It’s been a while since we’ve looked at some French language from the TV show Les Parent. Let’s look at a scene from season 5, where we come across the québécois usages épeurant, moumoune and ben correct.
The scene:
Louis Parent has received his cousin Kevin Parent as a guest at his place. (Kevin is played by real-life singer Kevin Parent.)
During Kevin’s stay, a character called Marie takes a liking to him. Marie is a friend of the Parent family. She wants to watch a scary movie with Kevin late at night hoping to put the moves on him.
When Marie is alone in the living room with Kevin, she begins to flirt, using the subject of the scary movie that she’s about to see as her excuse:
Est-ce que c’est très épeurant comme film? Parce que moi j’suis vraiment moumoune.
Is it a really scary movie? Because I’m a real scaredy-cat.
Kevin doesn’t seem to be into Marie. He responds:
Non, c’est un peu dur, mais c’est pas vraiment épeurant. Tu vas être ben correcte.
No, it’s a bit rough but it’s not really scary. You’re gonna be just fine.
épeurant, scary
moumoune*, scaredy-cat, wimp, sissy
ben correct, just fine
*A note about une moumoune:
In the quote above, Marie used moumoune as an adjective to refer to herself as someone who gets scared easily. This word can become offensive if a gay male is referred to as une moumoune.
[Language taken from Les Parent, “Kevin qui vient dîner,” season 5, episode 1, Radio-Canada, Montréal, 17 September 2012.]
