not very good at being intense.
PS : someone must have been aware of that before I was, back in 1988, because Roman Polanski's title was not translated for is movie Frantic. (young, handsome Harrison Ford, in gloomy 80's right bank Paris) Of course, it was pronounced à la française... 'Do you remember the movie Frantic ? It's amazing how the city has changed..."
'follow-me-young-lad', is a ribbon or a piece of laces, that dangles from the back of a woman's dress or hat, as if to lure the men into following her. XIXth century.
'All the gazes followed Nana down the street, the red suivez-moi-jeune-homme proudly dangling from her dress.'
